Why so much of Pueblo points back to one steel mill

If you are new to Pueblo and the city feels a little hard to read, the steel mill is a good place to start. Bessemer steelmaking began here in 1881, and a mill town named Bessemer grew up around it the same year before Pueblo absorbed it. The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company hired workers from dozens of countries, and many settled close to the gates. Those families gave the south side its churches, corner restaurants, festivals, and last names, and a lot of that texture is still there to notice once you know where it came from.

The Steelworks Center of the West, on Canal Street, is where that history is kept. The museum sits in CF&I’s former medical dispensary, a building from 1901 that once treated injured mill hands. It holds one of the largest publicly available corporate archives in the country: thousands of boxes of records, more than 100,000 photographs, films, and maps that trace the company across more than sixty mines and operations in the West.

The labor history here is real, including the 1913 to 1914 coalfield strike that ended in the Ludlow tragedy, and the museum does not skip it. The mill itself is no relic either. Steel is still made on that ground today under newer ownership. For hours and current exhibits, see the Steelworks Center of the West’s official site.