Spontaneous celebrations broke out 77 years ago from Old Colorado City to the dirt road on the city’s east side — Union Boulevard — as people hugged, kissed and danced in the streets to mark the end of World War II in Europe.

No single event has brought more change to this failed health spa and tourist town of Colorado Springs with its boom-gone-bust gold industry. But the change to the Pikes Peak region amounted to more than bringing in bases and military contracts.

The treasures World War II delivered to the Colorado Springs area were men and women like those the Gazette outlined in its Last of the Greatest series of stories in late 2019 and early 2020.

“It brought a diverse group of people here to the Springs, a broad diverse group,” said retired Army Command Sgt. Maj. Terrance Mcwilliams ini 2021. “It has helped define Colorado Springs.”

It almost never happened. As war clouds loomed in Europe, Colorado Springs was at a crossroads. Penicillin took away one of the city’s industries, as a spa to recover from tuberculosis.

Another important underpinning, gold, was hit by a federal price cap and diminishing returns on the Cripple Creek lode. Tourism was already down thanks to the economic turmoil from the Great Depression, and with war on the horizon, that industry, too, was heading off a cliff.

As we went through the coronavirus pandemic, the economics may sound familiar. But the city’s leaders did what they’re still doing when the economy heads south: find another path.

In the early 1940s, the city’s newly-formed Military Affairs Council snapped up some cheap ranchland south of the city and offered it to the War Department for free. Those first parcels grew into the 135,000-acre Fort Carson, one of the nation’s key Army hubs.

But the city giveaway didn’t stop there. The town’s airport was handed over to the Army Air Corps on a $1 per year lease that

continues to this day.

The place was later named for Lt. Edward Peterson, the first airman to die in a training accident here.

Then, Colorado Springs handed over some vacant lots on the eastern fringe of town, Platte Avenue and Union Boulevard. Ent Air Force Base, now the Olympic Training Center, was named for Maj. Gen. Uzal Ent, its first commander.

People in Colorado Springs, a conservative burg known for its teetotaling stance on alcohol, were suspicious at first of the troops who rolled in.

But quickly, people here fell in love with the military. And the troops fell in love with them.

It’s something that continues to this day.

“Colorado Springs is the No. 1 place that people want to be stationed,” Mcwilliams said. “I attribute a lot of that to the culture of this community.”

Army divisions trained here and the troops moved back after the war. If you like some of the home cooking here these days, it is at least partially due to the Italian and German prisoners of war who were housed at Fort Carson, and immigrated after VE Day, bringing their native cuisine with them.

The people drawn here first by the military who stay after they take off the uniform are a secret to the Pikes Peak region’s success.

Before World War II, Colorado Springs was a town of 33,000, dwarfed by its southern neighbor Pueblo, with 55,000 residents.

Now, 77 years after the war, El Paso County has grown to well over 700,000 residents. That group includes nearly 45,000 active-duty troops, several thousand reservists and more than 100,000 veterans.

“It is who we are as a community.” Mcwilliams said. The military brought us the merging of different cultures and ethnicities. They didn’t come with so much financial wealth, but they have intellectual wealth and vast experience in multiple skill sets.”

More than 40% of the Pikes Peak region’s economy is tied to Pentagon paychecks and defense contractors, according to reports.

After the war, Colorado Springs kept pitching in, donating land for the Air Force Academy, luring the North American Aerospace Defense Command to Cheyenne Mountain, and cementing its place in the space business with Schriever Air Force Base.

To better align Schriever and Peterson Air Force bases with their missions, were recently renamed Schriever Space Force Base and Peterson Space Force Base. Space Force is the newest branch of the Armed Forces and was established in December 2019.

Colorado will have the largest contingent of bases named for the new space service because it is also home to Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora, U.S. Space Command, Space Operations Command and the bulk of the Space Force’s 13,000 troops.

Colorado Springs is the provisional home of U.S. Space Command — which oversees all military missions in orbit — through 2026. In January 2021, former President Donald Trump announced U.S. Space Command would be uprooted and moved to Huntsville, Ala., after 2026. The federal Government Accountability Office has been reviewing the decision and Congress could reverse it.

With U.S. Northern Command, Army Space and Missile Defense Command and NORAD, no place in the United States can claim more strategic importance than Colorado Springs.

In its first two years, nearly 200 guardians were commissioned into the Space Force after graduating from the Air Force Academy.

And from Air Force Academy cadets to infantry troops still growing out their basic training haircuts at Fort Carson, Colorado Springs also helps raise the military’s future.

It all came from a few Broadmoor cocktails in 1940, where city fathers came up with their plan to give a gift to the military.

And it came from those World War II troops who came here and fell in love.

The military during the war planted roots elsewhere in Colorado. Camp Hale in the mountains, was closed after the war. Air bases in La Junta and Pueblo closed. Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal have come and gone.

Air Bases in La Junta and Grand Junction are gone, too.

But there was something special in Colorado Springs that created lasting bonds with the military. And what could have ended after all that dancing in the streets 77 years ago continues to this day.