When was pueblo founded

In fact, you may be surprised to know that the Arkansas River Valley was home to the Ute Indians, a town called Swallows, and that there was a flood in that redefined the landscape into what it is today. According to tribal history, the land was passed down from generation to generation since the beginning of time.

Prior to the use of horses, the tribes would travel and camp in familiar sites and use well established routes such as the Ute Trail that can still be seen in the forests of the Grand Mesa. Occasionally, a native could be seen raising his arms in salute to Manitou. Indians would also be seen at Signal Rock, waving their blankets in wig-wag messages to other natives on Robbers Roost over near Fountain Creek.

The rock, highest elevation in Pueblo West, is known today as Liberty Point. Due to the gold rush and settlers moving west, small towns started popping up all over the plains and mountain ranges. Around , adventurers and homesteaders formed a town called Swallows 12 miles west of Pueblo in the Swallows Valley. The town served as a stop on the rail line into the gold camps and the available natural resources helped the town to flourish.

It watered the community of Swallows, and flowed into the Arkansas. The community raised such vegetables as cabbage and celery in the rich bottom land soil. They had a few orchard trees, some cattle, and produced dairy products.

The town would never fully recover and would eventually be submerged when the valley was flooded in after the creation of the Pueblo Reservoir. On June 3, , the city of Pueblo received word that the Arkansas River was flooding upstream. The flood was caused by a sudden cloudburst on the Arkansas just ten miles west of Pueblo, near Swallows. The flood only became worse later on when Fountain creek also began to flood from down pours 30 miles north.

Two of these grants, the Nolan Grant and Vigil and St. However, Native Americans—predominantly Utes—fought against Mexican attempts to occupy these lands. American trader and ex-military man John Gantt built Fort Cass on the site in , pioneering the liquor trade in the Arkansas Valley. By Teresita Sandoval, a Mexican woman, was operating a buffalo farm in the area with Matthew Kinkead, an Anglo-American with whom she cohabitated until she married another Anglo man, Alexander Barclay, in In the American traders George Simpson and Robert Fisher established El Pueblo , a small trading camp dealing mostly in buffalo hides, at the present site of the city of Pueblo.

Many of its approximately four dozen original residents were American men married to Mexican women, but it also attracted Utes, Arapaho, and other Native Americans.

Several large ranches, some owned by Mexicans and others by Americans, developed around the small trading nexus, and a cornfield was planted. American explorer John C. He returned to the Pueblo County area on another expedition in , purchasing supplies farther up the Arkansas at Hardscrabble before continuing on to the Wet Mountains and Sangre de Cristos. By January the settlement consisted of little more than a few Indian lodges and an adobe building.

Greenhorn was not resettled until , after the establishment of the Colorado Territory and the removal of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute. By that time the fur trade had all but ceased and the settlements in the Pueblo County area fell silent; only a few residents remained at Pueblo by the summer of , the year William Bent set fire to his fort farther down the Arkansas. After a brief period of resettlement in , a Ute-Apache attack in killed most of the population at El Pueblo.

In response to the killings at Pueblo, the United States launched a military campaign against the Utes and their Apache allies in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. The campaign pressured the Utes into peace negotiations, and in they agreed to a treaty. Congress, however, did not ratify the agreement, and hostilities between the United States and Native Americans in the Pueblo area continued. Three years later, the Colorado Gold Rush brought thousands of white fortune-seekers across the plains to the Rockies.

The confluence of Fountain Creek and the Arkansas River was once again an important crossroads—this time its important connection was not south to Taos but north, via Fountain Creek, to gold diggings at Cherry Creek. Pueblo County was established in as one of the original seventeen counties of the Colorado Territory. Boone was also known for negotiating treaties with various Indian tribes.

It was also during the early s that the Beulah Valley was settled by Anglo-American ranchers and farmers; at the outbreak of the Civil War in , the valley was used as a secret gathering place for Confederate Army recruits from Colorado. In the wake of the destruction of the buffalo and removal of Native Americans, great cattle herds came to the Colorado plains during the s.

He soon acquired a large piece of the Nolan Grant and established his ranch headquarters in Rock Canyon, west of present-day Pueblo. The modern city of Pueblo took shape between and through the gradual merger of four separate towns: Pueblo, South Pueblo, Central Pueblo, and Bessemer.

The town of Pueblo, at the site of the old trading post, was formally established in By the turn of the century the city was the smelting capital of the world. As a result, labor strife, whether in the city or across the state and nation, frequently disrupted its Pueblo operations. Beyond labor strife, Pueblo endured its share of ups and downs in the twentieth century. In a devastating flood put some sections of Pueblo a dozen feet underwater, inundated a smelter, wrecked homes, and killed hundreds of people and scores of livestock.

Some 3, refugees had to live in tent colonies in the aftermath, but three years later the city had recovered. The Depression of the s brought a lull in industrial production, but demand for metals quickly skyrocketed at the onset of World War II.

In the US government built an ordnance facility in Pueblo to receive, store, and distribute ammunition. Among those who came from Eastern Europe were Jews fleeing the Russian pogroms of the s and early twentieth century.

With so many countries and religions represented in the same city, Pueblo became a rich cultural mosaic in the early decades of the twentieth century. By the Klan counted nearly 1, local members, including Pueblo County Sheriff Samuel Thomas, who took fellow Klansmen with him on liquor raids. In addition to providing water for residential and industrial developments, the Arkansas River also allowed Pueblo County to develop a strong agricultural economy, bolstered by demand from Pueblo, Denver, and other cities.

The value of agricultural products again dropped sharply during the Great Depression. Agriculture remains an important part of the Pueblo County economy today. About 33, cattle and several thousand horses, goats, and sheep are raised on county ranches. President James K. Polk recalled U. Baca constructed a log house for himself, about twelve more for his farmhands, and several corrals.

The attack resulted in the death of twelve Fort inhabitants, an unknown number of Indian deaths, and the capture of three Fort inhabitants. The attack led Baca to ponder future hostilities and abandon his homestead, moving south into New Mexico Territory.

Louis arrived at the confluence of the Arkansas and Fountain Rivers on September The party consisted of Josiah F.

Doubting the reports of gold coming from Cherry Creek the group decided to spend the winter in what would become the Lower East Side. During the autumn season, the group constructed approximately thirty structures made of logs and adobe. The mild winter convinced the men to survey and plat the town of Fountain City the following spring season.

The resourceful would-be prospectors realized the money to be made directly below their feet and planted crops which commanded top-dollar in the Denver-area markets. To supplement their personal accoutrements, members of the party traded with nearby Arapaho tribes who knew the surrounding landscape well. The Bercaw Bridge lacked any fortifications and required a toll to cross it; probably leading many would-be users to take their chances in the sand and mud of the usually shallow riverbed.

The bridge would only last a few years. The next influx of residents in what would become the East Side neighborhood would not occur until almost a decade later. Source: Source: Jerome C. Smith filed the first homestead claim that included small portions of what would become the East Side neighborhood. Source: U. General Land Office, land patent to Josiah F.

Smith , issued 1 September Bradford received his first of three land patents in what would become the East Side; two other land patents would follow in Although Bradford initially farmed the land to prove his homestead, his landholdings marked the beginning of speculative real estate investments in the East Side. Bradford attained seemingly limitless prominence in the study and practice of law.

He served as a district court judge in Iowa before entering private practice in Nebraska City and later Central City, Colorado. He was appointed to the Third Judicial District and immediately made Pueblo his residence.

In , the people of Pueblo voted Bradford to represent their territory in the U. House of Representatives where he served two non-concurrent terms. By this year, Lewis Conley became the single largest landowner in Pueblo. Allen A. The patents made up acres in the middle of the East Side neighborhood. Townsend procured enough land to make himself the largest landowner in East Pueblo before the period of initial development and land sales. General Land Office, land patent to William H.

Townsend , issued 10 November ; U. Townsend , issued 5 June ; U. Enumeration District: 94; Image: Henry Fosdick surveyed the first addition to the city of Pueblo east of the Fountain River. For a time, Pueblo was the only Colorado city with mainlines extended in all four cardinal directions. The railroad reached Pueblo by building south from Denver.

Once south of Colorado Springs, the railroad traveled along the western edge of the Fountain River to Pueblo. Now, not only the river but the railroad separated East Pueblo from the rest of the town. This was the first bridge in Pueblo County that did not require travelers to pay a toll. East Pueblo building improvements accounted for over ten percent of those improvements throughout the town, including the industrial and downtown areas.

Fountain City pioneer Josiah F. Smith also constructed a house and outbuildings in East Pueblo. Only one seminary existed within Pueblo at the time, however, and was located in South Pueblo on the mesa. The seminary was never constructed, likely being a marketing ploy to sell lots and get people to move into the subdivision. Lewis Conley lost virtually all of his wealth in the ensuing years. He procured advertisements in the Colorado Chieftain, practically begging people to buy his real estate holdings.

Conley moved to Alamosa in the middle of the decade, not to return to Pueblo until the mids. The District held its first classes the following autumn in a storeroom erected by Judge Mark G.

Enrollment peaked at students the first year, with daily attendance of Source: Colorado Daily Chieftain , June 2, , 4. Ward 5 consisted of all of Pueblo east of the Fountain River. At least fifty voters comprised the new ward. The editor of the Colorado Daily Chieftain , Dr. Stevenson, left the office to dine that evening at his East Side home. Upon reaching the bridge, Dr. Stevenson found both approaches to the bridge under water.

The river rose five additional feet that evening between and p. Source: Colorado Daily Chieftain , March 10, , p. Also this year, only four years after its opening, residents began to complain about the deplorable condition of the East Pueblo Bridge. I, Chicago: Blakely Printing Company, , The lines ignored the entire population of the East Side, even though city council granted a right-of-way to the private operator on all bridges and many East Side streets.

Another private endeavor operated horse-drawn omnibuses along East Fourth Street, over the Fourth Street Bridge, and to the nearest streetcar terminal at Santa Fe Avenue. East Side residents were forced to pay for two rides, the omnibus and the streetcar, as there were no transfers allowed between the two. Source: Morris Cafky and John A. Talks began with Pueblo School District 1 for the larger district to absorb the small East Side district.

The schools of the East Side officially fell under the jurisdiction of District 1 in This operation became the first major employer located east of the Fountain River. Once in Pueblo, trains rumbled directly down the middle of Erie Avenue in the East Side neighborhood before crossing the river between First and Third Streets and into the downtown area. Undoubtedly, this configuration led to many traffic delays once the automobile became popular. Freight trains continued to thunder down Erie Avenue for about years until the early s.

School District 1 held its first classes in the newly-constructed Fountain School in the autumn. Source: Tivis E.

The location of the smelter was immediately southwest of the Lower East Side, just across the Fountain River. The smelter became a major employer of men living in the Lower East Side, along with the railroads, due to its proximity. Housing in the area reflected the blue-collar nature of the men, with small houses packed together, built on narrow lots. Many of the workers who made the Lower East Side home were European immigrants.

The subdivision was located on the highest points in the neighborhood, near the present-day Safeway supermarket. Indeed, many smelter managers constructed homes in the subdivision. A new school opened in the East Side in a rented room at an unknown location to ease crowding at Fountain School.

Upon learning of this, real estate developers O. Wiley and Humphrey B. Chamberlin donated land within their namesake subdivision likely located near the intersection of South LaCrosse Avenue and Catalpa Street.

Construction proceeded quickly, and students attended the new Wiley School. Wiley School was located approximately one-half mile south of the present-day Bradford School.

Streetcars entered the neighborhood via the Fourth Street Bridge before turning north onto Glendale Avenue.