CANON CITY

seat (1861) of Fremont county, south central Colorado, U.S., at the eastern end of the Royal Gorge of the Arkansas River between the Front Range and Wet Mountains, just north of a segment of San Isabel National Forest. The site (altitude 5,343 ft ), formerly a camping ground of the Ute Indians, was settled by gold seekers in 1859. In the late 1860s oil was discovered nearby, and Canon City (from Spanish caon, canyon) developed as a supply point for the nearby mines and oil field; it was incorporated in 1872. A territorial prison, now the Colorado State Penitentiary, was established there in 1871, and a women's correctional institution was added in 1968. After the arrival of the Denver and Rio Grande Railway in 1874, the community became a shipping point for agricultural products, livestock, minerals, quarried marble, and (later) manufactured items (firebrick, concrete, hand tools, conveyors, and ore concentrates). The city is the seat of College of the Caons, an extension of the University of Southern Colorado at Pueblo. The Alantasauru archaeological finds (including fossils of prehistoric dinosaurs) were discovered at Oil Creek (northeast) in 1878. The poet Joaquin Miller (18371913) once served as judge, mayor, and minister in Canon City. The Royal Gorge, spanned by a suspension bridge 1,053 ft above the Arkansas River, has an incline aerial tramway (built 1931). Buckskin Joe is a reconstructed mining town at the entrance to the gorge. Canon City is a base for model rocket manufacturing. Pop. (1990) 12,687.