Letters to a friend...: The most boring city in Colorado... Really?

What is the best way to spend a warm and sunny weekend in October? Right! Visiting New Mexico! What can be better?

That's what we did a couple of years ago - woke up early, shoved some stuff into the car trunk, and took I-25 to the South. And the journey began…

It was such a nice and chilly Saturday morning... With just a few cars on a highway, cool breeze, and crisp air… the car was literally flying, and all passengers were super excited about seeing something new. After a couple of hours in the car, we all decided we needed a break... And the best place to stop after two hours from home is Pueblo, often referred to as the most boring city of Colorado. The most boring? Hm... After spending half a day there, we were no longer so sure...

You know, let’s take a closer look and, perhaps, you'll find this place interesting and worth coming to.

The information below was mostly copied from WiKi and may not be 100% accurate... But I guess it is accurate enough ;)

The population of Pueblo was 106,595 in the 2010 census. Over 160,000 people are living in the Pueblo Metropolitan Area, and adding Cañon City makes it 208,000 people. That is a lot, isn't it?

Pueblo is one of the largest steel-producing cities in the United States, which is why Pueblo is referred to as the "Steel City". ‘That is interesting and really unexpected,’ I thought when I read that…

The history of Pueblo starts somewhere in 1842, where a few trappers built a plaza and trading post and called it El Pueblo. According to accounts of residents who traded at the plaza, the Fort Pueblo Massacre happened sometime between December 23 and December 25, 1854, by a war party of Utes and Jicarilla Apaches under the leadership of Tierra Blanca, a Ute chief. They allegedly killed between fifteen and nineteen men, as well as captured two children and one woman. The trading post was abandoned after the raid, but it became important again between 1858 and 1859 during the Colorado Gold Rush of 1859. Yeah, that wasn't uncommon to start history with some bloodshed. But for many places that was the end of the history, not for Pueblo though.

The current city of Pueblo represents the consolidation of four towns: Pueblo (incorporated 1870), South Pueblo (incorporated 1873), Central Pueblo (incorporated 1882), and Bessemer (incorporated 1886). Pueblo, South Pueblo, and Central Pueblo legally consolidated as the City of Pueblo between March 9 and April 6, 1886. Bessemer joined Pueblo in 1894. The consolidated city became a major economic and social center of Colorado, and was home to important early Colorado families such as the Thatchers, the Ormans, and the Adams. By the early 1870s, the city was being hailed as a beacon of development, with newspapers like the Chicago Tribune boasting of how the region's lawless reputation was giving way to orderly agriculture with triumphal rhetoric. One author crowed of Pueblo that "the necessity exists no longer for Sharp's rifles and revolvers. These have been supplied by the plow and the mowing-machine."

Pueblo's development stretched beyond agriculture. Steel emerged as a key industry very early, and in 1909 the city was considered the only steel town west of the Mississippi River.

Until a series of major floods culminated in the Great Flood of 1921, Pueblo was considered the 'Saddle-Making capital of the World'. Roughly one-third of Pueblo's downtown businesses were lost in this flood, along with a substantial number of buildings. Pueblo struggled with this significant loss but has had a resurgence in growth.

The main industry in Pueblo for most of its history was the Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I) Steel Mill (mainly owned and controlled by Jay Gould's and John D. Rockefeller’s financial heirs) on the south side of town. For nearly a century, the CF&I was the largest employer in the state of Colorado. The steel-market crash of 1982 led to the decline of the company. After several bankruptcies, in 1993 the company was acquired by Oregon Steel Mills and changed its name to Rocky Mountain Steel Mills. The company was plagued with labor problems, mostly due to accusations of unfair labor practices. In January 2007, along with the rest of Oregon Steel's holdings, it was acquired by EVRAZ Group, a Russian steel corporation, for $2.3 billion. What a story - from Rockefeller to EVRAZ :)

"Melting Pot of the West," that is how they called this city. Pueblo in the early twentieth century attracted a large number of immigrant laborers. The groups represented led to Pueblo becoming the most ethnically and culturally diverse city in Colorado and the West. At one point, more than 40 languages were spoken in the steel mill, and more than two dozen foreign language newspapers were published in the city. Irish, Italian, German, Slovenian, Greek, Jewish, Lithuanian, Russian, Hungarian, Japanese, and African-American groups arrived in the area at the turn of the century and remain to the present time. The convergence of cultures led to a cosmopolitan character in the city that resulted in a number of ethnically-rooted neighborhoods that are typically not seen west of the Mississippi.

Pueblo is the hometown of four Medal of Honor recipients (more than any other municipality in the United States) - William J. Crawford, Carl L. Sitter, Raymond G. Murphy, and Drew D. Dix. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, upon presenting Raymond G. "Jerry" Murphy with his medal in 1953, commented, "What is it... something in the water out there in Pueblo? All you guys turn out to be heroes!"

So… do you still think it's the most boring city in Colorado? Really? :) But it doesn't matter what you or I think, most travelers don't leave I-25 and spend more than one hour in this city, just long enough to grab a bite, use the restroom, and keep going. Actually, that was our intention as well – to look at several churches and buildings and continue on our way to Las Vegas… But the planned hour-long stop turned into a half-day trip filled with walking and enjoying the streets of Pueblo.

First, we stopped downtown, to see The Pueblo County Courthouse and a bunch of churches built in Gothic-Renaissance Revival style. They were quite common in places where wealthy residents had enough money to build such beauty. And then we moved to Main Street to just walk along and look for nice buildings, great murals, and try to see what it looked like 100 years ago…

Pueblo Union Depot was constructed in 1889 in the architectural style of Richardsonian Romanesque by the architect Frank V. Newell. Railroads were the links that determined a town’s economic development. Pueblo’s first railroad, the Denver & Rio Grande, ran north to Denver. Next, the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad linked Pueblo to the East. Soon there were five railroads serving Pueblo.

Originally, each railroad had its own depot, and this was somewhat inconvenient for the traveler. The Pueblo Union Depot was part of a national trend in which one central depot served all of the railroads. The Depot was built by Puebloans Henry Thatcher and Mahlon Thatcher, and since it was done, one depot serviced all five railroads.

The 1889 Sanborn Insurance Map indicated that the Depot’s main building housed an emigrant’s waiting room, a baggage room, toilet room, ladies waiting room, gentlemen’s waiting room, central hall, lunch and dining hall, kitchen with pantry, laundry, barber shop, gentlemen’s toilet, and storage rooms on the side. The separate building to the north is the Express Office.

In 1892, the Depot handled 51 trains, 18,615 passengers, and 164,718 pieces of baggage per day. During this year, there were 103,114 tickets sold, worth $568,639. Passenger service ended in April of 1971.

During World War II, many troop trains stopped at the Depot. The government paid $1 for each soldier’s meal, which included a T-bone steak, mashed potatoes, gravy, vegetables, and ice cream. If steaks, which cost 50 cents a pound, were not available, the soldiers were served pork chops. I wish they had served something like this when I was in the Navy ;) But I shouldn't complain, we never had T-bone steaks, but the submariners were fed quite well, much better than any other branch of the military.

The Union Depot is located within the over century-old Union Avenue Historic Commercial District. The Union Depot is the shining star of 83 buildings in the 27-acre District on the National Historic Register. The Union Depot is located at one end of this historic District, with the Riverwalk, Pueblo Downtown's main modern attraction located at the other end, with many unique shops, antique stores, restaurants, boutiques, and venues in between for locals and visitors to stroll through.

We stopped being attracted by bright posters in the window and walked in to talk to Mathias Valdez, the printer who creates those great jobs. He worked there for 10 years and printed posters for customers around the globe. Film festivals, music groups, local businesses, and other clients appreciate his cool and intricate screen print work. And... honestly... he is an artist and his work is far above average prints.

But we had to keep going. So we loaded into the car and drove around the streets a little bit more, stopping here and there to take pictures of St. Michael Orthodox Church, Traveling Agency, St. Mary Church with God's 10 Commandments located next to the entry and a beautiful praying garden nearby...