- Trinidad is one of the
oldest towns in Colorado and has a rich and
fascinating history that most simply don't know. Hi, I'm John Ferrugia. Discover a town that has
constantly reinvented itself, from a farming and ranching
community of the Santa Fe Trail, to a bustling coal
mining city with world class architecture, to
the sex reassignment capital of the world, and
to the arts hub it is today. And now, Colorado
Experience, Trinidad. - Trinidad is very eclectic. - Trinidad does make you
feel like you are somewhere. - One of the things
I love about Trinidad is how well it constantly
reinvents itself. - It's recreated itself
over and over again. It's at such an
important crossroads in southern Colorado, on the
border between Colorado and New Mexico. - People love to come down
and see the architecture here. - And the history of the
people who have come there, and the changes
that they've made. And a pair of
architectural brothers who designed and had
built 80 buildings that are still standing. - I think if a person
wants to step back in time all they've got
to do is step out on the main street in Trinidad. - This program was funded by
the History Colorado State Historical fund. - Supporting projects
throughout the state to preserve, protect,
and interpret Colorado's architectural and
archaeological treasures. History Colorado
State Historical fund, create the future,
honor the past. - With support from the
Denver Public Library History Colorado. With additional funding
and support from these fine organizations and
viewers like you. Thank you. [music playing] - Situated along
the Santa Fe Trail, Trinidad has always been
a hub of innovation. Humbly starting with
a dozen families, Trinidad has gone through
a series of metamorphosis that has made it like no other
town in the state of Colorado. - I'm currently
obsessed and have fallen in love with Trinidad,
Colorado, which is very, very remarkable and
sensational community with a gigantic history in
the very far southern part of the state of Colorado. - Trinidad is about 25 miles
from Raton, New Mexico. We're located off of I-25,
just on the Raton pass. - We're three hours south
of Denver, three hours west of Amarillo, and three
hours north of Santa Fe. We're by the Spanish
peaks and we're about 6,000 feet elevation,
but you have that nice desert weather. - It's a farming community. It has brick streets. It's got a lot of charm, a lot
of great architecture here. We have walking trails. We have the Trinidad
Lake state park, and we have the
community college here. - As time has gone
on the town itself has served very different
roles, from a farming community, to a ranching headquarters, to
a coal mining support community, to a 20th century oil
and gas community, to the national headquarters
for gender reassignment surgery, to an art community. This is a town that continually
shows new faces to the public. - People have been
moving through what became Trinidad for centuries. - The Comanche's, and
Cheyenne, and Arapaho who were quite familiar with
the area and see its resources and take advantage
of those resources. - From the 1500's when
you have Spanish explorers and you have trade
between different groups. - The Santa Fe Trail is
such an important part of connecting the different
areas of North America and transforming northern
Mexico's territories. - It is tempting to think of
Colorado most consequentially by the Western movement of
English speaking people, but the Northward movement
of Spanish speaking people is a little bit
more consequential. - For most of the trails
of existence there's Native American tribes, there's
Utetribes that are dominating the area. So if you were a
trader from Mexico and you were trying to get your
wares Eastward or to the Gulf this is the trail you would use. - With the Colorado
gold rush in 1859 Trinidad comes into
existence, but it is a product of the
northward movement and Felipe Baca does
have a reason to be here. - Who we like consider the
founding father of Trinidad is Felipe Baca. And he was very used to
traveling and trading. As a boy he grew up moving his
uncles cattle down into Mexico and then back up. And was a trader
and decided to take a trip from their town in New
Mexico to Denver to sell flour. And on this trip he
noticed the Purgatory River and looked around and said,
this is absolutely perfect. And they built an irrigation
system, and they plant a crop. They work that crop through
the spring, it's melons and it's a lot of
delicious foods. They bring that crop back
to their town in New Mexico to show all of the families what
great farming opportunities are there. So I think he saw one
that he was actually going to get to
found an area and I think that interested him. And then the agriculture
and then the grazing lands were perfect. So all of the things
that you need to bring together to create a
very successful business in agriculture. - If Colorado has a patron
Saint of neighborliness it's Felipe Baca. Baca was already the richest
man in the county of Mora, but when he stopped in
the Purgatory River Valley and looked around at the
future site of Trinidad he realized that there was
a really promising future. He went back to his
home in Mora, New Mexico and went to the
house of a neighbor and said to that
neighbor, you know, we've always lived
together in harmony. I've always been a friend with
you, and if I moved to Colorado I'm going to miss your company. So why don't you come with me? And that really
represents the-- sort of the neighborly character
of a guy like Baca. He convinced 12 families to
pick up everything they had and move back with him to
their new lives in Colorado. - Felipe Baca and
the 12 other families they come and they
settle in 1862, and Trinidad grew quickly
because it was on the trail. He's married, Dolores
is 16, so he's 17 or 18. They end up having 12
children, 11 of which live into adulthood, and
10 of which survive them. They mainly spoke Spanish. He might have even
known more languages because he interacted a lot
with Native American tribes. He had an adopted Navajo
son, and the woman that he interacted
with when he was a boy was a Tarahumara woman. There's a story where him and
Dolores meet Chief Kolora and have a very
successful meeting. Chief Kolora
really resisted settlers and Dolores was
wearing this beautiful red scarf and he made a comment
on how beautiful it was, and so Dolores takes it
off and gives it to him. And he puts it on immediately
and they get along well. There was an instance
where a wrestling match between an Anglo
settler and a Hispano settler got too far and
one of them dies, and it's called the
Trinidad Race Riot. Philippe Baca is basically the
person who comes out and says, this isn't going
to get us anywhere. He hides one of the
Anglos in his house and is able to get
them on a wagon so that he can go to court
to be tried at court. - Felipe Baca was a small, and
very quiet, and very forceful man, and very friendly. Baca was a community
leader, and in addition to co-founding Trinidad
with other Anglo and Hispano leaders, he served his community
on the territorial legislature in Colorado. He was one of only a
handful of Hispanos who served in the
legislature in the 1860s. And he was incredibly
concerned that the Anglo's of Northern Colorado
would somehow dominate territorial politics. And he was concerned
that English would become the
official language, and that it would
somehow marginalize the Spanish speaking settlers
of southern Colorado. Baca apposed statehood. Baca argue that the rights
of Spanish speaking settlers in southern Colorado
would be better protected under a territorial government
where the federal government appointed the
governor and approved the laws and legislation. He was afraid that the
numerical domination of Anglos in the
north would overwhelm the rights of Southerners. He was outspoken
in his opposition to statehood without guarantees
of the political rights of Spanish speaking settlers. - The Baca family
were sheepherders and they had a lovely adobe
house that they actually paid for with sheep wool. - So Mr. And Mrs. Huff are
who actually build this house. And then a couple of
years later Delores and Felipe decide
to purchase it. Felipe Baca trades
20,000 pounds of wool to Mr. Huff for the house. He makes jokes later that he got
the house for free because they were his sheep and they'll
grow their wool back and he'll be able to
sell it next year, and so it was no loss to him. Dolores decides that Miss Huff
decorated the house very well and she also wants to
keep the furniture. Miss huff and Dolores spend
hours negotiating everything in the house. And eventually Felipe
comes in and he says, you're negotiating 1% of what
we just negotiated in the house. Like, just agree to
it so we can move on. He allowed her to negotiate
as long as he wanted, which is an interesting dynamic. He definitely had great
respect for Dolores, but he's also very funny. Dolores was a wonderful
preservationist. She was very
confident in herself, and she was very
dedicated to her children. She was very dedicated
to her community. One of my favorite Dolores Baca
stories is--the building behind us, they wanted to
convert into a theater. And they would have had to knock
the barn that started being built in 1975 down to do this. And they even bring her son
up to try and convince her that it will make money
and it will be great. And she says, no, we're going
to keep these structures. They were the
founding of our town. Everyone was trying
to tell her what to do and she, even as she got older,
was very comfortable saying, nope. - I will say this
about Felipe Baca, he was a major early
philanthropist. - One of the really important
things that Felipe and Dolores Baca did for the region was
Trinidad public school district number one. We are school
district number one because we were the first public
school district established in the state. - He was a man who
made a lot of money, but then would give
it away generously to help create
community institutions. Baca was the kind of man who
could build good relationships with the Hispanic community
who lived in Trinidad, as well as the Anglo community,
as well as the American Indians, the Utes, in
the Hickory Apache's who still called the
Purgatory River Valley home. Baca went out of his
way to make friends with each of these communities. Baca made arrangements
to give part of his crops and part of his
livestock to the Utes every year in order to
ensure friendly relations. He absolutely got
along with everybody. Felipe Baca passes away
at 46, which is 1874. And he actually
passes away the day after his daughter's wedding. And then passes
away the next day in what we assume is a
heart attack because there wasn't really any symptoms. - He left behind a large
family and a thriving business as a merchant and as a sheep
raiser, but he died young and that was really
a loss to Colorado's early political
leadership, because he was such a bridge builder. Delores Baca served as the
matriarch of the Baca family and continued to live in
the Baka house for decades after Felipe's death. She became by the
nineteen-teen's one of the links to the old
pioneer past of Colorado and of Hispanic settlement. - She lives until 82. She passes away in 1915. - Because of the very
strong positive feelings that community
felt about her that helped lead to the preservation
of the Baca house in Trinidad. - With Felipe Baca first
establishing the town, the Rapp brothers
were next in line to break up Trinidad,
giving it the beauty it is renowned for today. [train whistle] - Coal is discovered 1860's . So mining starts
taking off and that's why the railroad comes
in 1870, and then that's the main industry for
a very, very, very long time. - Trinidad, like so many
Western communities, is one way before the
railroad and another way after the railroad. Coal can be exported
far more effectively, the mines can grow and prosper,
the workforce can grow. Coal mining takes
a lot of laborers, and companies use strategies
in recruiting laborers. And in the late 19th century
and early 20th century one strategy was to
recruit very widely people from many different
European countries, people from Mexico, Asian people. People come from all over the
world to work in coal mining. - The population of the
area goes up and down. Obviously when coal mining was
highest it was its highest, and then there was about
25,000 to 35,000 people in the whole region. - It was an amazing
cosmopolitan community. You could hear dozens
of different languages. English and Spanish
to be sure, but also Greek, and Slovenian,
Russian, Japanese on the streets of Trinidad. All of these workers
from around the world were coming here to
work in the coal mines. In 1900 Trinidad was the
community of the future. This was a place
that was building up the sinews of the nation
by providing the coal to create steel, which in
turn built the railways. And Trinidad was a magnet
for a global community of labor coming to Colorado
to mine coal for CF&I and other coal companies. That brought a lot of
wealth to Trinidad, and Trinidad became something
of a financial hub as well. And when that happened the
business leaders in Trinidad realized that they needed
the kind of architecture that represented their success. And the Rapp brothers, Isaac
Hamilton and William Rapp arrived in Trinidad
as architects trained in the Midwest to
help create the kind of built landscape that Trinidad really
deserved as a thriving coal community. - They were born in New York. They came in from Illinois. - And Chicago was the
mecca of architecture in the late 19th century, Louis
Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, came out of that tradition. Chicago was creating
the architects who were designing
the American West. The Rapp brothers arrived
in Trinidad in 1888. They brought with them all
of this creative ferment that was taking place in Chicago. They were able to
elevate the architecture and the built
environment in Trinidad in a way that represented
its commercial success. - The Rapp brothers were two
of the best known architects in Colorado. When you go to Trinidad you'll
see these beautiful masonry buildings, incredible
atmospheric theater, all the work of
the Rapp brothers. It's this incredible
architectural legacy. - And these guys
brought a real sense of shape, ways in which humans
can inhabit space, and shape space, and to carry a
sense of accomplishment, to carry a sense of achievement. The configuration of
what Trinidad looked like was really much aided by having
those two skilled architects come into the scene. - The architecture with
the bricks wrapping around the big old windows, they
capture that Victorian era, that architectural interest. The Rapp brothers had
so many buildings. They had the 1889 city building,
which is the firehouse, and now the children's museum. It was followed by the
temple of Aaron in 1889, the Zions German
Lutheran Church in 1890 had a Gothic and
Queen Ann styling. First Baptist Church
of 1891 described as a medieval fantasy,
and Rapp and Rapp also designed the west theater
in 1908 and several homes in Trinidad. - Four different churches
are built in for years. - The Rapp brothers also build
and design the First National Bank, which is a
iconic structure that's right at Main Street
and Commercial, it's sort of the heart piece. When the Rapp brothers
built the bank there are conversations about
who was supposed to invest and how much they were
supposed to invest. There is an unfriendly version
of Frank Bloom immortalized on the side of the bank because
of the dispute that arose. He's making a very ugly face. Right next to him is the Madam
that ran the brothel downtown. - Rapp gives us an
important lesson, never cross an architect,
because he can satirize you for all eternity. And if you're going
to make enemies, don't make enemies
with architects. - One of the great buildings
that the Rapp's did was the West Theater. And it's that sort
of old school theater that we call
atmospheric, meaning when you went into it you felt
like you were being transported to another place. There is Beautiful terracotta,
spectacular proscenium arch. - The Rapp brothers
were architects for more than 40 years,
and during that time they were extremely prolific. They built courthouses,
and public buildings, and private residences, and
libraries, and firehouses. And they not only
build in Trinidad, they built throughout the
southern Colorado, New Mexico region. Isaac Hamilton Rapp
was amazingly versatile and incredibly prolific
in designing buildings all through the New
Mexico, Colorado region. - Isaac Rapp stayed here when
his brother William left. He passed away in 1933. - With Isaac's passing
another chapter closes in the
history of Trinidad. - In the early 1900's
there's great tension in mining towns of
southern Colorado, and there's something
close to industrial war. - You can almost say that the
Ludlow massacre of April 1914 was really the beginning of
the end of Trinidad's heyday. A long and painful
coal strike, followed by a violent cataclysm, in
which women and children were killed at a striker's colony
just outside of Trinidad. - There's strikes in a number
of places, not just Ludlow. And there's kind of
free floating violence, and almost nothing like
guerrilla war going on in the nineteen-teen's. - It's hard to
say that there was a silver lining in
Trinidad's economic downturn. One consequence of
the downturn was that the wonderful
Victorian architecture, the buildings of the Rapp's
and other architects, remained in place. If anything the greatest
threat to those buildings during the 1950's, and
60's, and 70's, was demolition through neglect. - Trinidad was almost too
poor to tear things down. Things just stayed. They just didn't even get
around to tearing them down. - There's buildings and
there's nobody in them anymore. It's a diminished
community and population, but it is holding on. Trinidad went into a long and
slow decline from the 1920's into the Great Depression. But even after World War II it
really struggled to find itself and to reinvent itself as it had
during the coal mining heyday. - There's something
that is incredibly interesting of how people
make the decision that it's time to leave. We know that there are ghost
towns, and each of those towns has a very interesting
story of for how long people keep saying, oh,
we have a downturn, but I think it's
going to pick up. We still have a downturn. I'm not sure it's
going to pick up. And then, we have a downturn,
and I can't wait any longer. I have to go somewhere else. - Soon another individual
began the next reincarnation of the shrinking town,
beginning an unexpected period of distinction. - In the 1950's a doctor named
Dr. Stanley Biber arrived. Biber was born in Iowa,
and he had served in Korea as a mash surgeon in a mobile
army surgical hospital. And came to Colorado to practice
medicine at Fort Carson, and ultimately moved to Trinidad
to work at a united mine workers clinic to
serve the coal miners. - Dr. Biber was
the doctor in town, so if you were from Trinidad,
if you were born and raised in that era, he was your doctor. - In a place like
Trinidad the town doctor is a very important
part of the community. And Stanley Biber was
a community leader in every sense. He was a county commissioner,
he was an accomplished cattle rancher. He was a rabbi. In 1969 a friend of
Biber's came to him and identified herself
as a transsexual and asked if Biber would
be willing to perform a sex reassignment surgery. Biber claimed he had never
even heard of sex reassignment up unto that point,
but began corresponding with colleagues at Johns
Hopkins University. And began to learn about this
surgery which had been growing in the United States
since the 1950's. And Biber did such a good
job that word got out. - When you were
undergoing those surgeries you would come to
Trinidad and you would stay, because it's not
one day and then you're done. You have some recovery time. You have some observation time. And so you need somewhere
beautiful and quiet to recuperate, and so
Trinidad was perfect for that. The culture here, we like
to say keep Trinidad quirky. Everyone is just
very comfortable. - Trinidad was known
as the sex change capital of North America. It was the place to come for
a sex reassignment surgery. - From 1969 until 2010 it
was definitely the gender reassignment surgery capital. - Stanley Biber retired
in 2003, and at that time he was 80 years old, but
by that point in his career he had performed more than 5,000
sex reassignment surgeries. And he took on a
protege, a woman named Marci Bowers, who was
in fact a recipient of a sex reassignment surgery herself. She took over and continued
performing the surgeries until she left Trinidad in 2010. - Following the death
of Dr. Biber in 2006, and Dr. Bowers
departure in 2010, Trinidad once again
needed to reinvent itself. - One of the things
about Trinidad from the very beginning
of it's founding, it's been a
progressive community. It's a community
that is tolerant. It made sense that
Trinidad would become a hub for the
artistic community as well. - Drop City was founded in 1965. And it was what people
traditionally would consider a hippie commune. It was actually an artist's
living, residential. - The Dropper's, as
they were called, the participants
in this experiment, built geodesic
domes out of objects that were scavenged from
junkyards and elsewhere. - Drop City dissolves in
the early 1970's, but you can absolutely still feel
its legacy in Trinidad today, there's still wonderful
counter culture art - Trinidad is really on the
cusp of the next great chapter in the existence of their city. The [inaudible] foundation
got very excited about the possibility
of the arts to bring new economic
life to a community. They have identified a
building in the downtown that the city has
acquired that is going to be converted into space for
artists to not only live in, but to practice their art. And then people could visit
and purchase their art if they're interested in it. I was talking to a developer
here in Denver one time and he said that if you want
to know where to develop, follow the artists. - Trinidad History Museum has
an artist and residence program. And what you do is you
come, and you live, and you work in the
same space, and then you're able to show off
the work that you do. - So that's the
Trinidad of our moment. As a creative district Trinidad
is a experimental place with the space to create. - We're trying to reach
a shared vision, which is so necessary for
communities that want to turn themselves around. The transformation
that's going on now is related to a recognition by
people involved with the arts, that it is special and
it needs to be protected. And it's one of the
first art districts in the state of
Colorado as designated by the state of Colorado,
and the population is turning and growing. - And we have about 9,000
people in Trinidad today. - And the artists are coming
in, and they understand that they are very, very
important part of rebuilding this special part of Colorado. - Trinidad has embarked
on its next era as an arts destination,
infused with $14 billion from private and public funds. Ultimately, a full city block
with several historic buildings will house resident artists,
galleries, and performing and gathering space, making
the Corazon de Trinidad national register
historic district a gem in the Colorado community. - If you go to Trinidad today
it might as well be 1910, the trademark red Trinidad
bricks are still in place. - "Trinidad loves
"company is the tag line. - You can go to
these communities now and truly see what they
look like 100 years ago, because everything
is still there. - It is just a place that
needs to be preserved. - There are buildings done
by architects that are just simply great pieces of art
that show really at the highest level the capacity of
humankind to produce amazing pieces of art
we need to preserve it for future generations. - Trinidad has
constantly molded itself thanks to the inventive
individuals who call it home. The Baca's, the Rapp
brothers, and Dr. Biber all saw a need and an
opportunity, exemplifying how great things can be
accomplished with the support and love of a great community. Today artists are vying
to be the next individual to define a chapter
in Trinidad's history. - Trinidad represents so
many different threads of Colorado history
coming together, the versatility and the
adaptability of Coloradoans, of how we take the
circumstances we have and make the best of them. The truth is, it's not easy to
live in Trinidad, as beautiful as it is you have to be
very versatile in order to create opportunities. So Trinidad has by necessity
reinvented itself time and again. - I'm so excited to see the
renewal that's occurring now in Trinidad, because
I think that is going to save what is one of the
great architectural legacies of Colorado. - When you find people who are
fatalistic about the president, Trinidad offers a kind of
recovery and treatment program for them. Of just saying, if
you're gloomy because you think you see the
future, you want to spend a little
time in that town. Because the twists
and turns, nobody would have possibly
imagined that. And if you think that
we are living in an era where individuals can't
make a difference, and you think that's been the
case for hundreds of years, you want to go to
Trinidad for that too, because there you can
see the individuals really can make a difference and open
pathways and show areas where doors seem to be
locked and closed, but that was because nobody
thought they might try a key. When the future seems
locked off that's just because you have put
enough thought into what key you need to get
into that future. - The legacy of Trinidad
is a celebration of resilience and diversity. We learned to never give up. There's always something
else to work towards, and the way that we
can work towards that is by working with each other. [music playing]
