Brief by Central Staff
Local History – November 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
Colorado Fuel & Iron operated its steel mills in Pueblo, but the company’s influence extended deeply into the fabric of Central Colorado for about a century.
The old Orient iron mines above Valley View Hot Springs, now best known as the summer home for immense clouds of bats? Those were CF&I mines.
So were some early iron mines near Turret in the Arkansas Hills above Salida. Steel-making also requires limestone, and for several generations, that came from CF&I’s Monarch Quarry about 20 miles west of Salida. The Pueblo blast furnaces were fed by coal, and until 50 years ago, that coal came from CF&I’s Big Mine at Crested Butte.
Those bulky materials moved by rail, and thus the transportation needs helped defined our regional rail network.
Now there’s a project underway in Pueblo to preserve CF&I’s archives, and to restore a CF&I building to house them; it’s being administered by the Bessemer Historical Society.
If you want to help, the Minnequa Works Federal Credit Union is publishing a 2002 calender that features historic photos from the CF&I archives. We haven’t seen one yet, so we don’t know whether any of the pictures come from our part of the world, but the price is certainly reasonable: $5.
The calendars are available from the credit union at 1549 E. Abriendo Ave. in Pueblo, or you can call Maria Sanchez at 719-561-6807. The historical society has a website at www.cfisteel.org.
