Pueblo County, Colorado
Pueblo News 1904

Page contributed by Karen Mitchell, news items contributed by Jean Griesan and Karen Mitchell. Our utmost thanks and appreciation to Jean for typing these up.
These news items are being extracted from the local newspapers. They are in chronological order. To search for any given name use your browers "Find" button.

The Pueblo Chieftain, 1-18-1998 Unrest in Southern Colorado 1904-1905
By PETER STRESCINO
Bloody strikes, official corruption, industrial tragedy, train wrecks, floods and killing fires were part of the landscape of 1904-05 America.

And much of it was centered in Southern Colorado.

On the international front, Russia and Japan fought a terrible war. Russians revolted, not for the last time, against Czar Nicholas II. There were problems in Panama, as the U.S. orchestrated revolt against Colombia wasn't too popular with the Colombians.

And in the West, Kansas and Colorado were fighting about water. There was even talk in 1905 about Colorado annexing Western Kansas to stop the water quarrels.

There was enough news locally that a reader then might never look at the articles centered on Japan smacking around Mother Russia.

Pueblo's Republican Mayor Benjamin B. Brown was portrayed as sort of a Bill Clinton in a bowler by the Democratic Star-Journal newspaper. The paper called him B.B. Brown, and if official corruption is your thing, B.B. would be your boy.

Brown and the chief of police, City Council president, constable and several cops, chief among them Det. E.H. Wilson, were hit with close to 100 indictments of official misconduct for ignoring the gambling dens on Santa Fe and Union avenues.

In May 1904, less than a month after the gambling indictments, another grand jury handed down another 90 or so indictments for larceny, embezzlement and forgery. Brown again was indicted, as were two county commissioners, the sheriff, chief of police, city accountant and council president.

Detective Wilson also was indicted, as he was again in 1905 for voter fraud and trying to influence witnesses. He was found guilty on those charges that year.

In 1905, after winning election to governor for the third time the previous November, Puebloan Alva Adams was tossed from office by a joint session of the Legislature. Statewide voter fraud by the Democrats, especially in Denver and Pueblo, was cited. When Adams, who served two months before losing the governor's job, returned to Pueblo in March 1905, a huge crowd turned out to hear him speak.

Strikes in Cripple Creek and Victor brought the state's "Army" out to attack strikers and union men in 1904. The streets of both communities were filled with blood, and even when Gov. Peabody told the militia to cease, the "generals" ignored their civilian leadership and continued to hunt down striking miners.

In 1905, the state Supreme Court ruled that the governor was the commander in chief of the state militia.

A train wreck at Eden killed more than 85 people in August 1904. Earlier in the year, a broken cable in Cripple Creek caused the death of 14 miners. The Purgatoire River turned to hell and wiped out much of Trinidad in the fall of 1904.

Things were vastly different than now during the middle of the century's first decade:

· "Another Chinaman weds white woman," a headline said, detailing the second such marriage in a month.

· Eight-room modern house, near Grand Hotel, $35 month.

· "Insist on using the weed," a long tribute to healthy tobacco use, appeared in the Star-Journal's meaty middle pages.

· McClelland Library, with a $70,000 donation from Andrew Carnegie, opened in Royal Park.

· Ads: "Fancy" hosiery, 34 cents; men's suits and overcoats, $11; buy your booze at L.E. Ross Family Liquor store; boy's shoes, $1.29.

· There's talk of getting families off county relief rolls. There are 262 paupers at the local hospital, costing the county $6,600 annually.

· The fire department is breaking in nine new horses, a story says.

· Bowling is huge. The two newspapers have a fierce competition and there is a Front Range league.

· Nancy Sneed, "35 and pretty," sold her husband's furniture, cleaned out his bank account and took off to California with the ice man, according to a story.

· Russian and Austrian Puebloans drilled in Bessemer, in case Russia called them to fight against what the paper called the Yellow Peril.

· Headline -- "Man robbed of 5 cents by Negro highwayman."

· Lake Minnequa freezes over in winter and hunting rabbits on the ice was big sport.

· Pueblo had 65,000 residents.

· Forty-two unpaid members of the state's militia seize the Pueblo armory on Jan. 27, and say they'll keep it until they're paid. The paper does not report how this turned out.

· Ida Miller abandoned her 11-year-old son and took off to Denver with the "Poet-Buglar of East Pueblo, William Wert." She killed herself with laudanum when she was captured.

· On April 6, 1905, the Chicago Nationals and Chicago Americans (the Colts) play an exhibition baseball game in Pueblo. Hall of Famers Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers and Frank Chance play, as do notables Fielder Jones, Johnny Kling and Jimmy Slagle, all of the Nats, later called the Cubs. The paper runs a boxscore but no story.

· Pueblo County had several of its products on display at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, not least among them marble from Beulah.

· There were at least two opera houses in Pueblo.

· "Fewer idle girls now unwilling to stay home," a headline says.

Akron Weekly Pioneer Press, Akron, Washington County, Colorado - May 30, 1902 - In Pueblo Five Hundred People Are Rendered Homeless. Denver, May 27. - A Republican dispatch from Pueblo last night says: Pueblo is being swept tonight by the worst flood in the Fountain river since the settlement here was wiped out by the high waters of 1864. A cloudburst above Fountain has washed out several hundred feet of the Rio Grande and Santa Fe tracks, stopping traffic and doing much damage. Several big bridges in this city have been carried away and dozens of shacks have been swept down stream. Timely warning of the approach of the waters prevented loss of life in the lowlands of Pueblo, where 500 people have been rendered homeless. There are wild rumors of loss of life but none can be confirmed. It appears that the flood started with a cloudburst in the vicinity of Butten (?) about noon. When the water reached Eden it was twelve feet high and was gaining in volume and force. By the time it had reached Pueblo the river was a rushing mass of small shanties, tents and driftwood.



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