Pueblo's Melting Pot

For many years, Dad was the principal at Bessemer Elementary School - the neighborhood school that has been referred to as Pueblo's historic melting pot.  Today the school is called Bessemer Academy, and most of the traditional red brick structure dates back to the 1930s when the current Bessemer school building was built.

Steel Plant

Established in the late 1800s, Bessemer was an independent town south of Pueblo, built in proximity to the Colorado Coal and Iron Company, and took its name from Henry Bessemer, the Englishman who invented the process for converting pig iron into steel.  The steel plant later became Colorado Fuel and Iron - CF&I - and was a major employer in Pueblo for many years.  The school was founded in 1881 to serve the growing number of steel-worker families, mostly immigrants from Italy, Slovenia, Germany, Ireland, Spain and other European countries.

Bessemer neighborhood today

Historian George R. Williams wrote that at the turn of the century, Bessemer was a lively place, with boarding houses for smelter and steel mill workers, grocery stores, clothing stores, little ethnic neighborhoods. A main thoroughfare [just two blocks south of the school], Northern Avenue, was the first asphalt-paved street in Pueblo and "CF&I was the big dog. It was a very prosperous area." 

Bessemer School

Bessemer Academy - September 2009

In 1880 the community residents asked the school district to provide a school for their area, and the next year ground was broken for the school that would share the name of the community.  Miss Maggie Schackleton was named the first teacher at Bessemer School.

 According to an historical account published in 1949 in The Pueblo Chieftain (newspaper), the building was expanded in 1893. It was expanded again in the 1920s, but by 1930 the building was believed to be unsafe, and after several failed attempts to pass a bond issue and then find a contractor acceptable to the community, the current two-story building was constructed.

Don walking down memory lane

Window at the lower level

Interesting brick work

 Left side is the gym - scene of Dad's famous "slam dunk"

1125 Routt Avenue

historical information found here and here