Special Collections at the Pikes Peak Library District houses city directories for Colorado Springs published from 1879 to the present. The first city directory for Colorado Springs was compiled and published by W.H.H. Raper & Co. in 1879. Subsequent editions were published by S.N. Francis, the Out West Printing and Stationary Co., the Giles Directory Co., and R.L. Polk & Co., who continues to publish them today. The directories were published, roughly, every other year until 1900, when they began to be published annually.
City directories can provide valuable genealogical and historical information about people and the communities in which they lived. They list residents alphabetically by surname and usually indicate a person’s address, occupation and spouse’s name. Directories may also contain business listings and advertisements; a brief community description; information about local, state and national government; listings of schools and colleges, clubs, organizations, secret societies and churches. After 1900, in Colorado Springs, the directories also included a cross-reference index to street addresses. The Colorado Springs city directories also include listings for surrounding communities, such as Old Colorado City and Manitou.
The Colorado Springs city directories from 1879 through 1922 have been digitized, with the gracious help of dedicated volunteers from the Pikes Peak Genealogical Society, and are provided here in .pdf format. The text of the directories has been scanned with optical character recognition (OCR) software, so that they may be searched using a .pdf reader. The OCR process is not perfect, especially with older texts and fonts, so the directories should be browsed if a search does not turn up intended results. City directories published after 1922 may still be covered by U.S. copyright and are not included here. The originals, however, may be viewed in the Special Collections department of the Pikes Peak Library District. Later editions of the Colorado Springs city directories, up to 1963, can be found in the HeritageQuest database
1899 Colorado City and Manitou Directory
Telephone Directory, Spring 1940, for Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs, Cripple Creek and Victor, Drennan, Fountain, Cascade, Chipita Park, Green Mountain Falls, Woodland Park, and Yoder. Residential listings only.