Colorado Experience: Pueblo

[Music] Pueblo in so many ways represents the cultural richness of Colorado as a crossing point as an international boundary it's drawn people together from very diverse perspectives over time I can't imagine when a train pulled in with new immigrants and they got off in this area what it must have been like for them our history is how we have united despite all the reasons to be divided we have found a way to find common purpose American Indians hispanos explorers soldiers farmers miners railroad men all come to this spot have all called it home and have all had to work together in order to succeed Colorado experience is a co-production of Rocky Mountain PBS and history Colorado history Colorado brings history to life for audiences of all ages through exhibits collections and historic preservation programs throughout the state history Colorado connects people to the stories places and heritage of Colorado's past that provide perspectives on today and inspire our choices for tomorrow find out more at WWDC lard org additional funding provided by L poem our Foundation and the Boettcher Foundation celebrating 75 years of philanthropy in Colorado with additional funding and support from these fine organizations and from viewers like you thank you [Music] you history is really complicated all history is really complicated there are so many things that run through it there's race there's class there's gender there's politics and I think problem can be sliced and diced in so many different ways those fault lines run in so many different directions that if any one of those fault lines dominated the history of this town nothing would ever get done well if we're gonna go back to the beginning of course we have to go thousands of years but the primary tribes really for this region are five there's the Arapaho Cheyenne Apache Comanche in the Utes the Utes probably being the oldest tribe in the area for thousands of years pablo has been a crossroads for many different people it's it's across one of the oldest migration corridors in North America for more than ten thousand years people have been moving north and south across the Front Range and across the Arkansas River right at the spot where Pueblo was built what we know is I 25 today is an ancient trade route of Native Americans that extends all the way like the current road does I you follow i-25 once it crosses the Mexican border goes straight to Mexico City even in the pre pre white man times a few will pre European times Indians did compete conflict with each other Europeans did not introduce conflict warfare trade it has already existed here in Pueblo and Puebla is almost a crossroads and according to many accounts maybe the first expedition that entered what is now Colorado would have been the Coronado expedition from 1540 242 many of them brought their wives and children some of them quickly intermixed with the Indian women some of them married him some of them just cohabitated but there is definite cross pollenization we have a border culture here the border being the Arkansas River it flows right through our town and so that separated countries when those five tribes were moving through here that was not seen as a border it wasn't until the French came in and the Spanish came in then they started looking at the vast territory and claiming it now and it went back and forth between France and Spain a few times and most of the Indians particularly the nomadic Indians they refused to submit to Spanish Authority and there was almost a constant state of warfare for instance the Comanches and we're here definitely but when the Spanish came through they moved them south because they were constantly raiding the colonies they were a real threat to the settlement of northern New Mexico so Juan Bautista De Anza push the Comanche south in the 1700s just a few years after the American Revolution so that kind of gives you an idea of just how old our history is here Puebla was an international boundary the Arkansas River was literally the boundary between New Spain and French Louisiana in 1803 the French sold their portion of the North American continent to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase and so Pueblo and the Arkansas River became the major border crossing in the Far West between the United States and New Spain and then after 1821 Mexico Mexico becomes independent from Spain in 1821 by 1822 there's already people coming from Missouri overland and then establishing the Santa Fe Trail establishing a trade route by 1840 to a group of traders some of whom had been affiliated with been sold for it established their own trading called El Pueblo at the site of today's 500 Pueblo means the village in Spanish and it was a settlement of mountain men and hispano sand American Indians who all lived together they raised livestock and they traded with each other and with American Indians for hides and for robes and for whiskey and guns and beads and it was a place where people could come together and exchange things that they had for things that they needed American Historians Frederick Jackson Turner and his Pulitzer Prize winning essay back in the 1890s talked about the passing of the American frontier and he looks at these mountain men these traders fur trappers and frontiersman as literally carrying American culture with them spreading west to the Pacific coast would later be referred to as manifest destiny they believed that it was America's destiny to occupy all of North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific they felt in the long run having northern Mexico as part of the United States would spread what they called an empire of Liberty that we would bring American systems political systems like democracy to people who the traitors very often felt were backwards Puebloans history is very complex when we're speaking about all of the tribal nations and then we have the countries that claim this area as well including the Republic of Texas came up to this border at one point so we're talking about a lot of flags flying over this area the Mexican American War of 1846 to 1847 around pueblo the smanos who lived at a place like pueblo were Nationals of the Republic of Mexico but they were very often mayor 8/2 Americans or too American the various nationalities of the people live there led to all kinds of discussions about loyalty and citizenship ultimately by the end of the mexican-american war all of New Mexico became part of the United States and the land south of the Arkansas River became American soil relationships between the United States government and the Plains Indian tribes were really deteriorating the arrival of the United States Army scared away game it spread disease it led to the decline of timber and water resources which convinced the American Indians that they really didn't want to stay in the area anymore the war actually brought a decline to fur trading posts like El Pueblo and bents fort and by the end of the 1840s that that era of the Indian trade and the Santa Fe trade was really over the Americans began taking up more land and that in turn created resentment among many American Indian tribes after the mexican-american war treaties were made with the tribes in the area and our treaty was made with the youth they settled on specified land and they were a very peaceful tribe they maintained this treaty in turn the United States agreed to build forts that would protect them as long as the white man could move through their territory freely but after many years they became poor and poor where the other tribes were becoming more affluent Comanches kaya's and other tribes were given annuities that concluded ammunition and guns so they raided the youths and the youths were starving they were not given provisions they were not given those implements they were not taught how to to be farmers the the tribes were pitted against each other leaders asked for ammunition and powder so that they could protect themselves from the raiding tribes and that never came it never came and so that's why they became so poor and so desperate they were starving they eventually tried to meet with the territorial governor Meriwether he had gifted them some jacket some coats that were military like with lapels and very attractive but unfortunately from that meeting the natives contracted smallpox and that was the last straw it might shock some of our sensibilities today and a lot of people consider it kidnapping and slavery and theft but it was a different world and customs were very different from the way we think of laws what should be right and wrong so it wasn't the bloodthirsty savages scalping raping pillaging wanton bloodlust that's a gross exaggeration of a very old tradition a new leader emerges his name is Jana Blanca white earth and they start to rain they came to Felipe parkas Placita and he had a number of cabins and workers he had quite a crop of corn and a large number of horses livestock and the youths raided there they took his animals his horses and then they proceeded west to the trading post in a short order they heard the screams hollering and shooting coming from the trading place [Music] and after a while when these were quiet they investigated and they found the residents murdered the attack took place on Christmas Day most of the residents of the four de pueblos had been up all night celebrating Christmas Eve they were totally unprepared for the attack when the youths arrived they killed almost everybody in the fort they only captured one woman and two children and and used them as hostages and it was a real tragedy it spread a lot of alarm among the settlers of southern Colorado and ultimately it led to the establishment of Fort Massachusetts and then fort garland in the San Luis Valley an American military post that would keep the peace between settlers and American Indians it took a number of years after the massacre for people to settle again in the Pueblo region the cause of the next wave of settlement was the Pikes Peak Gold Rush of 1859 and 1865 order and a border crossing and for the thousands of gold seekers making their way to the gold fields of Cherry Creek in the Rocky Mountains Pueblo was a natural place to stop and resupply it was a place where you could rest up before that last jump into the Rocky Mountains there were a number of little settlements that were founded right around level that ultimately consolidated into the city of Pueblo as we know it first it was a farming supply town in a ranching supply town providing goods to the miners by the 1870s it became a major railroad town once again serving that purpose as a crossroads in southern Colorado the arrival of the Denver and Rio Grande railroad really caused Pablo to boom for the first time it was an urban and industrial area and because of its proximity to large coal fields it seemed like the ideal place for railroad developers to build their rails to provide the coal that would power their engines across the plains and into the mountains so developers like William Jackson Palmer the founder of the Denver Rio Grande railroad made a beeline for Pueblo general Palmer was the first industrialist and he started the land companies here to bring people to the west well how are you going to get people to the west you needed railroads and he realized with the resources here that he could make the rails here we could make the rails between the 1870 and 1880 you saw the arrival of the Denver and Rio Grande and they were Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe and The Rock Island Railroad in the Chicago Burlington and Quincy all of these railroad lines converging on Pueblo as the hub of southern Colorado sort of that nexus between the mountains and the plains thousands upon thousands of people came out on those very rails and they came to pueblo union depot pueblo at its height had 55 training can go in it day there were different languages spoken here all the time by the 1890s Pablo was a jungle of factories and smokestacks pillowing huge plumes of smoke into the atmosphere of course you need a lot of laborers in order to keep that industry humming and pueblos imported thousands of workers literally from all over the world from Europe and Latin America and Asia who all came to pueblos in order to get a job in order to escape difficult circumstances at home and hopefully get a new life in America it is a city with a tremendous racial and ethnic mix and has been for a very very long time a lot of people who worked in the coal mines back when the coal mines were operating when the coal mines stopped operating moved to pueblos and got other jobs so if you talk to native prevalence you know it's like my dad worked in a steel mill well my grandpa worked in the coal mines and they all sort of come together the whole Southern Colorado the used to be industrial southern Colorado comes together in this city I think that makes its character unique we're not just in Colorado really in the entire West by the 1880s steel companies like the Colorado coal and iron company and its success of the Colorado fuel and Iron Company made Pueblo their corporate headquarters manufacturing gigantic foundries and factories to smelt pig iron into steel and manufacture that steel into rails and the other sinews of the Industrial Revolution CF&I was the largest steel mill west of the Mississippi River and CF tonight was the largest private employer in Colorado the largest private landowner in addition to the steel mill the coal mines were very very profitable for the company because the coal mines not only provided coal for the steelmaking industry but here in Pueblo but they also provided coal for residence commercial field purposes so that's that's the feel when the Colorado field and iron company prior to the unions the workers were not regarded not their safety not their wives not their children they were pitted against each other Wow and they were not assisted they did not have any medical help there were no benefits and they were extremely exploited and the work was incredibly dangerous certainly the Cold War's the strikes affected positively workers rights and with the Ludlow strike and the Rockefeller plan that had an impact on workers throughout the country and still does we definitely have a union history here on Pueblo CF and I had a sociological department and the purpose of the sociological department in a lot of ways was to educate the immigrants about American customs and American activities they see themselves as assisting these individuals in these immigrant groups even though you're dealing with Mexican Americans are these new of mcconnell's who actually from southern Colorado in northern New Mexico for a long time this idea of we can help uplift you it's kind of kind of ideas connect with the progressive movement I think CF&I is actually saying we don't want you to identify as ethnic groups we want you to identify as workers and their sociological apartment is headed by Richard Korman who actually is the pioneer of Pablo's medicine right and so one of the things that he addresses is one of the sociological ideas is to Americanize these immigrant groups and I actually think of it as more as it's not about Americanization at the beginning it's how do we make better employees and then it becomes Americanization colorful iron is one of the premier welfare capitalists in the United States a welfare capitalist is a company that does things not because they have to for labor market purposes they do so because they want to thinking that it will get them some sort of advantage in the long run baseball teams that's part of all for capitalism having company gardens is part of welfare capitalism none of this is required if you're gonna make steel but they wanted their workers to be happy workers and they thought doing these things would pay off in the long run because their productivity CF&I clearly drove the economy of pueblos and the economy of the entire state of Colorado for for many many years 121 years CF&I was in place there were booms and busts and throughout that 121 year history but it's very very difficult to find anybody in pueblo who didn't either work at the plant or know somebody who worked there well pueblos thrived and so with that comes this well-to-do metropolitan town not very large but certainly by Western standards Pueblo was quite sophisticated and there was a building boom and beautiful avenues were built beautiful homes on the north side the first neighborhoods were built by the very people who were the industrialists and the railroaders there would be beautiful shops and restaurants and banks the newspaper is well-established here life was very good but unfortunately the summer of 1921 after a drought it began to rain and it rained quite heavily for three days the levees broke the water rose very very quickly so a lot of people were trapped train cars picked up and moved and smashed into the beautiful shops there was a fire that started in the lumberyard and so he had burning drafts on the fire it had to be an incredible night of terror during the flood of 1921 telephone operators women who worked for the Pueblo telephone system were among the first to learn about the flood and they spent their their rotation calling people down the Arkansas River warning them that the flood was coming they stayed at their post so long that they actually were unable to leave because the bottom floor of the telephone building was under water in the flood and they actually had to walk across a boardwalk a piece of plank laid across the roof of their building to a neighboring hotel in order to receive help and shelter they were about 250 souls lost it took days before relief could come and the center of Pueblo was completely wiped out fortunately most of the structures survived and so we still have those same buildings today but the merchants were wiped out pueblos suffered a huge blow and it took a long time to pull out of that so that was the one of the first economic blows to hit Pueblo [Music] we were talking about how all Colorado history seems to disappear in the textbooks after 1935 that's a sign on one hand that it's better but at the same time there are actually five strikes and the still no after 1945 but those strikes are national in nature they're not local in nature the struggles just change and they morph and eventually I think the town has to pull together to survive despite whatever tensions there might be with respect to race or with respect to ethnicity in the 1970s the decline of steel production the United States should also see a decline in production at CF&I and so the result of this is that see if an ice production will be cut but then also their employee will be cut and so individuals who for generations their family members have worked at the mill and had just been kind of part of familial culture that when they graduate from high school they'd go and work in the mill ocf and i would provide them with pensions workmen's compensation and health insurance other things like that that they no longer had access to would see if and I finally went under is it was devastating to a lot of families because they this steel mill was this city Pablo and a lot of ways are still kind of recovering from that and trying to figure out are where are they going to put where is their basic manufacturing because they still know have been their base of manufacturing for almost 200 years and so I think we're still dealing with that issue is it and wind energy is in solar energy where do we where do we put our point out I always like to look on the positive side and I think the diversity and the cooperation is there you can't ignore the conflicts that have approved but you take the good with the bad so many Coloradans trace their ancestry to people who came to work in the factories and foundries and stockyards at Butler it was the place where were thousands of people got their start in Colorado you know if you walk around downtown Pablo if you go down Union Avenue the thing to do is not to look in front of you you need to look up because that's where you can get an idea of what these buildings used to be who built them who put them up you can see Ashton stone for instance the the names of people who you used to own the building or you can see Ashton stone the names of businesses that used to operate there we have great plants big vision and have already begun to change the infrastructure the center of Puebla our Riverwalk is still to be completed three more phases will come in over the next 15 years Pablo still maintains a really cosmopolitan spirit descendants of those original steel workers or rail workers are still the people who make Pueblo a lively place today you can still find Italian and Greek communities Hispanic communities african-american communities Asian communities the people who always called Pueblo home for generations now people of Pueblo are hard-working they serve their country we do have four Congressional Medal of Honor winners but I think that they represent many of the men and women from Puebla who have served in world war one world war two Korea Vietnam Iraq and Afghanistan and I think that that when you actually start talking to people in our community besides just the Congressional Medal of Honor winners is that it's everyday men and women who served and I think it's something that historically when their ancestors came to public people came to public work they came to work in the coal mines they came to work in the steel mills and this is some of the most dangerous labor even today Pueblo is trying to do a better job of sharing our heritage and all of these stories and just how old our history is we're doing a better job of telling those stories with our museums and programs I think people will be very wise to take a second look and to keep their eye on Pueblo because we're not done yet we're not done yet we're still we're still making history and there's still a lot of stories in the making [Music] [Music] [Music] Colorado experience is a co-production of Rocky Mountain PBS and history Colorado history Colorado brings history to life for audiences of all ages through exhibits collections and historic preservation programs throughout the state history Colorado connects people to the stories places and heritage of Colorado's past that provide perspectives on today and inspire our choices for tomorrow find out more at WWDC lard org additional funding provided by l poem our Foundation and the Boettcher Foundation celebrating 75 years of philanthropy in Colorado with additional funding and support from these fine organizations and from viewers like you thank you this episode is available on blu-ray visit our website to order there's more Colorado experience online at RM pbs.org slash 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Channel: Rocky Mountain PBS

Views: 93,473

Rating: 4.836164 out of 5

Keywords: Pueblo, Native American, Utes, Colorado Gold Rush, Colorado Fuel & Iron, CF&I, home of the heroes, Flood, Colorado, Colorado Experience, RMPBS, Rocky Mountain PBS, History Colorado

Id: pX9CNMFG7Dc

Length: 28min 0sec (1680 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 15 2013