The Air Force Academy's Oldest Building is a Tiny Cabin

Tucked away in the Douglass Valley woods, along the stretch of the Falcon Trail between the Community Center and Falcon Stadium is the oldest structure on the Academy and one of the oldest in the Pikes Peak region.  ----more----

This is officially called the Pioneer Cabin.  It has been known as the Capps Cabin, but in reality was built by William A. Burgess, another early settler.  Around 1870, Leonard and Mary Ann Capps established a homestead just south of where Falcon Stadium is today.  The foundation of that three-room building is still visible.  This structure, the Pioneer Cabin, was built by Burgess in 1871.  It was re-named the “Capps” cabin because, when Falcon Stadium was built in 1962, graves of the Capps family were moved to the site of the Burgess cabin from their original burial site near where the stadium’s fifty-yard line is today.  The five graves include Leonard and Mary Ann Capps.  On 29 July 1961, Academy officials, led by Colonel Edward Stealy, deputy base commander, and the Palmer Lake Historical Society dedicated the cabin, as well as the Pioneer Cemetery.  A plaque memorializing the members of the Capps family was unveiled, reading, “This cemetery symbolizes the many pioneer families who originally settled this region.”  In January 1975, the cabin was added to the National Register of Historic Places by the U.S. Department of Interior.

 

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