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TRINIDAD

Trinidad sits on the banks of the Purgatory River in a pleasant, cottonwood-shaded valley. Old artifacts, petroglyphs, and adobe structures were left here through the centuries by many different peoples. The valley was home to prehistoric civilizations more than four hundred years before Columbus set foot on this continent. In 1593, the priest accompanying a Spanish expedition named the river that runs through it “Rio de las Animas Perdidas en Purgatorio.” This translates to “The River of Lost Souls in Purgatory,” and legend says the expedition priest named it in memory of a soldier who drowned in the river. When French trappers came looking for beaver in the 1700s, the Spanish name Purgatorio became the Purgatoire. By 1806, American mountain men venturing into the Rockies to trap beaver twisted the river’s French name into the Picketwire or simply called it the Purgatory.

The Spanish government had forbidden trade with the French and Americans, so in 1821, when Mexico won its freedom from Spain, the door was thrown open to traders. Settlers in Santa Fe were eager for all kinds of goods, and William Becknell, a St. Louis trader, was the first to load a pack train with $3,000 worth of calico, cloth, beads, and goods and head west toward Santa Fe.

When Becknell reached the Purgatoire River, near the site of present-day Trinidad, he crossed rugged Raton Pass and went south to Santa Fe. The Spanish settlers were eager to trade, and Becknell quickly sold all of his goods and returned to Missouri with his pack mules loaded with bags of Mexican pesos and bundles of furs. Becknell made an enormous profit, more than $90,000, and news of his success spread quickly. Soon traders with dollar signs in their eyes and loaded pack trains and wagons were headed for the markets in Taos and Santa Fe. They followed Becknell’s route, which became known as the Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail.

Weary traders and pioneers headed west welcomed the respite when they reached the Purgatoire River near present-day Trinidad. Everyone relaxed in the shade of a large grove of cottonwood trees, while their oxen and mules grazed on the thick grass. Animals and people needed to regain their strength before making the difficult crossing of Raton Pass. The treacherous trail over the pass was narrow, steep, and rocky. Often the wagons’ wooden axles snapped, and their wheels were shredded by the brutally rough terrain.

In 1846, when the Mexican-American War erupted, General Stephen Kearney led the Army of the West of 1,600 volunteer troopers south across Raton Pass. Santa Fe was captured, and Mexico gave up Texas, California, most of Arizona, Nevada and Utah, part of Wyoming, much of Southern Colorado, and half of New Mexico in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

During the Civil War, the Mountain Route of the Santa Fe Trail was used by the Union army to move troops and supplies into the Southwest. Raton Pass was guarded by Union troops until the end of the Civil War. After 1865, the Raton Pass trail was blasted wider and graded into a usable toll road by retired mountain man and entrepreneur Uncle Dick Wooten. The rolling grasslands around Trinidad became a major sheep producer, and when the road over the pass was improved, travel became easier. Often up to five hundred head of wagon train oxen could be seen grazing on the lush riverside grass, preparing for the journey over Raton Pass. It usually took shepherds an entire day to get a large herd of ten thousand sheep safely across. Cattlemen Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving paid Wooten ten cents a head to bring thousands of Texas longhorns over the pass on their way north to Denver.

In 1860, twelve families from Mora, New Mexico, led by Felipe and Delores Baca, settled in the fertile valley of the Purgatoire River. They named their settlement “Trinidad,” derived from the Spanish for “Trinity.” The new community became a supply center for neighboring farms and sheep and cattle ranches. By 1869, Trinidad’s population had grown to 1,200, and log and adobe buildings lined Main and Commercial Streets. More Hispanic families came from New Mexico and settled west of Trinidad in the vast San Luis Valley.

During the late 1870s, the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad was in a race with the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe to be the first to reach Trinidad. Both were anxious to make a deal with Uncle Dick Wooten for the right of way across Raton Pass, the only railroad route into New Mexico. AT&SF, laying its tracks west from Kansas, arrived just a few hours ahead of the D&RG crew and won the contract. This shattered Palmer’s dream of building a railroad to Mexico—so he turned west toward the silver camps of the San Juan Mountains.

Served by two railroads, Trinidad’s depot became a shipping center, sending boxcars of sheep and cattle to eastern markets. Heavy mining equipment and machinery arrived from the East for the silver camps in the San Juans. The town marshal, Bat Masterson, had plenty to do when rambunctious cowboys flooded the town on payday to gamble and quench their thirst at the bars in El Corazon de Trinidad (the Heart of Trinidad). Bat never shot anyone, but he used his fists and boxing skills to toss rowdy lawbreakers into jail. In May 1882, his friend Wyatt Earp rode into town with Doc Holliday after their dustup at Tombstone’s O.K. Corral. Bat helped Doc avoid extradition to Arizona to stand trial for murder and sent him on to Denver. Doc spent some time in Denver and then went to Leadville, where the high altitude did not help his case of advanced tuberculosis. Wyatt dealt faro in a Trinidad gambling hall before moving on to boisterous Silverton.

Rich coal deposits were discovered near Trinidad, and hundreds of European immigrants came to work in the mines. A new courthouse, a city hall, a library, and an elegant opera house were built with Trinidad-manufactured bricks or golden sandstone from a nearby quarry. Coal money poured into town, and wealthy bankers, merchants, and coal men built their elegant Victorians on Aristocracy Hill.

The Colorado Coalfield War, believed to be the deadliest labor strike in the history of the United States, began in 1913 and finally ended in 1914. There was a great deal of violence and death, and conditions in the mines did not improve. Many were killed, and the numerous funerals cast a pall of gloom and despair over Trinidad. The arrival of federal troops quelled the violence, but many coal mines closed in the 1920s, and Trinidad’s population declined.

During the 1950s, when other towns were demolishing their historic buildings, the town fathers of Trinidad decided instead to save them. Now Main Street winds through historic downtown, Corazon de Trinidad, which is included in a National Historic District. Many of the old streets are paved with the original bricks that were made here and are marked “Trinidad.” The Trinidad History Museum is a complex of restored old homes that contain family heirlooms, photographs, and antique furnishings. The Bloom Mansion is an elaborate Second Empire home built in 1882 by cattle baron Frank Bloom. It is surrounded by century-old trees and flower gardens. The adobe Baca Home was built around 1872 by a Santa Fe Trail entrepreneur. He sold it to early settlers Dolores and Felipe Baca for twenty-two thousand pounds of wool. The Santa Fe Trail Museum is full of artifacts from the days when this was the main route for travel and trade between the United States and Mexico. It contains many relics from those early times, including a fringed buckskin jacket that scout Kit Carson gave to Trinidad’s mayor.

TARABINO INN

Two brothers, John and Barney Tarabino, built their impressive Italianate-style home on a prominent knoll on Chestnut Street in 1907. They moved their large families into the three-story, U-shaped brick house, which had two separate wings. The children played on the sun porch and learned their ABCs in the small schoolhouse in the backyard.

The six Tarabino brothers came to Trinidad from Italy in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The eldest, Giovanni (John), arrived in Colorado in 1883 and started a mercantile store in the coal mining community of Engleville, south of Trinidad. He eventually sold his business to the Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I) Company and, with his brother Bernardino (Barney), started a general merchandise store in Walsenburg.

In 1899, they opened the Famous Department Store on Trinidad’s Main Street, carrying a large variety of clothing and merchandise. Their store was very popular, and the brothers expanded to become the largest mercantile in town. Their four brothers invested in real estate, ranching, and a variety of businesses, and all became very wealthy.

After more than thirty years in Trinidad, John and Barney retired and moved to Santa Monica, California, leaving the Tarabino Real Estate Company to manage their properties. John Tarabino died in 1918, and Barney died just three years later.

The Tarabino home remained in the family until it was sold in the 1960s. It changed hands several times, but it has remained essentially unchanged since its construction over one hundred years ago. There was one important change: the family’s outhouses were replaced with indoor plumbing.

The Tarabino Inn, a family home for generations, is now a bed-and-breakfast, home to several friendly spirits. Courtesy of Wendy Williams.

GHOSTS

The Tarabino Bed and Breakfast Inn is rumored to have several ghosts. Mysterious footsteps are heard on the stairs leading to the second floor, and it’s not unusual to catch a whiff of cherry tobacco smoke in the library. Ceiling fans suddenly start whirring when no one has touched the switch, and the oven turns on and off by itself. When the owner, Teresa, was baking, the oven turned on and off so many times that she became really exasperated and ordered, “Cut it out!” The activity immediately stopped.

Occasionally, the entire house is filled with the pleasant, spicy smells of gingerbread and cookies baking. There’s even a faint aroma of pine, and the comment, “It smells just like Christmas,” is heard often—even in summer. These tantalizing fragrances are noticed when no one is baking in the kitchen.

There’s a lot of paranormal activity in an upstairs bedroom, especially near the closet. Several guests have seen the apparition of a “wiry-haired woman quietly rocking in an antique rocking chair.” She doesn’t speak and slowly fades away when noticed.

A medium who visited the Tarabino Inn sensed the presence of at least seven spirits in the house. She was certain that a man named “Hector” enjoyed smoking his pipe of cherry tobacco in the library. She said two children were playing in different rooms upstairs, and she was certain that the spirit of Barney Tarabino was lingering in the house. She noted an unusual presence in the dining room but assured everyone that the spirits in the house were friendly. She sensed another unknown presence in the Chestnut Suite upstairs and said that two ghosts spent a lot of time walking up and down the front stairs. The owners of the inn have seen the filmy image of a young woman wearing a long, white gown standing at the foot of these stairs. They said, “She was just looking at us with a sad or longing expression—then she faded away.”

The Tarabino families gathered in this dining room for meals. Courtesy of Wendy Williams.

One guest came down to breakfast and commented that they “had a very busy household.” She explained that during the night there had been a gathering of long-gone family members near her room. She added that she had seen a strange man wander into her room. When she looked through some old newspaper clippings about the Tarabino family, she pointed to a picture of Barney and insisted without hesitation, “That’s him!”

A longtime Trinidad resident, F. Dean Sneed, who lived in the Tarabino house when he was a child, wrote about his experiences in a book, Ghosts of Trinidad and Las Animas County. His family often heard mysterious, disembodied footsteps, and there were voices throughout the house. Sneed said once he felt a “reassuring hand on my shoulder in the library.” He recalled an evening when he was lying on the couch near the stairs. Suddenly, he saw the shadowy figures of two children walking toward him. He said they were quite clear, but he was so terrified that he started screaming loudly. The children vanished just as his mother came running. Sneed said that he always felt protected in the home and he’s certain that the spirits in the house were never a threat to him.