Pueblo, Colorado

“ Its transportation facilities comprise the Denver and Rio Grande, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, the Missouri Pacific, the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific, and the Colorado and Southern. The vicinity to the east is interested to a very large extent in stock-raising, and to a somewhat important degree in agriculture. Near the city are deposits of coal, limestone, and oil, and the tributary region includes very highly productive mineral districts. Pueblo is the great distributing and receiving point for this section of vast natural wealth. ”

“ At La Junta, the Santa Fé Trail swerves to the south-west towards New Mexico, but another trail continues westward and northward towards Pueblo, Colorado Springs, [Pg 105] and Denver, the three "cities" of Colorado State, and Pike's Peak, one of the highest points of the Rockies. I decided to leave the trail for a day or two and go sightseeing in famous Colorado. So I continued westward, scanning the horizon all the time for a vision of a vast and rugged mountain range. The sight of mountains would be as balm to a sore wound; as welcome as a spring of water in the desert ”

“ The library is in the Royal Park, on the crest of one of the mesas, very near the home of Governor Adams. It is a library to delight the heart of the book-lover. Pueblo offers, indeed, great attractions to all who incline to this land of sunshine. The climate is even more mild than that of Denver, from which city it is a little over three hours distant by the fast trains, or four hours by slower [Pg 123] ones. Colorado Springs lies between—two hours from Denver and a little over one hour from Pueblo. The location combines many attractions. ”

“ Such groups of ruins and pueblos with accessory rancherías are still inhabited, and have been described as found throughout the Plateau Province except far to the north beyond the Uinta Mountains. A great pueblo once existed in the Uinta Valley on the south side of the mountains. This is the most northern pueblo which has yet been discovered. But the pueblo-building tribes extended beyond the area drained by the Colorado. On the west there was a pueblo in the Great Basin at the site now occupied by Salt Lake City, and several more to the southward, all on waters flowing into the desert. ”

“ Colorado Springs, forty-five miles from Pueblo, is nearly 6000 feet above the level of the sea. The character of the line to it is best described in the fact that the average grade per mile is 44·14, the maximum curvature 6°. There are "no Springs" here, but the little town, charmingly situated, is a halting-place much frequented in tourist-time by travellers, and reputed to be healthful. There are some pleasant houses visible from the station, at which we descended to take our places in the carriages provided to take us to Manitou Springs, five miles away. ”

“ It would be tempting to explore all these places and to see more of Colorado and the immense fund of natural [Pg 114] beauty which she displays in endless variety. But impatience draws me again towards Pueblo, so that I can once again strike the trail that leads to California. I am already getting anxious to see the blue sea, though yet only half-way between the oceans!
That afternoon as I paused beneath a "bowser" in Pueblo while Lizzie was filled to the brim, I inquired the condition of the road to Trinidad, some 100 miles to the south on the Santa Fé Trail. ”

“ In a remote age the ancestors of these Pueblo tribes, or a race of kindred habits, filled most of that vast region which is drained by the Colorado River and its affluents, and spread beyond into the valley of the Rio Grande. The explorers of a great extent of country in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado have found everywhere evidences of the wide distribution and wonderful industry of that ancient people. On the low land which they used to till lie the remains of their villages,—rectangular buildings of enormous dimensions and large circular estufas, or halls for council and worship. ”

“ All of the mountain roads of Colorado are splendidly built—even though some of their railless edges are terrifying to anyone light of head, and by no means to be recommended to an inexpert driver. One famously beautiful drive has a turntable built at an otherwise impossibly sharp bend.
After Pueblo—which by the way is not in the least quaint or Indian as its name promised, but a smoky and smeltering industrious little Pittsburgh—you [136] come out upon the plains, plains that look as you imagined them, on which cattle and cowboys ranged and prairie schooners came slowly over the horizon. ”

“ The most available towns for the invalid who has to earn his support are Denver and Pueblo, but there is a moderately wide field from which to choose when health and comfort, and not money, are the main considerations. Colorado Springs combines so many favorable conditions of climate, good accommodations, pleasant society, and natural objects of interest, as to render it, in addition to its sanitary condition, an almost ideal resort for phthisical invalids. ”

“ Denver thus becomes to all Colorado what Paris is to France. Through all the enormous area, from Wyoming far into New Mexico, and westward to Utah, she has had no formidable rival until South Pueblo rose to contest the trade of all the southern half of this commercial territory. That she advances with the rapidly thickening population of the State and its increasing needs, is apparent to every one who has noted the gigantic strides with which Denver has grown, and the ease with which she wears her imperial honors. ”

“ When, by the extensions of the railway into the back country of Colorado, merchants began to perceive that at Pueblo they could buy goods of precisely such grades as they desired a trifle more cheaply, and get them home a trifle more expeditiously, than by going to Denver or Kansas City, Pueblo began to feel the impulse of new commercial vigor. ”

“ In the report on Spruce-tree House, using pottery as a basis, the prehistoric culture of the Southwest, including the Gila-Salt area, which can not strictly be designated Pueblo, has been provisionally divided into several subcultural areas. Among these are the Hopi, a specialized modification of the Little Colorado, the Little Colorado proper, the San Juan, and the Gila-Salt areas. ”

“ Houses on Rocks and Sand Hills--How Many Families Dwelt Together in Unity--Peculiarities of Costumes--Pueblo Architecture and Folk Lore--A Historic Struggle and How it Ended--Legends Concerning Montezuma--Curious Religious Ceremonies.
Perhaps the most peculiar people to be found in our native land are the Pueblos, who live in New Mexico between the Grande and Colorado Rivers. When Coronado, the great explorer, marched through the territory 450 years ago, he found these people in a condition of at least comparative civilization. ”

“ These are known as coulees, and sometimes from these coulees cinder cones arise.
This valley of the Little Colorado is also the site of many ruins, and the villages or towns found in such profusion were of mueh larger size than those on the San Francisco Plateau. Some of the pueblo-building peoples yet remain. The Zuñi Indians still occupy their homes, and they prove to be a most interesting people. They have cultivated the soil from time immemorial. They build their houses of stone and line them with plaster; and they have many interesting arts, being skilled potters and deft weavers. ”

“ The last five years have witnessed a wonderful material progress in the Far West. The mineral wealth discovered in Colorado and New Mexico has caused a great westward-flowing tide to set in. The nation seems to be possessed of a desire to reclaim the waste places and to explore the unknown. Cities that were founded by "fifty-niners," and after a decade seemed to reach the limits of their growth, have started on a new career. And for none of these does the outlook seem brighter than in the case of the city of Pueblo, the old outpost whose early history we have attempted to sketch. ”

“ In recent times, the limits of the pueblo-culture area have contracted to meet the demands of the white man; we know also that before the advent of the Spaniard many once populous districts had been abandoned, and as a result there came to be fewer but larger villages. We know also, both from tradition and from archæological evidence, that in former days the pueblo people inhabited many of the villages of southern Colorado and Utah, and that the Hopis and their kin were numerous in many parts of Arizona. ”

“ About twelve miles from Colorado Springs they obtained a dinner and oats for their horses. As they pursued their southerly course, the snow began to fall and impede them. When about one mile from Pueblo, they put up at a ranch for the night, about 10 o’clock in the evening. About 7 o’clock in the morning (Wednesday) they started for Pueblo, and rode down one of the principal streets, when they were discovered. Not until they were close to the bridge did they imagine they were pursued, and then only from the peculiar action of two men on foot and two others on horseback. ”

“ March; "but think what a place that would be for cattle, and for hay. Farming would be something worth talking about; and Billy says that the farmers in the valley can have a good market in Rosita for all they can raise. There are nearly a thousand miners there; and it is also only a day's journey from Pueblo, which is quite a city. It really looks to me like the most promising place I've heard any thing about here."
"It's the nicest bit of country there is anywhere in Colorado," said Billy, "'s fur's I've seen it. Them mountains's jest a picture to look at all the time ”

“ From this place, he made a sketch of Pike's Peak, and is "charmed with the view of the valley of Fountain Creek," on which Manitou and Colorado Springs are located, and which he reached a little north of its junction with the Arkansas River. He speaks of finding at this point a "Pueblo" where a settlement of mountaineers were living, married to Spanish wives, "who had collected together and occupied themselves with farming, and a desultory Indian trade." They had come from the Taos Valley settlements, the Valley that was later named the Rio Grande. ”

“ Morphologically speaking, they do not present structural features of pueblos, for they are not terraced, neither have they specialized circular ceremonial rooms, kivas with vaulted roofs surrounded by rectangular rooms, or other essential features of the pueblo type. The group contains buildings which are sometimes consolidated with cliff-houses and pueblos, but are often independent of them. In this type are included castellated buildings in the Mancos, Yellow Jacket, McElmo, and the numerous northern tributary canyons of the San Juan. ”

“ Let no one fancy it is too far from Paris to have the latest French fashions. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that it demands the best and the most up-to-date ideas of the Eastern cities to be at all eligible in these Colorado towns. Pueblo has a most delightful club-house on the edge of a lake—the lake is artificially created, and being made to order, is, of course, exactly the kind of lake that is desired, the water being conducted from the mountains into a large natural depression—where great open fires in every room greet the daily visitor ”

“ The territorial prison, formerly at Yuma, was abandoned for a modern building at Florence, Pinal county; and a hospital for the insane is 3 m. from Phoenix.
History.—The history of the South-west is full of interest to the archaeologist. A prehistoric culture widely distributed has left abundant traces. Pueblo ruins are plentiful in the basins of the Gila and Colorado rivers and their tributaries. Geographical conditions and a hard struggle against nature fixed the character of this “aridian” culture, and determined its migrations ”

“ The Colorado River was first calledRio del Tizón, "River of the Brand," by the Spaniards, on account of the local custom of carrying fire in rolls of cedar bark. Coronado's men were the first to discover the Grand Cañon.
Pueblo, the Spanish word for "town," is applied to all Indians living in the terraced houses of the southwest. The Zuñis, Hopis, and Queres are the principal pueblo tribes.
You will findTiguexon the map, somewhere between the Ty-uonyi and the place where the Corn Woman crossed the Rio Grande.Cicuyeis on the map as Pecos, in Texas. ”

“ A stairway cut in the rock by human hands and an old ladder resting against a perpendicular rock were discovered. [464]
The Colorado Chiquito and its tributaries flows through the very heart of the Pueblo country. One hundred miles above its junction with the Rio Colorado, Whipple, Sitgreaves and others, found numerous ruins, crowning nearly every prominent point in the valley. The pottery of the region is unlike that usually met with, in that it is ornamented with 288impressions and raised work, instead of being painted. ”

“ The only settled region, or rather the region containing the remains of large settlements, lying west of the water-shed between the Colorado of the West and the Rio Grande, is much farther north.p. 14 It is the so-called San Juan district, where extensive ruins are still found, for the description of which we are indebted to General Simpson, to Messrs. Jackson and Holmes, and to Mr. Lewis H. Morgan. To reach this region, Coronado had to pass either between Acoma and Zuñi, or between the Zuñi and the Moqui towns. ”