This story is part of KRCC's Peak Curiosity series in collaboration with Colorado Wonders.
The snap and sizzle of electricity singes the air as a Tesla coil powers up. Designed to create high voltage currents, the large apparatus is suspended inside a metal cage above beer tanks at the Bristol Brewery in the repurposed historic Ivywild School on the south side of Colorado Springs.
Small bolts of lightning flash as brewery founder Amanda Bristol jolts the replica instrument to life with a remote control.
Inventor Nikola Tesla created an even larger coil during his experiments in Colorado Springs in 1899. He lived at the Alta Vista Hotel, which once stood on Cascade Avenue, but is gone now, according to Matt Mayberry, director of the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum.
“He wanted to stay in a room (number) that was divisible by three, and he was something of a germaphobe," Mayberry said.
"He's an odd and unusual character, as so many geniuses are."
In Memorial Park, just east of downtown Colorado Springs, a plaque honors Tesla. It’s close to where the scientist's laboratory was, Mayberry said.
Tesla aimed to harness the power of lightning, and the Pikes Peak region is "one of the lightning capitals of the United States," meteorologist Klint Skelly with the National Weather Service in Pueblo said.
"We have a mixture of the low-level moisture coming from the Gulf being forced up mountains, going into dry air, and then causing thunderstorms almost every day during our warm season," Skelly said.
But almost a full decade before Tesla came to Colorado Springs, his work was already in use on the western side of the Continental Divide to power a gold mine.
"The Ames Power Plant in Telluride was installed about 1891 by the Westinghouse Corporation, who had licensed Tesla's patents," said electrical engineer and Tesla buff David Bondurant. "So for the first time, they were transmitting hydropower over two miles by AC to a motor that drove that mine. So that's a milestone."
That power plant would become the first in history to use alternating current, or AC, based on Tesla's work. Eventually, Telluride would become one of the first U.S. cities powered by AC electricity.
Tesla then turned his attention to high-frequency AC, used in wireless telegraphy or wireless transmission. A high-altitude location, he thought, would yield the best results for his experiments.
Bondurant said Tesla developed a transmitter and receiver specific to this task and raised money to build a laboratory.
One of Tesla’s patent attorneys, Leonard Curtis, had moved to Colorado Springs for its health benefits, according to Bondurant. Curtis worked with a local power company, which provided the land and the power for the project.
Tesla arrived in Colorado Springs in May 1899.
"One of the first things he did was to simply listen to lightning storms that were coming from the mountains and heading east," Bondurant said. “With his sensitive receiver, he was able to hear radio transmissions that were emanating from these lightning strokes."
The experiments lasted only a few months, but Bondurant said Tesla got what he came for.
"He was running out of money," Bondurant said. "He had spent $100,000 to build his experiment... So he went home, did his patent and he never returned."
Home for Tesla was New York. That patent, one of many he owned, was for a wireless transmission system.
The laboratory he left behind was foreclosed on, Mayberry said.
"Ultimately … the laboratory is dismantled,” he said. “It's made out of rough-cut wood, and apparently that wood is repurposed building homes in the Ivywild neighborhood south of downtown."
That's the same neighborhood where Bristol Brewing now creates lighting with its replica Tesla coil.
To this day, Nikola Tesla sparks speculation and wonderment.
"The way I think about it is, we stand on the shoulders of the people who come before us," said Mayberry. "And I think by all accounts, Nikola Tesla had huge shoulders, and helped those who follow him take the next step, and the step after that. And so, that's how you think about it ... we're adding new knowledge to the world, and that's what he was trying to do."
Colorado Wonders
This story is part of our Colorado Wonders series, where we answer your burning questions about Colorado. Curious about something? Go to our Colorado Wonders page to ask your question or view other questions we've answered.
