Garden of the Gods
Colorado Springs, CO
The area now known as Garden of the Gods was first called Red Rock Corral by the Europeans. In August 1859, two surveyors who helped to found Colorado City explored the site. One of the surveyors, Melancthon S. Beach, suggested it would be a "capital place for a beer garden". His companion, the young Rufus Cable, awestruck by the impressive rock formations, exclaimed, "Beer garden! Why, it is a fit place for the Gods to assemble. We will call it the Garden of the Gods." However, an 1893 issue of the Colorado Transcript reported that Helen Hunt Jackson assigned the name "the Garden of the Gods"
Riding past the cabin of a prospector from the South in one of the early days of the settlement, she was attracted by a beautifully kept garden in which two negro servants, a man and a woman, were working. In answer to a question the man informed her that his name was Jupiter, and the woman's Juno, whereupon she exclaimed: "Then, this must be the Garden of the Gods."
The name "Garden of the Gods" was also later given to a section of the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, California, filled with large sandstone rock formations, because of the area's resemblance to Colorado's Garden of the Gods. The story goes that back in the early days of Hollywood, a movie producer seeking a rocky filming location made a comment to the effect of, "Who needs to go all the way to Colorado—we have our own 'Garden of the Gods' here!" The Iverson family took the comment to heart and began calling their own collection of rock formations the "Garden of the Gods," and the name stuck. Today the main section of Chatsworth's Garden of the Gods has also been preserved as a park.
TL;DR
The area was first called Red Rock Corral. In 1859, two surveyors explored it. One suggested a "beer garden", the other called it "Garden of the Gods". In 1893, Helen Hunt Jackson named it "Garden of the Gods". The name was later used for a section of Iverson Movie Ranch in California due to similar rock formations.
