Pueblo, City of History and Heroes
By Marcy Hege, Managing Editor
Photos by Joe Hege

Quick…close your eyes and what images come to mind when you hear “Colorado?” Skiing, snow, mountains, and Denver were the pictures of Colorado in my mind but a recent trip added a whole new perspective to my view of the 38th state in Union. Joe, my husband/photographer, and I were guests of the Colorado Tourism Office for a five-day tour of southeastern Colorado in early May. Spring and fall are perfect times of year to visit southeastern Colorado. Blessed with an average of 300 sunny days each year, our hosts were ecstatic when our group brought some spring rains with us since their rainfall average is about ten inches a year. It was so dry that the abundant supply of tree cactus was not even blooming!

Convenient flight arrangements landed us at the Colorado Springs airport where we were greeted by Arnold of Southeastern Colorado Ground Services four our 45 minute ride to Pueblo, the largest city in southeastern Colorado with a population just over 100,000. Little did we know then just how much Arnold and his drivers would be there at every turn for the next five days. About an hour after checking into the Abriendo Inn, a lovely bed and breakfast in Pueblo, Arnold picked us up again and off we went for a walking tour of Pueblo’s historic district and our first glimpse of the Riverwalk.

Pueblo has worked to restore and preserve many of the buildings in the downtown area and now has a vibrant shopping district featuring antique shops and restaurants. The Pueblo Union Depot is one of the highlights in the historic district. In its heyday, the depot served five railroads including the famous Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Line. Today, the building houses shops and public space with an Oktoberfest scheduled for this fall. Train buffs can explore the rail cars and engines located on the tracks behind the Depot and are a part of the Pueblo Railway Museum.

On many of the restored buildings, you will see the intricate works of Italian stonemasons. With work available on the rails, in the mines and related operations of Colorado Fuel and Iron, Pueblo was home to several immigrant populations: Italians, Irish, Scottish, Russian, English, Greek, Slovenian, German, Japanese and Mexican. These groups have left their imprints on the city’s cultural life. You can enjoy a Dutch lunch at Gus’ Place and wash it down with a beer. Gus Masciotra came to Pueblo from Naples, Italy at the age of 14 to work in the steel mills. By 1926, his grocery was added to the side of his house. After Prohibition in 1933, he opened a family tavern in the front of the grocery. Gus’ Dutch lunch is still a favorite of the locals and most days you can find the back table occupied by Pueblo’s retired Italians and their adopted family friends. Just a short walk down the street is Gagliano’s Italian Market, a 4th generation owned business where even strangers are invited to the back kitchen to see how Momma cooks as well as get a taste of her biscotti. Throughout the town, ethnic neighborhoods still show traces of their ancestry.

Giving a nod to the influence of industry on Pueblo’s development, the Bessemer Historical Society (BHS) is the driving force behind the Steelworks Museum of Industry & Culture and the CF&I (Colorado Fuel & Iron) Archives and Research Center. When CF&I ceased operations after 121 years in 2002, the nonprofit BHS took over the stewardship of the company’s office complex which includes 100,000 square feet of space in five buildings spanning 5.7 acres. The main office building has 31 vaults where the company’s maps and deeds were stored. The whole complex has been placed on The National Register of Historic Places. Archival records include company minutes, correspondence, labor relations files, mining documents, and ledgers that form one of the most complete historic corporate records in the nation. With CF&I being the first integrated steel mill west of the Mississippi and a pivotal player in the coal strikes and other trade unions events, these records will tell the viewpoints of labor and management. It was eerie to walk into offices where old typewriters, still with paper rolled in ready for work, were left when the company closed its doors. The first building to open to the public will be the Medical Dispensary where one can only imagine how the antique medical equipment could have been anything but a humanized form of torture to injured workers. The Steelworks Museum will be opened in phases as the cataloguing and restoration is completed.

Pueblo’s downtown district was devastated by flooding from the Arkansas River in 1921. To prevent the recurrence of a similar disaster, the town built levees to re-direct the river and form the Lake Pueblo, the city’s reservoir that offers all types of water sports on its 4,646 acres. The levees that were built to harness the Arkansas River are now a part of the world’s largest art mural measuring 65 feet high and more than three miles in length. The levee walls are at a 45-degree angle and feature all types and styles of painting. Below the levee walls, you can find an urban whitewater kayaking course. For fly fishermen, there are opportunities to wet a hook and test your fishing skill.

The Historic Arkansas River Project has restored the Arkansas River channel to its original location in downtown Pueblo. Walks, art-inspired walls, concert venues and boat cruises are available in the 26-acre Riverwalk area. A hub of activity for Pueblo, the Riverwalk’s schedule is full with June’s Boats, Blues & BBQ Cookoff, July 15’s commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Zebulon Pike’s expedition to Pike’s Peak, Sunday Serenades throughout the summer and the Annual Christmas Tree lighting.

Pueblo is known as “Home of the Heroes” since it is the hometown of four recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor. To commemorate this distinction, statutes of the four men stand proudly in front of the city’s convention center on Memorial Plaza. The granite Medal of Honor Memorial surrounds the area with the names of the more than 3,400 recipients of this prestigious award.

Also in downtown Pueblo, the El Pueblo History Museum sits adjacent to the original location of El Pueblo, a trading post and fort that teemed with activity during the 1840s. In the late 1980s, archaeologists began a dig to unearth the trading post’s history and to reclaim the area before all was lost to urban development. The dig site is secured in a glass pavilion. To serve as a reminder of the original buildings, a reconstruction of the trading post, complete with adobe bricks and horno bread ovens, stands adjacent to the El Pueblo Museum. In the museum, you can see many of the artifacts recovered from the dig. El Pueblo Museum focuses on the peoples who have lived and affected the area’s culture as exemplified by the 47 flags flying in the International Hall. Visitors can tour the exhibits that chronicle human activities in the area from prehistoric ages until the arrival of the railroads and industrial activity in 1900. Special emphasis is given to the lifestyles of historic Native American tribes and the impact of the Spanish explorers. A special exhibit “Explorer or Spy: The Pike Legacy” will be on view through this fall.

No trip to Pueblo would be complete without a visit to the City Park for a ride on the City Park Carousel. Built by the Charles Wallace Parker Amusement Devices Company in 1911 in Kansas, the carousel is of the Country Fair Style. It was restored in 1985 and a 1920 Wurlitzer Military Band Organ joined the carousel in 1989. You can become a child again as you experience the music and the brightly prancing horses. When you tire of the carousel, there’s a miniature train that runs through the park, complete with flashing lights at the crossings. After your rides, the Pueblo City Zoo offers a biopark home for more than 110 species of animals.

If you plan on going to Pueblo, be ready for chiles. There are chiles on the street flags, chiles on shirts, and more chiles. Each September, the city celebrates the harvest of the Pueblo Chile with authentic food, music, arts, fresh and roasted chiles and an 1840s historical market. The Chamber of Commerce even has its own brand of salsa featuring the chiles. I bet there’s at least one dish with chiles on the menu at every one of the city’s more than 100 restaurants.

When you tire of the city’s attractions, it’s time to get out on the road and hit the Frontier Pathways Scenic and Historic Byway. In about 100 miles, you can travel through the intersection of Native American, Spanish, French and American territories. Some of the highlights of this drive are the San Isabel National Forest and Lake Isabel, Bishop Castle, Sangro de Cristo Mountain Range, and Hardscrabble Canyon. Bishop Castle was probably the most unreal stop on our journey. This one-man project has been built by one man, Jim Bishop, using a wheel barrow and shovel. In his “day-job,” Bishop is works in wrought iron. Bishop, not a man to handle government intervention into private matters, has quarried and carried the stone, set the stone, installed the iron works and other construction since 1969.

For more information on visiting the Pueblo area, check out this website which contains links to many of the museums and other attractions in the area along with calendar of upcoming events: www.destinationpueblo.com.

In the July issue of Boom!, the rest of the trip throughout more rural areas of southeastern Colorado will be featured. We traveled to Picketwire Canyon to see one of the world’s largest gatherings of dinosaur tracks and prehistoric art, visited a Japanese internment camp, traced frontiersmen’s footsteps along the Santa Fe Trail, got chills from haunted houses, tried a bit of bird watching along with meeting some of the friendliest folks.

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