Trail’s End – The song of Pueblo

By Cathleen Norman

The story of Pueblo, the largest community in southern Colorado and a leading industrial city since its very beginning, is an interesting one. With a population of 107,000, Pueblo is the state’s seventh largest city. Hispanic/Latino citizens make up 44 percent of the residents, a legacy of both abundant agricultural activity in the Lower Arkansas Valley downriver from Pueblo as well as the work force demands at the city’s steel mills and manufacturing plants.

Multinational immigrants from dozens of countries arrived at the turn-of-the-19th century to work at Pueblo’s many industrial sites. In the past half century, the number of Hispanics has grown considerably.

Pueblo sits in the high desert where Fountain Creek flows into the Arkansas River, 100 miles south of Denver and 45 miles south of Colorado Springs. Before the city grew here, the location had a brief and ill-fated function as Fort Pueblo. George Simpson, Mathew Kinkead and other traders and trappers built an adobe structure in 1842. The fortified trading post encouraged settlement and trade in the Arkansas River Valley, at that time U.S.-Mexican borderlands. On Christmas Eve 1854, Utes and Jicarilla Apaches raided Fort Pueblo, killing or kidnapping half of the 30 or so inhabitants. Fort Pueblo was abandoned.

The area grew again 15 years later with 1859 Colorado gold rush. Present Pueblo originated as a ranching center and a stop on the famed Goodnight-Loving cattle trail, according to Pueblo, A Pictorial History, by Joanne West Dodds. The Pueblo Chieftain newspaper observed, “The cowboy is apt to spend his money liberally when he gets paid after his long [cattle] drive from Texas.” The city of Pueblo was incorporated in 1870 and immediately became the major industrial center of southern Colorado.

The railroad arrived in 1871 – the Denver & Rio Grande (D&RG) built south from Colorado Springs by Gen. Henry Jackson Palmer. It launched Pueblo as a transportation hub and industrial center. The railroad hauled gold and silver ore down from Colorado’s mighty mountain districts, like Leadville, to the Pueblo’s awaiting mills and smelters.

Railroad construction also fueled the steel-milling industry: Palmer’s CF&I Steel Corporation erected enormous mills to produce gigantic quantities of “rail steel,” metal train tracks. Pueblo became the largest steel-producing city in the West.

Commerce and finance flourished as well. Two brothers, Mahlen D. and John A. Thatcher, opened Pueblo’s first bank and expanded their banking empire expanded into nearly a score banks throughout southern Colorado, including the rich San Juan mining districts. Stock raising and agriculture remained prime industries, and Pueblo became the largest saddle-making center in the world.

This economic activity saw several challenges, including business recessions and labor union strikes. However, the Great Flood of 1921 struck Pueblo the worst. The unruly Arkansas had jumped its banks several times, but in June 1921 the catastrophic flood devastated the commercial district, inundating stockyards and saddle making operations, closing forever one-third of the city’s businesses and destroying dozens of downtown buildings. At least 150 people were dead or missing and $33 million in property was lost.

It took the city several decades to recover. Pueblo Reservoir, constructed 6 miles upriver in 1970-75, provided flood control and a prime recreational attraction. During the past decade, the Arkansas River has emerged as a landscaped centerpiece flowing past the historic red-brick downtown district.

Meanwhile, the steel industry did not burgeon forever. Pueblo steel mills produced an array of metal products: rail, rod, bar, and seamless tube, as well as wire, fencing and nails. But the city’s economic profile changes in the early 1980s when the market for domestic steel crashed and thousands of jobs were lost. Juggernaut C&FI Steel, after a series of bankruptcies and takeovers morphed into Rocky Mountain Steel, a subsidiary of Russia-based steel giant Evraz. Today, it consists of specialty mill employing as many as 1,000 workers.

Although the industry is just a shadow of its former self, Pueblo’s Steel City nickname defines the Union Avenue Historic district. Art galleries, coffee shops, Internet cafes, beauty salons, clothing boutiques, music taverns and tattoo parlors thrive in the beautifully restored old buildings in this National Register Historic District.

Meanwhile, the steel mills still loom as a vacant visual reminder of the city’s industrial past: towering rusting structures visible from I-25 and elsewhere in the city. The main blast furnace was torn down in 1989, but stoves and furnace foundations remain. Part of the industrial complex was reborn as the Steelworks Museum of Industry and Culture and that contains the Bessemer Archives Center.

There is more to Pueblo than the steel industry. Remnant of its agricultural roots, Pueblo hosts the Colorado State Fair. The state’s largest single event attracts a half million people during its 10-day stretch and has been a Pueblo tradition since 1886. Another major influence and main employer is the State Hospital, established in 1879 and now renamed Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo. Colorado State University has had a major campus in Pueblo for 60 years.

All year round, Pueblo is a place of exciting activities and festivals, in a climate 10 degrees warmer than its northern urban neighbors. The Professional Bull Riders moved their corporate headquarters to Pueblo in 2008, where they occupy a brand-new red-brick building beside the Arkansas. Reaching back to the city’s stockyard and round-up history, the Pueblo Chamber of Commerce launched the annual Wild Wild West Fest three years ago, a mid-May extravaganza offering everything from all types of roping events to blacksmithing and chainsaw art and a golf tournament.

The Rocky Mountain Street Rod Nationals have been held at the State Fairgrounds for more than 20 years. The Chile & Frijoles Festival in late September celebrates with vigor the pungent pepper. Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead that coincides with the Halloween season and spirit, sees various festivities.

Pueblo’s mellower side includes the inviting riverwalk. The Historic Arkansas River Project reclaimed the mighty and murderous water way to create a concert plaza and an attractive waterway complete with boat rides. The site where Zebulon Pike first spied his namesake peak on Nov. 4, 1806, is commemorated in sculpture. Upriver, at the Nature and Raptor Center of Pueblo, Bluegrass On the River entertains thousands of music lovers every first weekend in June.

The original 1850’s adobe fort has been reconstructed as El Pueblo Museum and the Sangre de Cristo Art Center is the focal point for a bubbling cultural community. The John Thatcher residence, now the Rosemount Mansion, is an architectural centerpiece. The city’s numerous historic districts deserve their own separate article. El Pueblo Museum regularly hosts the “Song of Pueblo,” a musical that celebrates the brightly colored stories surrounding this spicy city.