The U .S. actually has five military academies and the Air
Force Academy north of Colorado Springs in northern El Paso County was the last
one of those to be established in the 1950s. Gee, I tend to think of it as
there being three such academies, but in fact there are also Coast Guard and
Merchant Marine academies as well as Army, Navy, and Air Force. I’m not sure
why, but Colorado seems to me to be such a natural place to have located the
academy, but apparently back when the new academy for the new department of the
U.S. military was planned, locations in Illinois and Wisconsin were also
considered. They picked a fantastically located site fir it, though, where the
Great Plains rise dramatically at the Front Range of the Rockies, a kind of Big
Sky country appropriate for fighter planes to cruise the skies.

The Air Force Academy is one of the first sights I visited
in Colorado when I arrived for graduate school in Boulder in 1991. I had just
found a place to live and accompanied my roommate (Brad) on a day trip to Colorado
Springs and the Air Force Academy . I think I’ve been back once or twice and
recall visiting once when my parents were in town because it was one of the few
sights my father would take much interest in. Timby (Tim and Toby) decided had
not yet visited yet in their three years of living in Colorado, so we decided
to make a stop on the way home after the Balloon Festival, Garden of the Gods,
and lunch in Colorado Springs.

Although the Air Force Academy is supposedly one of the most
popular visitor attractions in Colorado, there really isn’t too much to see. Security
is tight nowadays, of course, but unlike West Point and Annapolis there are no
long guided tours around the campus. From the visitor center and its displays
on the hill you can get a dramatic view of the entire campus and its
surroundings. It’s then possible to walk down to the campus and the cadet area
without a guide, but the only part of the campus that can be visited is the
very modern Cadet Chapel. The extremely modernistic design of the campus and
especially the chapel are said to have been controversial at the time of
construction but are now considered one of the foremost examples of modernist
academic architecture in the country.