Our History

Las Animas County was founded on February 9th,1866 Some historical facts that occurred and were recorded in history included William Becknells first recorded trading expedition from Missouri to Santa Fe in 1821. He followed what became known as the "Mountain Branch" of the Santa Fe Trail on his journey to the west.

In 1826, a young "Kit" Carson left his job as a saddlemaker in Missouri and joined a caravan headed west the beginning of his career as a frontiersman, explorer, hunter, pioneer, settler, Indian agent and fighter, and military officer.

In 1860, the Postal Service changed the mail route from the Cimarron Cutoff to the Mountain Branch.Traders from New Mexico traveled over Raton Pass to bring supplies to Denver and to all the gold miners who had arrived. The fertile valley along the Purgatoire River, attracted 12 families from Mora, New Mexico including Felipe and Dolores Baca and settled here to begin the settlement that became Trinidad. The Bacas became prominent in town as farmers, ranchers, merchants, and civic leaders.

In 1865, former mountain man Richens Lacy "Uncle Dick" Wootton and his partner, George C. McBride, built a toll road over Raton Pass. They blasted rock, removed road debris and built bridges finally crossing with a passable road. They built a toll booth and charged everyone who wanted to pass, except Native Americans who traveled free.

Rail lines continued to reach to the west in the 1860's and 1870's and brought more human traffic along the Mountain Branch. Adobe and log structures soon began being built along what is known now as Main and Commercial Streets and the town soon became and major commercial and agricultural area.

In 1870, John Hough, his wife Mary, and their two daughters moved to Trinidad from the Trail town of Boggsville. The Houghs established a mercantile firm, Prowers & Hough, and were soon know to carry the largest and best selection of dry goods, groceries, and other amenities in the whole Colorado Territory. Workers built the family a two story adobe house, using Hispanic construction techniques and English design and the family occupied the house until 1873, when it was sold to Felipe and Dolores Baca for a price of $7,000 worth of wool for the property and $1,500 in wool for the furniture. The home is now known as the Baca House in the History Museum.

In 1872 Cathay Williams the first African-American woman documented to have served in the United States Regular Army settled in Trinidad.

Trinidad was incorporated in 1876, the same year Colorado became a state.

In 1878, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad arrived in Trinidad. The next year the train reached Raton and finished the stretch into Santa Fe in 1880.

The Columbian Hotel, on the corner of Main and Commercial in Trinidad, was built in 1879 (that's Bat Masterson on the right).

In 1882, cattle baron Frank Bloom built his wife Sarah the Victorian jewel in Trinidad now know as the Bloom Mansion. Bat Masterson was Town Marshall and while he was here the Earps and Doc Holliday came into Trinidad, straight from the shootout at the OK Corral.

From its' founding in 1862, Trinidad grew to be 560 citizens in 1870, 2,226 citizens in 1880.

Las Animas County gets its name from the Spanish name for the river: Rio de las Animas Perdidas en Purgatorio (River of Souls Lost in Purgatory). Legend has it that several Spanish explorers were lost on the river in the late 1760s. Their bodies were never recovered, and thus they were doomed to spend eternity in Purgatory. The French gallicized the name to Purgatoire, and the Americans later anglicized it to Picket Wire.

The ares is always been richer in ethnic diversity than most other parts of the state because of the diversity of the groups who arrived to work the coal mines: Italians, Greeks, Welsh, Scots, Irish, Slavs, Serbs, and more all came to mine or to provide the labor to supply the many needed services centering around a coal mining camp. Although many explosions and other tragedies occurred as a result of mining, the one tragic event in Las Animas coal mining history that has been immortalized centers around the major coal strike of 1913-14, and the Ludlow Massacre.

District 15 of the UMW called a general strike on September 23, 1913 in order to call attention to the safety conditions and the pay and to gain company recognition of the labor union. The miners abandoned their homes and moved into tent colonies. The Colorado National Guard was called out in fear of increased violence and damage to the mine works.

The famous Mother Jones supported the strikers with periodic but rousing speeches to no avail as the companies did not budge. For 290 days, the feverish tension between the striking miners and the coal companies continued with eventual trading of gunfire that sent women and children out of their tents and into pits dug beneath the tents specifically for their safety. The tents were set aflame by militiamen and although many people escaped into the draws in the foothills surrounding the camp, one group was trapped in the cellar and all but one of the women and children caught there eventually died of suffocation and smoke inhalation.