Colorado State University Pueblo

Colorado

A bill to give Pueblo a four-year college died in the state senate by a single vote.

historicalpeopleculture

A bill to give Pueblo a four-year college reached the state senate in 1926. It lost by one vote. The idea sat dormant through the Great Depression, and by the time a high school teacher named Eric Kelly picked it back up, the city was in rough shape. The steel mill, Pueblo's biggest employer, had stopped hiring. Drought and dust storms were working over all of southern Colorado. The town was still digging out from the floods of 1921. Kelly gathered a handful of local business leaders, including the publisher of the Pueblo Chieftain, and they got a school incorporated. The first classes met in the fall of 1933 in three empty rooms on the third floor of the Pueblo County Courthouse. Sixty-three students enrolled. Two full-time instructors and eight part-timers taught them, and Kelly agreed to serve as dean. Seventeen of those students made it through to the first graduating class in 1935.

This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
The bill was defeated by one vote.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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