Trinidad, Colorado

Trinidad grew up as a crossroads. It was established in 1861 in far southern Colorado, at the foot of Raton Pass, on the Santa Fe Trail — the last major stop on the Colorado side before wagons climbed the pass into New Mexico. That position, where the plains meet the mountains along the Purgatoire River, made it a natural gathering point, and the town became the seat of Las Animas County when the county was organized in 1866. By the late 1860s roughly 1,200 people lived there, and the town settled in as the trade and government center for a wide stretch of country that had, for generations before, been ranched and traveled by Hispano families whose roots ran south into New Mexico.

What made Trinidad boom was coal. Beginning in the 1870s, the hills around town proved rich in coal, and Trinidad grew into the capital of southern Colorado's coal-producing region, prospering from the late 1870s into the 1910s. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad reached town and hauled the coal out, and the money built the brick-and-adobe downtown that still stands — including cattle baron Frank Bloom's elaborate 1882 Second Empire mansion on Main Street. It was also hard, dangerous work: the coalfields around Trinidad were the setting for bitter labor conflict, culminating in the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, when National Guard troops attacked a striking miners' tent colony about twelve miles north of town.

When the coal industry faded, Trinidad's boom-era architecture survived largely intact — which turned out to be its second act. Much of the well-preserved downtown is now the El Corazón de Trinidad National Historic District, blocks of late-19th- and early-20th-century brick and adobe buildings, with sidewalks and streets paved in red bricks that were each stamped "TRINIDAD." The same district is a Certified Colorado Creative District, and the affordable historic buildings and open landscapes have drawn artists, galleries, and a working theater company. History Colorado runs the Trinidad History Museum in the heart of it, keeping the Baca House, the Bloom Mansion, and the Santa Fe Trail story on one downtown block.

Trinidad today is a walkable, characterful little city that wears its history on its sleeve — literally, on the brick-paved streets stamped with the town's name. Downtown, the El Corazón de Trinidad district packs galleries, cafes, the Trinidad History Museum, and restored Victorian and adobe storefronts into a few strollable blocks, and the arts scene keeps things lively with a resident theater company and a full calendar in the Creative District. The setting is a big part of the appeal: the town sits where the southern plains crumple up into mesas and the mountains, along the Highway of Legends scenic byway, with fishing and boating at nearby Trinidad Lake State Park and Fishers Peak rising south of town. It's an unpretentious, affordable place — the kind of small Colorado city where you can own a piece of history, know your neighbors, and still be minutes from open country.