Pueblo's Story Starts Here
LOCAL HISTORICAL ORGANIZATIONS NEEDED A HOME AND A PLACE TO TELL THEIR STORIES, TO EXHIBIT THEIR COLLECTIONS OF HISTORICAL ITEMS, TO HOLD THEIR MEETINGS, AND TO COME TOGETHER TO TELL PUEBLO’S RICH HISTORIC HISTORY IN ONE HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL PACKAGE.
Pueblo was a big railroad town and the Historic District was a transportation hub for Pueblo. Pueblo had numerous depots; freight and passenger.
The first depot built in Pueblo was the Rio Grande Depot. It was located between C and D streets and was used as a freight and a passenger depot. The second depot, Union Depot, built in 1876, was a passenger depot and originally located near where the old round house was, near South Main Street. It moved to its present location on B Street in 1889.
The majestic Union Depot on B Street was the place thousands of travelers and immigrants would first get a glimpse of Pueblo. It had 20 trains arriving and departing daily from all around the country.
There were several hotels in close proximity to Union Depot which accommodated passengers from the trains. The Victoria Hotel was located directly across the street from Union Depot. It sat on the corner of Victoria and B Street.
On June 3, 1921, when a flood devastated Pueblo, there was 11 feet of water on this very corner. The Victoria Hotel was too badly damaged to salvage, so it was torn down and in 1924, it was replaced with the Denver and Rio Grande Western Freight Station. This building now houses the Pueblo Heritage Museum.
There are still doors on each side of the building where freight was loaded and unloaded from trains to trucks and wagons and visa versa. There are still railroad tracks and a loading dock located on the north side of the building. Anything that could be shipped by rail or in a box car came through the doors at the Freight Station. Freight was ran though the Freight Station by the Denver and Rio Grande, Southern Pacific and Union Pacific until the 1980’s. The Freight Depot stopped shipping by rail in the late 1980’s because of lack of traffic. At that time the freight station was used by Alpha Beta Packing and the Rio Grande Roadways. It was then purchased by the city of Pueblo.
The city of Pueblo leased the building to four historical organizations which came together and formed the Southeastern Colorado Heritage Center and Museum.
The Southeastern Colorado Heritage Center became an umbrella organization over these historical organizations. The five founding organizations were The Pueblo Archaeological & Historic Society; Pueblo County Historical Society; Fray Angelico Chavez Chapter Genealogical Society of Hispanic America, Pueblo Locomotive and Rail Historical Society and the Pueblo Street Railway Foundation.
These historical organizations needed a home and a place to tell their stories, to exhibit their collections of historical items, to hold their meetings, and to come together to tell Pueblo’s rich historic history in one historical and cultural package.
What We Offer
PRESERVATION AND INTERPRETATION
The creation of the Pueblo Heritage Museum is a grass roots effort which recognizes the importance of the preservation and interpretation of the diverse ethnic and historical heritage of Pueblo and Southeastern Colorado. Target audiences include school groups, families, scholars, and tourists to the area.
EDUCATION
The Pueblo Heritage Museum’s educational outreach program includes a Legacy Trunk Program and guided tours, both of which serve to preserve, promote and interpret the rich heritage of Pueblo, and in the past year there have been several children’s activities added to the museum to make it more interactive for kids.
RESEARCH
The Pueblo County Historical Society manages a research library on the second floor of the building.
The Pueblo Heritage Museum is funded in part by the Pueblo County and City of Pueblo Partnership, Packard Grant and El Pomar Foundation.
Because Pueblo is such a melting pot, they chose the name Southeastern Colorado Heritage Center to emphasize the vast diverse background and history that makes Pueblo uniquely what it is. That includes not only ethnic diversity and heritage, but western heritage, and work ethic and heritage. We chose to do a dba of Pueblo Heritage Museum to simplify the name.
That group of historical organizations has grown to 10 over the years. The 10 organizations that now call the Pueblo Heritage Museum home are these same original 4 plus: The Irish Club of Pueblo, The Charter Lion’s Club of Pueblo, The Pueblo Board of Water Works, Southern Colorado Soap Box Derby, The Pueblo Conservancy District, and Miss Pueblo Scholarship Pageant.
It is not an easy task for 10 organizations to come together to build and support each others efforts to make a place for Pueblo’s rich history, but one of the major successes of the Heritage Center is that we have managed to do just this.
Some of the exhibits that make up the west wing of the building include: Native American history, Depression Era Home, Irish Heritage of Pueblo, Carlile family exhibit which includes the first piano to Colorado, Rural Telephones and Telephone Systems, Beulah Red, the only red marble of it’s kind in the world, Saddles of Pueblo, (as Pueblo was the Saddle making capital of the world), 700 year old pictographs from the Swallows area and other archeological history of the Pueblo area, early railroads, the Pueblo Army Depot, Hispanic genealogy and Hispanic history of the area, Kay Keating Collection of sleighs and buggies, Schools of Yesteryear, and the 1921 Flood, and of course, Lucky the papier mache horse that survived the 1921 Flood and a fire, just to name a few.
The Pueblo County Historical Society manages a research library on the second floor of the building.
The Pueblo Heritage Museum’s educational outreach program includes a Legacy Trunk Program and guided tours, both of which serve to preserve, promote and interpret the rich heritage of Pueblo, and in the past year there have been several children’s activities added to the museum to make it more interactive for kids.
Pueblo was once the industrial center of the entire west. We have had to reinvent ourselves, and we have and still are reinventing ourselves. I believe that Pueblo is now the cultural center of southeast Colorado and the Pueblo Heritage Museum is here to tell Pueblo’s story.
“Pueblo’s Story Starts Here”
Author: Fran Reed