Editor’s Note: In anticipation of the upcoming Yule Log Festival held at the Pueblo Mountain Park, we devote this cover story to the vision, planning, administration, and that makes this gathering place for the general public a dream come true. Indeed, the historic acknowledgement of Pueblo Mountain Park was designated on Dec. 6, 1994. Compiled and written by an employee of Pueblo Planning Department, additional photo submissions are credited to Tanya W. Kulkosky and Janet Moore (now Switzer, our very own proofreader). All photos are courtesy George Williams and Pueblo Library District.
Pueblo Mountain Park is significant for its historic association with the development of automobile-related recreation parks in the early 20th Century and architecturally as an excellent local example of the “Rustic Style.” It is significant for the development of landscape architecture popular in mountain parks during the 1920-1940 period, and its role as the model mountain playground as envisioned by Arthur H. Carhart in the Nation’s first outdoor recreation plan for a National Forest. The park’s evolution has been influenced and molded by several important forces, including the development of landscape architecture into recreational planning, and the development of recreation associations, and the significance of New Deal programs and activities.
Early Park Development
Pueblo Mountain Park at Beulah, Colorado is owned and operated by the City of Pueblo [today managed by Nature Wildlife Discovery Center] and located on 611 acres on a hilltop in the San Isabel National Forest above the rural ranching and residential community of Beulah. The early history of the park dates back to 1918, when the City of Pueblo and private citizens in Pueblo developed the Pueblo Municipal Campgrounds on Squirrel Creek nearby in the San Isabel National Forest. In 1919 Pueblo businessmen formed the San Isabel Public Recreation Association (SIPRA) to develop recreation facilities within the San Isabel Forest. The City of Pueblo purchased 600 acres of land to develop an adjacent Pueblo Mountain Park.
Great Depression, The New Deal & Park Development
Recreational development in the San Isabel Forest area went into decline for economic reasons towards the end of the 1920s. The stock market crash of 1929 and resulting Depression Era further sealed the fate of the SIPRA. With the advent of Roosevelt’s New Deal Programs, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) picked up where Carhart and the SIPRA had left off in Pueblo Mountain Park and the San Isabel National Forest Projects. The CCC worked on Pueblo Mountain Park,and went on to build Lake Isabel Dam and Reservoir. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) eventually finished the work at the Pueblo Mountain Park.
Work Ethic
In the 1930s, Americans lived by an extremely strong work ethic, thus taking relief was considered very degrading. President Franklin Roosevelt recognized this stressful aspect of life during the Depression and felt people would feel better about themselves if they worked for the money they earned. He was right, for as people returned to some form of work, personal pride was renewed. Using largely indigenous materials, the work projects employed people based on need alone. The proposed structures were built by CCC and WPA crews during a crucial period in American history by residents of the area that had become a melting pot of ethnic cultures. They speak of community pride in working together as a whole.
During the Depression and until America’s entry into World War II, New Deal programs pumped billions of dollars into public buildings and endless other projects across the country. The CCC program, while one of the more modest New Deal programs, was Roosevelt’s most successful. Many of the earlier, small-scale projects made use of local architects and indigenous materials along with local labor.
Roosevelt issued an executive order to create the ECW or Emergency Conservation Work Act in March 1933. The act overwhelmingly increased recreational planning in parks. Money flowed into the parks as FDR’s “Forestry Army” marched into the woods, by July almost 3000,00 men had been enrolled. Early work consisted of basic forest conservation such as tree, soil, flood and fire control. The thousands of park, forest conservation, and reclamation projects funded to the CCC by the Federal government no only created much needed employment for millions of the nation’s unemployed single young men, but also contributed to their education and the development of job skills.
The education and training the boys of the CCC received improved literacy and produced skilled technicians in a number of fields. Many learned to read and write in the educational programs taught in the camps, and many learned the trades that would provide for the future livelihood. It taught them the value of cooperation, teamwork, and the pride that comes with achievement. The projects complete by “Roosevelt’s Tree Army” were a crowning achievement in U.S. history. Besides the park recreational development, the men of the New Deal were important for the contribution to flood, fire, erosion control, water and sewage systems.
Their efforts in reforestation and forest-disease control contributed to wildlife and waterfowl conservation. Tree planting, grazing and irrigation programs benefited the “dust bowl” farmer and rancher via land conservation. Roads and trails opened the forest and countryside to the traveler. “To say that the CCC was the greatest blessing ever to come to the forest, soil, and water of America is no exaggeration.”
CCC at Pueblo Mountain Park
In March 1933, newly elected President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Act to establish the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in August, Colorado’s acting Lieutenant governor, Ray H. Talbot of Pueblo requested that CCC outfit be put to work in Pueblo Mountain Park. Talbot would later serve many years as Pueblo City Commissioner. Instrumental in bringing millions of New Deal dollars into Pueblo and Eastern Colorado, Talbot would play a major role in the general development of Pueblo and the New Deal in Colorado. Talbots’s request was approved shortly, and immediate improvements were planned.
Thirty to thirty-five CCC companies were to be formed with 50 percent of the enrollment to come from the State of Colorado and the rest from Texas and Oklahoma. The enrollees went through a basic training in a ‘conditioning’ tent at the Fort Logan headquarters before they were transported by truck or wagon to the camp sites, most of which were located in the Colorado National Forests. Their first task would be to construct the camp they would be living in before they began laboring on work projects outlined by the Park or Forest Service.
In 1935, the Colorado CCC was divided into two districts. The headquarters for camps west of the Divide was in Grand Junction while those on the eastern side were quartered at Fort Logan. Enrollees were required to send a portion of their money home to their depression-ridden families, work hard, obey camp discipline, and attempt to educate themselves. In return they received a job with pay, “clothing, food, living quarters and medical attention.”
Opportunities for education and recreation were also provided. Their labor in the decaying forests and parched prairies of Colorado was desperately need. Conservation of land and water along with park construction was not the only benefit for the camp; young boys became men.
Activities
Company 801 first started work by constructing Hardscrabble Camp F-26-C which was the first ECWC camp to be established in Colorado. According to camp superintendent, Alfred C. Stiefel, in his 1933 report to the Forest Service, Company 801 arrived at the Hardscrabble site on May 10, 1933. The Company was involved in a number of forest clearing, reforestation, and construction projects. Many of the enrollees were from Pueblo and the Arkansas Valley. By August 1933, there were 44 CCC camps at work in Colorado. The major project of the Hardscrabble crew in the first six months was the “extension of the South Hardscrabble Road to the Beulah junction.”
Shortly afterwards, in November 1933, Company 801 moved to Camp SP-6-C located at the Colorado State Fairgrounds in Pueblo. By 1934, Company 801 SP-6-C moved to a tent camp they constructed at Pueblo Mountain Park near Beulah. During the next year, the 801 Company would continue working on the improvement of Pueblo Mountain Park.
By December 1934, the Company had constructed a temporary tent camp, including a kitchen, mess hall, barracks, and infirmary, and was able to boast a resident physician. Eventually, the camp would add a recreation hall that included a piano, radio, and library. The park was known to be used recreationally by the CCC as late as mid-1937. With an enrollment ranging from 181 men in 1934 to over 211 in 1935, the young men were involved in many projects at the same time.
Early projects included clearing the forest, construction of picnic tables, benches, stoves, latrines, along with partial construction of the lodge and the construction of roads and foot and bridle trails. The fence work included the casting of concrete boundary posts.
Work at the park in 1934 and 1935, included construction of the workshop, an addition to the caretaker’s house, picnic shelters, the first reservoir building, and the powder (dynamite) house. The first reservoir building and buried pipelines improved the existing water system. Road, trail, cattle guard, culvert and bridge work improved access to the park’s acreage. General park cleanup included erosion control, burning brush and removing dead timber. The Company built lumber forms for the reinforced, concrete bridges and the cement was mixed at the site with a rented concrete mixer. There was an abundance of tree planting along with dead tree removal.
Second only to the Corps’ primary objective of environmental conservation was an effort to provide education and job skills to enrollees. The average enrollee at Company 801 had an eighth-grade education. The boys were given immediate access to an education. During 1934 and 1935, some 10 to 15 classes were offered and almost one-half of the some 200 enrollees attended classes. Elementary, high school, and vocational classes ranged from the vocational, carpentry, survey and electricity to the creative, such as photography woodworking, and journalism. The camp published its own newsletter “Canteen Chatter” as did Company 812 with the “Burnt Mill Bull’s Eye.” Educational and religious films were shown in the evenings and camp libraries grew as reading was encouraged.
A work ethic of hard physical labor coupled with education and recreation were the camp goals. The CCC emphasized work, health, and education. During the winter of 1935, “there was a small business boom in Pueblo and its vicinity, because so many CCC men secured their discharges to accept permanent employment.”
In December 1934, Frank K. Culley [hired to design and supervise construction of campgrounds on Squirrel Creek, North Creek and South Hardscrabble Creek-possibly the first designed and built by a landscape architect on the National Forests] made his first trip as a park inspector to Pueblo Mountain Park. Culley provided criticisms and advice which improved the park’s design. Culley also checked the trails and made changes there as well. He was very concerned with creating natural designs. Culley even went to the extent of demanding that the tree pruning, which was going on at the park, giving it an “orchard appearance be stopped.” In his first report concerning this inspection of Pueblo Mountain Park, Culley complained that “the service group of the park is disorganized and messy, and a plan must be carefully studied to work from.
In April 1935, Culley’s report to Maier descriptively illustrated the Pavilion at Pueblo Mountain Park as:
“Excellent selection [of] native weathered stone well placed in the community building. Advised careful consideration of roof for scale, alignment and general rugged effect to cap these walls. Advised heavier construction of French doors, conversion of central group french doors on west towards view into large window group and use of dark stain.”
During his inspection, Culley also advised on the construction of “fireboxes” (original fire pits) and bridge veneering. “The construction of a community building at this park is progressing nicely. We now have two skilled stone masons … in order to speed up the work as much as possible. Large stone(s) weighing several tons are being used, giving the building a massive effect in keeping with the surrounding country.”
By May another bridge had been completed “faced with natural stone” and rail steps to a natural spring. Culley again inspected the Pueblo Mountain Park in July, and “advised more study to simplify [the] method of treating bridges in park.” He “suggested native stone veneer piers and wing walls with simple log sleepers and stingers for railing. Project manager Ahren reported that the community building was two-third complete and that great improvements had been made in the rustic façade over the existing concrete bridges there, yet funds were slow in coming.
In August 1935, work continued on picnic sites, mountain road and trail construction, landscaping; and concrete bridges continued to be faced with the new rustic veneer. In September Ahren was descriptive in describing the Pavilion when he reported that it was constructed of excellent rock work.
“Native stone which is covered with lichen and many weathered cracks through [sic] it has been used. They have these rocks(s) in very large sizes producing a monolithic effect. At a little distance the feeling of joints is lost and these huge stone masses seem to grow out of the ground.”
By December, Culley reported the CCC camp at Pueblo Mountain Park had “moved leaving certain projects unfinished… the most serious of which was the community building and veneering of a number of bridges. Ahrens reported that an agreement had been reached to complete the unfinished work between the Forest and Park Service starting that December.
Works Progress Administration and the Pueblo Mountain Park
While CCC work continued in the San Isabel National Forest in 1936, work at Pueblo Mountain Park slowed and apparently came to a virtual standstill. In 1937 WPA funds were requested and received, and the WPA made recreation facilities construction a priority. Early forerunners to the WPA, CWA and the PWA, had been in the San Isabel National Forest since 1933.
In his application to the WPA, City Commissioner, Ray Talbot expressed City Councils’ recommendation that work at Pueblo Mountain Park continue. Talbot stated; “… this park was used for a CCC Camp at one time and work that the Corps were doing in the park remains unfinished due to the withdrawal of the unity from the park and at the present time it is desirous to finish this work.”
The funds were requested to “complete [the] pavilion, bridges, water system, and road work. Talbot was successful in his funding request and soon millions of WPA dollars poured into the Pueblo area. In 1938, 1939, and 1940, work intensified at the park; the baseball park, bleachers, and Horseshoe Lodge were constructed.
By 1939,the park development program at Pueblo Mountain Park and San Isabel National Forest had now been ongoing for 20 years. The SIPRA, well ahead of its time in developing private recreational organizations, was dissolved and the sponsoring Commerce Club evolved into the Chamber of Commerce.
Pueblo Mountain Park with its extensive improvements has been used continuously as a convention center, to host receptions and meetings, a summer camp for children and adults, local annual events, and as a unique recreation experience for thousands of visitors. It is a source of pride to the local community and retains a rich historical heritage which deserves to be recognized. v
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