An Archive of Colorado Mysteries & Frontier Lore

The Southern Colorado Obscura

Vol. VI Features Long-Form Edition

Features

Long-form records — recovered accounts — open investigations

Place & Territory


Pueblo

Probability Archive — Active

Home of Heroes

Four Medal of Honor recipients from one city. The archive's definition of hero is more precise — and the pattern runs deeper than any single war.


Crime Archive — Pueblo, 1985

The Detective in the Driveway

A narcotics detective shot in his own driveway. The investigation first looked outward. Then it turned back toward the house.


Regional Archive

All Locations — Active Series

Regional Archive

Mapped archive of Southern Colorado's most historically layered, folklore-dense, and anomaly-producing locations.


Las Animas County

Trinidad

Coal wars. Underground tunnels. The city buries its records in layers that do not always agree.


Field Record

Las Animas & Huerfano Counties

Ghost Towns of Southern Colorado

What remains of the CF&I coal company towns — Cokedale, Hastings, Tercio, Starkville, Morley, and Ludlow. Six sites surveyed. Visitor access, current condition, and the system that built them all.


Road Record

Colorado Route 12 — Trinidad to La Veta

Highway of Legends

82 miles from Trinidad to La Veta — through the coke ovens at Cokedale, the dike walls at Stonewall, the meadows above Cuchara, and under the Spanish Peaks. What to see, what to know, and what most travelers miss.


Field Guide

Alamosa, Costilla & Saguache Counties

The San Luis Valley

The tallest sand dunes in North America, the oldest town in Colorado, Blanca Peak, Kit Carson's fort, dark sky astronomy, natural hot springs, and the UFO corridor. A complete guide to the most geologically and historically extraordinary basin in the Rocky Mountain West.


Pueblo County

Boone

Founded by Daniel Boone's grandson. Built on a crossing older than any town. The river has been here longer than every name given to it.


Field Guide

Fremont County — Arkansas River

Royal Gorge

A canyon 1,250 feet deep. A suspension bridge that held the world record for 72 years. A railroad war fought with hired guns in 1878. A scenic excursion railroad still running at river level today. What the gorge is, and how to see all of it.


Field Guide

El Paso County — Front Range

Pikes Peak

14,115 feet. The cog railway (rebuilt 2021), the 19-mile highway, and Barr Trail. Katharine Lee Bates wrote “America the Beautiful” at the top in 1893. The Hill Climb has been run since 1916. A complete guide to Colorado’s most famous mountain.


Long Features

Canon City — Interactive

The Canon City Blacksmith

Forge documentation. Hargrove Method Archive.


Recovered Object

The Corbie Reliquary

What was recovered. What was not.


Death Record — Anomalous

The Reckoning Book of Abner Rourke

For twenty years he named the hour he expected to die. On his final day, the hour was off by twenty-three minutes.


Regional Archive — Object Ledger

The Pueblo Saddle Ledger

Eight saddles from the Pueblo corridor. Each with a documented ownership chain. Each with a history that did not end with its last recorded owner.

Cases & Anomalies


Full Record

Las Animas & Huerfano — 1913–1914

The Colorado Coalfield War

The strike against Colorado Fuel & Iron, the tent colonies, the Ludlow Massacre, the Ten Days' War, and what followed. The defining event in Colorado labor history — fully documented.


Disaster Record — April 27, 1917

The Hastings Mine Disaster

One hundred and twenty-one men entered the CF&I mine at Hastings on the morning of April 27, 1917. None came out. One of the worst mine disasters in Colorado history — and one of the least documented.


Case Record

Hinsdale County — 1874

Alferd Packer

The winter of 1874, five dead men on Cannibal Plateau above Lake City, a nine-year manhunt, and two trials that could not agree on what the crime was. The complete case record from the archive.


Complete Record

Kiowa County — November 29, 1864

The Sand Creek Massacre

Colonel Chivington attacked a peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho camp flying a US flag at dawn. Between 150 and 200 people died. Captain Silas Soule refused to give the order to fire — and was murdered four months later. The complete record.


Investigations

Active — All Cases

Investigations Desk

Cryptids, paranormal, treasure, and unexplained phenomena from the frontier record.


Pueblo County

Crime Desk

Justice notices, custody records, and blotter entries from the frontier record.


Sealed — Open Inquiry

Case Files

Recovered documents and sealed correspondence from active and archived investigations.


Handle With Discretion

Ransom Notes

Five case files. Conditions and instructions vary.


Anomaly Records

Beulah, 1877 — Closed / Disputed

The Solid Muldoon

The fraud was exposed. The measurements were not.

Persons & Profiles


Complete Record

Colorado, 1879–1887

Doc Holliday in Colorado

Denver, Leadville, the extradition Governor Pitkin refused, and the final months in Glenwood Springs. He spent more of his adult life in Colorado than anywhere else — and the poker-gated archive file proves it.


Historical Profiles

1865–1912

Benjamin Guggenheim

Colorado industry, European high society, and the final Atlantic crossing.


Frontier Record

Abner Rourke

Frontiersman. Contractor. Something else entirely.


Frontier Record

Benjamin Hale

A recovered profile from the frontier record.


Frontier Record

Jeremiah Pike

A recovered profile from the frontier record.


Frontier Record

Reuben Hale

A recovered profile from the frontier record.


Frontier Record

Thomas Riggs

A recovered profile from the frontier record.


Photographic Pursuit Record — 1837–1929

Caleb Sloane

The First Tempest Photographer. He tracked weather over southern Colorado for decades before anyone had a name for it. His tornado photograph was rejected because it showed too much.