Did Larry find love on the internet? Yesss!!!
And here’s the story (you knew there would be a story…)
In 2010 I had made the decision to finally stop teaching and begin fulltime retirement. This decision started intense searching the internet for the perfect companion for retirement: sleek, smooth, reliable, economical and well built. I sought advice from numerous people and blogs. Many a pretender came up on my computer screen over the following year before suddenly before me was the one. It was love at first sight! Yes, the beloved Lunch Box was first seen online on rvtrader.com. It glowed from the screen and my heart was won. I played hard to get for nearly six months, but kept coming back to it and finally made the decision. Why bring this up now? Because the Lunch Box was discovered at Boardman Motors in Pueblo, Colorado, our next destination. I flew out to Pueblo from Portland, had a whirlwind romance for a couple of hours one afternoon, and then made the commitment. A couple of months later my friend Peggy and I flew back, got the Lunch Box, and brought it out to Oregon. Of course, like any true romantic, this week I had to revisit the site of our first meeting…
Like many attempts to rekindle the first glow of a romance, this one fell a little flat. Boardman Motors has closed the location where I found the Lunch Box so all that is there is an empty lot. Across the street from the lot still sits the State Farm Insurance office. This is an important part of the beginning of my relationship with the Lunch Box because just on the street in front of the insurance building on that fateful day was parked a brand new Dodge Titan truck, which I promptly “rammed” into as I tried to back the Lunch Box out of the dealer lot. The Lunch Box has stuck with me despite that fact that I backed her into a truck within minutes of our meeting. Ain’t love grand!
And thus begins my visit to Pueblo…
A little geography lesson. As you have read repeatedly in earlier chapters of Volume 4, water is the center of everything in the west. Pueblo is situated where the Fountain River (running south along the Front Range of the Rockies from up by Colorado Springs) empties into the Arkansas River, one of the great rivers in the history of the West. The Arkansas rises deep within the center of Colorado and flows in a generally southeast direction before emptying into the Mississippi River in the state of Arkansas. The historical importance of the river cannot be overstated. Though not particularly large, it provided one of the few reliable sources of water leading from the Mississippi River Valley into the heart of the West. The river valley is broad around Pueblo, allowing the high desert climate of the southwest to pierce the heart of the Rocky Mountains. The immediate vicinity of Pueblo is high desert plains; grass, sage brush, and very few trees except along the river bottoms. Looking at a map you might think that there are a lot of “rivers” in this area, but it seems like any stream that flows year round is called a river. Certainly the Arkansas itself is not that impressive, being somewhat typical of rivers in the plains in that the river bed tends to be broad, with the actual water meandering over many changing channels. As the railroads came west, they, too, followed the rivers and Pueblo became an important railroad stop as the tracks began to enter the Rockies.
For a variety of reasons several small towns within miles of each other were established close to the junction of the Fountain and Arkansas Rivers (North Pueblo, Pueblo, Central Pueblo, South Pueblo, East Pueblo, and Bessemer). As the population in the area grew, the towns gradually grew together and in the 1890’s they all merged into the modern day city of Pueblo. Though the railroads were important (and are still a significant employer in town, as the interstate passes over the yards I counted at least 20 separate train tracks parallel to each other), the real driver of the development of Pueblo was the manufacturing of steel. The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) was one of the largest steel mills in the country, started to provide rails for the trains as they expanded west and expanded to feed the need for steel as the West grew. The mill, in one form or another, has produced steel for over 121 years. Owned by the Rockefellers in the early 1900’s, the depth and breadth of the industry lead to Pueblo being called the “Pittsburg of the West”, mirroring its’ eastern counterpart with the wealth generated as well as the union troubles of the workers. The Minnequa Mining District and the town of Bessemer were built on the plateau to the south of the Arkansas River. The Evraz Rocky Mountain Steel Company is still a major employer in town, though much of the vast manufacturing complex that stretches for nearly a mile along the interstate has been abandoned, with the tall smoke stacks standing witness to their powerful past.
A small museum is housed in the company medical building, which stands next to the original domed headquarters building of the CF&I. Both buildings were constructed in 1901.
The interior of the medical building houses the small museum (over-run by a six grade class the day I was there), but perhaps the most interesting part of the museum is the restored floor. The mill workers came from many different countries and most did not speak English as their first language. In order to get the employees to the right room, the stripes on the floor of the company clinic were color coded: teal lead to the dispensary, blue to the main examination room, and maroon to the hearing and vision test room.
A housing boom resulted from the industrial expansion and that lead to many neighborhoods of tidy Victorian and Craftsman houses being built on both sides of the valley, most of which are still standing and inhabited today. In the egalitarian manner of the West, there really was no mansion district per se, instead mansions and worker houses stand side by side through the city.
The historical town center of Pueblo was in South Pueblo along Union Avenue, just south of the Arkansas River and the north of the railroad yards. A massive flood in the early 1900’s moved the main channel of the river a half mile to the south so now the rail yards and Union Avenue Historical District are between the Arkansas River on the south and one of the old channels to the north (now developed as Riverwalk). There are three areas of note within a mile of each other from south to north in the central Pueblo area: the Union Avenue Historical District, Riverwalk, and the uptown courthouse district. They are all connected by Union Avenue/Court Street, which is actually the same street that changes name as it leaves the historical area and heads north through the center of the modern downtown area to the imposing courthouse on a hill to the north.
Union Avenue Historic District
Partially due to the dry climate, and partially due to the fact that Pueblo has been relatively prosperous for most of its’ history, this old town area stands virtually intact, with numerous buildings from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The district is anchored by the Union Train Depot clock tower on the south and the Vail Hotel on the north.
The compact, six block historic district lines both sides of Union Street. This is clearly a lively neighborhood of restaurants, bars, boutiques, etc. I took a lot of pictures because, as you know, I love architecture. Many of the buildings are built of the red sandstone from the surrounding hills.
Riverwalk
When the great flood relocated the main channel of the Arkansas River a half mile south, the old channel remained, dividing the central area. The Riverwalk stretches for a mile along both banks of the old channel, lined with restaurants, bars, parks, etc., and is where festivals and community gatherings are held.
Courthouse District
In the early 1900’s Pueblo vied with Denver for prominence in Colorado and the city fathers’ spared no expense in constructing their public buildings. The county courthouse was built on the hillside about a mile north of the Union Avenue downtown area and is simply magnificent, rivaling the great public buildings seen in Washington, D.C. and other cities of the east.
Around the same time that the courthouse was built another example of the various rivalries that helped shape the development of Pueblo took place. Three magnificent churches were built by different denominations on the blocks immediately to the south and west of the courthouse, their spires piercing the sky above the hillside; the towers of spirituality on the north balancing the towers of industry raising above the steel mills to the south across the valley.
All in all, Pueblo was a fascinating place to visit. As the sun sets over my camp site on the high plains outside of town, I marvel at the fate that brought me and the Lunch Box together in such an interesting place that otherwise I would have never visited.
Next up: “Yin and Yang” on the high desert of New Mexico
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