About Palmer High School...
Palmer High School is located at 301 North Nevada Avenue in Colorado Springs. The present building was built by the Works Progress Administration under Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940. Originally named Colorado Springs High School, Palmer High School was re-named in 1959 after the city's founder, General William Jackson Palmer. At that date, the city had expanded enough to warrant the building of a second high school, Roy J. Wasson High School.
The school traces its history back to the 1870s and still uses a "C" for varsity letters, which through 1986 was referred to as the Broken Circle Tribe. In 1894, the successful football team earned the nickname "holy terrors," and so the school adopted the nickname "Terrors." In 1923, the football team won the national championship, the same year that Fred Fink wrote the beloved "Terror Fight Song." Prior to 1945, the school's mascot was a pit bull. In 1945, a Native American student, Don Willis, designed Eaglebeak, a caricature of a fictitious Indian chieftain, beloved and respected by students and faculty alike, and the teams became the Terrors. Despite this, in 1985 a local political hopeful made an issue of racism for political gain, making Palmer one of the very first cases of controversy over an Indian mascot in the United States. This upset the community at large, even rival high schools who understood the respect Eaglebeak was treated with, and the politician lost the election very soundly. Despite the fact that he later publicly apologized to the student body and retracted the charge of racism, the damage was done, Eaglebeak was not to return. In the following years, Palmer experimented with a variety of mascots, to include a two-month flirtation with the Tasmanian devil from Warner Brothers, which very nearly ended in a lawsuit.
In the early 1990s the high school chose an eagle as its mascot, naming it "Eaglebeak", but without the historical background of the original.
About William Palmer...
William Jackson Palmer (September 17, 1836 - March 13, 1909) was a civil engineer, soldier, and industrialist. He was a Union General during the American Civil War. He also was founder and president of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. Palmer founded the City of Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1871, as well as several other communities. Learn more about William Palmer...
How to reach us...
You can find out how to reach us and get directions to Palmer thanks to Google Maps.
