1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pueblo

PUEBLO, a city and the county-seat of Pueblo county, the second largest city of Colorado, U.S.A., and one of the most important industrial centres west of the Missouri river, situated on the Arkansas river, about 120 m. S. by E. of Denver. Pop. (1890), 24,558; (1900), 28,157, of whom 4705 were foreign-born, 1250 being Austrian, 587 German, 529 Italian, 415 Irish, 391 Swedish, 385 English and 341 English Canadian; (1910, census), 44,395. It is served by five great continental railway systems—the Denver & Rio Grande, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, the Missouri Pacific, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific and the Colorado & Southern, giving it altogether a dozen outlets. It lies about 4680 ft. above the sea, in a valley at the junction of the prairies with the foothills of the Rockies, on both banks of the Arkansas river, near its confluence with Fountain Creek; the city has an exceptionally good climate and attracts many winter visitors. There are a state insane asylum and four hospitals, of which the Minnequa Hospital (for the employés of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co.) and St Mary's Hospital are the most notable. Among the public buildings are the McClelland public library (1891) and the court-house, the latter of white stone quarried in the vicinity. The Mineral Palace (1891), having a roof formed of twenty-eight domes, in the northern part of the city, contains a collection of the minerals of the state. Pueblo is chiefly an industrial city, and is often called the Steel City, or the Pittsburg of the West. Cheap fuel is furnished by the excellent coal of Canyon City (about 30 m. west), Walsenburg (about 40 m. south-west) and Trinidad (about 75 m. south). Petroleum deposits in the immediate vicinity are of growing importance. Fluxing material is only about 50 m. away, around Cripple Creek. The rich river valley yields abundant crops of alfalfa, sugar beets, cantaloupes, apples and peaches, and the dry lands behind its shores prove fertile under irrigation or under the Campbell system of dry farming; on the plains livestock interests are important. In 1905 Pueblo's total factory products were valued. at $2,197,293 (an increase of 52.6% since 1900); if the output of the great smelting and refining establishments just outside the city limits had been included, the value would have been considerably larger. Pueblo is the greatest smelting centre west of the Missouri and probably the greatest in the United States. The bulk of the steel rails used on western railways are from the mills of the Pueblo district.

Pueblo was originally a Mexican settlement. A considerable body of Mormons settled here temporarily on their way to Utah in 1846-1847, and a trading post was established in 1850; but the site, owing principally to Indian troubles, had been practically abandoned before 1858, when another settlement was made on the Fontaine qui Bouille, or Fountain Creek. Two years later Pueblo was surveyed and platted. The first railway—the Denver & Rio Grande—came through in 1872. Pueblo was chartered as a city in 1870, and again, with an enlarged area, in 1887.