Pueblo, Colorado.
Visit my 2003 Pueblo photo gallery
My home town. This town defies description. I'm not sure
why it seemed so surreal when I was growing up there. Maybe it
had something to do with the quality of the pot. Really good
stuff from the Sicilians. Former home of a steel mill built for
the railroad. Once known as "Little Pittsburgh". Home of the
Colorado State Fair. A place where a mob judge let a man off of
murder because "no one actually SAW the bullet leave the gun."
Home to the biggest arsenal of nerve gas in the world, the
Pueblo Army Depot. My dad used to work there. Most people's dads
worked there unless they worked at the steel mill. We used to
call it PU town from the American onomatopoeic expression for a
big stink. If you ever lived downwind from the flatulent fumes
of a coke extraction plant you will know why. "Gimmee some more
salsa verde, ese. Pass the frijoles, Lupe." This is an American
city where they have made canals with gondolas on them "just
like Venice". Santa Lucia...Santa Lucia...!"
Find out why the tourists are deserting Venezia in droves. Have a capuccino in one of the exciting sidewalk cafes, or buy fuzzy animals in one of the charming boutiques. Don't wonder where small town America went. It's been THEMED.
Check out
the Arkansas
Riverwalk
The "dark satanic mills" of the Pueblo steel mill, The CF&I.
Main street 1913
Mineral Palace Park. 1934 A history of this unique and strange park at City of Pueblo, Colorado - Parks and Recreation
The Mineral Palace itself, from which the park gets its name. It was made of minerals found in Colorado, including a statue made of coal, called "Old King Coal" and his Queen Silver.
Queen Silver, who disappeared mysteriously in 1893
Mineral Palace Interior, with King Coal. The queen seems to have gone out for a cigarette.
Pueblo Main Street, 1958
The fabulous City Park Gates with statuary executed in Naples. Later dismantled and used in a WWI scrap drive. The statues were stolen and melted down. Typical. The lamps on the entrance are described as "Caligula Lamps" depicting the hay crib used by the Emperor's horse Incitatus, which he famously made a Senator.
A history of Pueblo City Park at City of Pueblo, Colorado - Parks and Recreation
The More-Skinny sign. This animated neon "skinny man" sign , proclaiming a used-car dealership belonging to the Moreschini family became a mystical icon of the dream landscape of my childhood, glowing there so close to mineral palace park. I will never forget it. More info at the More-skinny website.
"Monkey Mountain" at Pueblo City Park. another WPA project, it was attached to the zoo and was home to a horde of monkeys.
Other Pueblo links
- Pueblo County Historical Society
- The Project Gutenberg eBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. (very strange articles about the history of Pueblo, full of "swarthy disreputable Mexicans" and such)
- City of Pueblo, Colorado - Parks and Recreation history of Pueblo City Park.
- City of Pueblo, Colorado - Parks and Recreation history of Pueblo Mineral Palace Park
- CRIME BEAT: Man shot at while walking cat - The Pueblo Chieftain: Crime Beat
- Colorado Fuel and Iron - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The steel mill, eh.
- Pueblo City Limits An excellent blog about Pueblo vinyl recording artists. There was really quite a scene.
- Pueblo City Limits: White Lightnin' about Ron Ellis, a friend of mine and his band. Including notes on The Trolls.
- MY ENTRY IN PUEBLO CITY LIMITS! I was so proud to be listed up there.
- The Uptown Theater an amazing cinema in Pueblo which was part of the Roger Corman distribution network and showed very strange films for such a small town. Other priceless fragments on this family site.
- P.U.L.P: Pueblo Colorado A free 'what's on' alternative paper
- Colorado State Fair an enthusiast's blog about the biggest event of the year in Pueblo.
- Pueblo Song Writers and Musicians Association An intrepid organization started by friends of mine of which I am also a member.
- Chile Frijoles Fest The annual celebration of the chile harvest.
Construction of East Ninth Street by the WPA (my street)
1934
The Mesa Drive-in. Last man standing of the Pueblo Drive-ins, the Mesa is still operating.
My favorite, the Pueblo Drive-in, which had an enormous screen, flanked with neon comedy and tragedy masks was apparently torched in 1995. That magnificent cinema had a model diesel-powered railroad which ran around the art-deco building which housed the screen. Playing on the swings before this enormous screen, swinging in and out of...say...Godzilla trashing Tokyo was an experience which burned itself permanently onto my psychic retinas.
Drive-In Review: MESA DRIVE-IN (Pueblo, CO)
1934
The Mesa Drive-in. Last man standing of the Pueblo Drive-ins, the Mesa is still operating.
My favorite, the Pueblo Drive-in, which had an enormous screen, flanked with neon comedy and tragedy masks was apparently torched in 1995. That magnificent cinema had a model diesel-powered railroad which ran around the art-deco building which housed the screen. Playing on the swings before this enormous screen, swinging in and out of...say...Godzilla trashing Tokyo was an experience which burned itself permanently onto my psychic retinas.
Drive-In Review: MESA DRIVE-IN (Pueblo, CO)
The Pueblo Ordnance Depot. Where my father worked. (Where pretty much everyone's father worked, if he didn't work at the steel mill.)
Pueblo Ordnance Depot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia