The Brokedown Palace .
In the meantime I quickly found a rental in a huge house built early in the ast century .My landlady was 94 years old .Her daughter lived in the back ,ans both she and her husband worked for the old Colorado and Wyoming Ry. Like nearly everyone I encountered in Trinidad , they were very friendly people .
The town was once served by five railroads . Three depots still existed in town .The D&RG depot was the county shops .The C&S's beautiful brick depot was bypassed in a 1990 relocation (to eliminate the 10 mph curve that approached from the west).It is now a restaurant . The ATSF tore down its beautiful mission-syle depot and replaced it with a sigularly ugly neo-nothing crackerbox that still serves Amtrak . Trinidad may be the most extensive and substantial mining town in the West .Precious metal mining ,while the most celebrated ,was conversely the most ephemeral . It created few lasting towns .The real money in Western mining was in coal and copper .So it is no surprise that Bisbee , Clifton and Trinidad are the best examples of such towns. Nevetheless ,the coal played out as well .Of the dozens of mines once active ,only one remains open in the district . Once there were 48 switching jobs in this town.Now one engine does any switching needed , if it is in town . The area was the site of a great deal of labor violence in the early part of the century . The simple and moving monunument to at the site of the Ludlow massacre ,a few miles north, attests to that .Some bitter fighting with troops took place in downtown Trinidad , and ,as they did later that winter in Ludlow(1914) the troops fired on women and children . The bitterness is just under the surface,and the hatred for Republican politicians is still vitriolic .
The downtown has many beautifully crafted structures that would make a city like Durango envious . Old-world craftmanship abounds in the nearly all structures .The carved sandstone on the five-story First National Bank ,with flourishes and gargoyles is ,at the corner of Main and Commercial ,the town centerpice . Sadly , Trinidad's population peaked in 1930 at 15,000,and the decline in its fortunes were easy to see downtown . There were numerous empty storefronts and entire buildings closed up .The town is reliant on state funding to stabilize existing structures .Nevertheless ,water damage was obvious in some buildings .There were reports that beautiful woodwork inside was ruined as well .
The residential area likewise is an unending parade of high Victorian architecture ,with gingerbread ,rotundas and towers on almost every block . Cut stone and brick are prevalent. Many houses are a combination stone, brick and wood trim .While a number of houses were lovingly cared for , there were a number of buildings that were unoccupied ,and some of those were huge . The "sunray" mofif was fashioned in wood under many pitched roofs. In my estimation , there were over 1000 buildings in Trinidad built before 1900,making it a "must see" for history buffs and modelers .
The town had many churches ,and a convent .Some were abandoned ,or used commercially .A standout was the Temple Emmanuel synagogue on high on the east side ,built in 1882 .It is brick with magnificent Turkish domes.
Like a lot of Front Range towns ,Trinidad had a lot of neighborood bars .As I would walk by ,an old miner stared out the door into the street in almost every one . The ubiquitous corner store is extinct in America .Trinidad had several abandoned examples ,and I took a lot of pictures of them . One ,in the Jansen area , had elaborate art-deco tinwork .
I noticed that one of the buildings at the corner of Main and Commercial had a hole in the tinwork ,next to its "1889" corner piece .A pigeon always surveyed the the decayed "town that has seen better days" scene .The "brokedown palace" look was Trinidad's charm and wistfulness of a town in a long decline.
