[5] For instance, the ground gives way after wood that held up the roof of the rooms deteriorates, generally 10 to 20 years after the mines closed.

[4] Cragmor is located about 300 feet (91 m) in elevation above and 3 miles (4.8 km) northeast of downtown Colorado Springs.

[10] Located on a bluff of prairie grass, pines, and ground oaks, the sanatorium's westward view included Pikes Peak and Rampart Range.

However, they were hit hard by the Great Depression in the 1930s and Cragmor suffered from financial distress into the 1940s.

It was briefly reinvigorated in the 1950s when a contract with the Bureau of Indian Affairs established Cragmor as a treatment center for Navajo people with tuberculosis.

[11] By the 1950s, coal was no longer mined in the area, and land was developed for the construction of about 3,500 houses,[4] which was completed in the early 1960s.

[6] In another case, a dog died when the earth sunk in the backyard and the resulting falling dirt suffocated the animal.

In 1979, earth sunk into an old mine shaft by a fourplex on Magnolia Street in the Cragmor area.

[9] In 1965, UCCS moved to its current location on Austin Bluffs Parkway in the Cragmor neighborhood of northern Colorado Springs.

[9] In 2001, UCCS purchased an 87,000-square-foot (8,100 m2) building at the corner of Union and Austin Bluffs to house the Beth-El College of Nursing.

[9] The former Katherine Bates Elementary School at 702 Cragmor Road was razed to create dormitory housing for the campus, which is scheduled to be completed by fall 2017.

[14] In what is now Central Colorado Springs, the Cragmor neighborhood is located by the UCCS campus.

The sinkhole was filled and the pool braced when tons of concrete was poured into the shafts.