The Artful Engineer

Since we moved to Colorado a little over two years ago, Susan and I have been working to explore the state that we now call home. Some of our explorations are just day trips, but we also take long weekends to get a little further afield. On this blog, I have tended to prioritize the big trips to Europe and just squeeze these little ones into the gaps. The result is that I have quite a backlog of images and experiences to share from closer to home. Two months ago, Susan and I went on one of these excursions down to Trinidad, Colorado, which is just a few miles north of the New Mexico border.

Like a lot of smaller cities in Colorado, Trinidad is not quite what it once was. Originally founded in 1862 because of the coal fields nearby, it has always been on major trade corridors: it was on the Sante Fe trail since that route’s inception in 1820 and the Atchison, Topeka, and Sante Fe railroad passed through in 1878 on its way to the famous (and nearby) Raton Pass in New Mexico. It is still on the railroad mainline, although that railroad has since merged into the even larger Burlington Northern and Sante Fe railroad. And, probably more importantly these days, it did not suffer the fate of Radiator Springs: Interstate-25 has passed right through the middle of Trinidad since its completion in 1969.

In and around the downtown area, Trinidad has a lot of historic Victorian structures. Some are in great shape, others not, but I would say that Trinidad is fighting the good fight to keep from falling completely into ruin, which I appreciate. Ironically, those historic buildings still stand because the coal mines closed in the 1950s and Trinidad was too poor in the 1950s and 1960s to tear them down to modernize the city. Also ironically, since I like to photograph somewhat dilapidated structures, when it comes to Trinidad I feel that I need to photograph them before they get renovated, not before they collapse! A case in point is the Holy Trinity School, which finally closed in 2004, 134 years after its founding. Work has started to clean up the inside so that it can become a civic structure of some kind. Dealing with the usual problems of old structures like this—lead paint and asbestos—is likely going to take a few years, but these buildings are going to look a lot nicer, eventually, so I’m glad that I saw it now.

An interesting piece of history is the football stadium, below. I have not been able to verify that this structure dates back to the 1940s, but I suspect that it is at least that old. In 1943, John Gagliardi took over head coaching duties as a high school senior when the head coach was drafted. From these humble beginnings, he went on to a storied 64-year college football coaching career, where he won more games (489) than any other football coach in history; next in line is Joe Paterno, a full eighty wins behind. Gagliardi’s wins were admittedly at the Division III level, but this is an astounding statistic. I didn’t know any of this two months ago, but it adds some poignancy to this image:

I would love to explore the inside of these buildings, but they obviously want people to stay out:

There was a hole in a sheet of plywood that was boarding up a window in this stairwell, so I was able to stick my camera in and get this nice image despite the constraint:

Similarly, I was able to put my camera through a broken-out window into an old classroom. I would love to have free rein of this building for a day:

I hope you enjoyed these photographs of a once-vibrant place.