Forged Together in the Bessemer Neighborhood

Historitecture, L.L.C.; DeHerrera, Jeffrey; Yost, Cheri; Thomas, Adam

From introduction: "This is the story of the neighborhood beyond but always in the shadow of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company’s colossal Minnequa Steelworks. Though conceived by the mastermind of neighboring South Pueblo, Colorado industrialist General William Jackson Palmer, the town of Bessemer was entirely intended to bear its own identity, one that would contrast starkly with that of South Pueblo. Bessemer was not a playground for the wealthy, white-collar, management types, but a town for the working man who would come home dirty and grimy every night to an overcrowded boarding house or a quaint dwelling squeezed a little too-tightly between its neighbors. These blue-collar workers, many immigrants living without their families, tended to stick together inside the perceived comfort of ethnic enclaves that included corner grocery stores and churches that varied from one block to the next. Over time, Bessemer grew from a fledgling working-class settlement, into a company town, and then into a neighborhood enveloped into the city in just over a decade. It was truly a boom town. Bessemer became one of the most important and most populous neighborhoods in Pueblo, providing the city with its largest employer, the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company (CF&I), and even an amusement park. The success of Bessemer both as a town and neighborhood depended greatly on the success of CF&I. Though it is not necessarily the case today, as CF&I flourished or regressed economically so did Bessemer. Today, the Bessemer neighborhood can identify itself as an area that resembles the grittiness of the steelworks: a neighborhood uniquely forged together, not frailly cast from a mold of sterile development. The steelworks remains the most important development in the history of the city, state, and the West, and still employs over a thousand workers. Indeed, the history of Bessemer and the history of the steelworks are intertwined. Yet for the purposes of this historical context, the City of Pueblo desires to emphasize the Bessemer Neighborhood itself, not CF&I, which has been the subject of numerous scholarly and popular histories. Instead, this history is about the company’s town. For the most part, secondary historical sources remain largely devoid of information about the town and neighborhood of Bessemer; generally, the only mention of Bessemer in these sources occurs in a few sentences or a few short paragraphs. Thus, this history of the neighborhood is informed most by its still extant built environment. For this historical context, Bessemer refers to the geographic area roughly bounded by Washington Street to the north, Interstate 25 to the east, Berkley Avenue to the West, and Streator Avenue to the south. The area also includes Lake Minnequa and the area surrounding the former Edison School and Eilers Smelter site north of Northern Avenue to the Arkansas River. Though the original plat of the town of Bessemer is not nearly as large as the study area, the boundaries make up what present-day Puebloans identify as Bessemer, the historically-named Laibach area (also known as Bojon Town and more recently Eilers Heights), and parts of Minnequa Heights." Project funding was provided in part by a 2011 Historic Preservation Fund grant to the City of Pueblo (project number CO-11-021) administered by the Colorado State Historic Preservation Office (grant number 08-11-31912) and the State, Tribal, and Local Plans and Grants Division, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. Pueblo, Colorado is a Certified Local Government.

Forged Together in the Bessemer Neighborhood

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