Cuchara and LaVeta in pretty valley
Traveling west from Trinidad on Highway 12, you will find beautiful scernery along a circular loop known as the "Highway of Legends." Visit Cuchara and LaVeta.
Aztec legend maintains that the valley where the community of La Veta lies was once a paradise on earth. No man suffered pain nor cold, nor was any man unhappy in this valley, according to the tale.
When Colonel John M. Francisco first laid eyes on what is now deemed the Cuchara Valley, he said "This is paradise enough for me."
Francisco's impression of the picturesque meadows and towering rock formations was so favorable, in fact, that he decided to make the area his home.
Francisco's ranch flourished and weathered the turbulent, but exciting and financially profitable period that came with the railroad to the quaint community that became the town of La Veta - a Spanish name meaning "the vein," in reference to veins of yaso, a white mineral found north of town and used to white-wash adobe houses.
In the late 1860s and early 1870s, a group known as the Georgia Colony settled in the Cuchara and Huerfano valleys.
Their coming to Colorado, Cuchara in particular, was the culmination of a series of events that began with the California gold rush of 1849.
William Green Russell, a Georgian returning home with $20,000 worth of California gold dust, crossed Colorado and prospected in the Pike's Peak region.
Russell predicted that the area around Pike's Peak would yield more gold than any other place in the United States, possibly even the world.
In 1858, Russell was joined by a gentleman named Kate Patterson and 200 experienced miners from Georgia. This bunch blazed the first trails and roads into Russell Gulch, where they discovered some of the richest placer beds in the state.
The findings of these men brought Horace Greeley - from whom Greeley, CO, derives its name - from his office at the New York Tribune to Colorado's rough-and-tumble wilderness.
Upon arrival and observation of Russell Gulch and the fevered gold mining activity it entertained, Greeley predicted a great future for this land.
In 1861, the Georgian miners were compelled to return to their original homes to enlist in the Confederate Army. Passing through what is now Huerfano County, these men recognized the potential of the land in the corn that shot from the ground.
In 1862, the group was captured and held as rebels - and transported as prisoners of war to Ft. Union, NM.
While a prisoner at Ft. Union, Patterson became acquainted with Ceran St. Vrain, Richens L. "Uncle Dick" Wootton, Lucian B. Maxwell, Kit Carson, as well as Governors Hunt and Gilpin.
These men used their influence to have the Georgians released, and St. Vrain urged Patterson to relocate his group to the Huerfano Valley - west of where the Cuchara and Huerfano Rivers meet.
Patterson took St. Vrain's advice. It wasn't long before friends of the settlers from Georgia began asking their transplanted brethren about the quality of life in their new-found home on the western front.
In return, the settlers answered their friends in earnest, hailing the Edenesque valley as a wonderful place to live. As the result of these replies, roughly 500 residents of Georgia and the Carolinas, with their families, relocated to the Huerfano and Cuchara Valleys.
There is some debate as to how the Cuchara River and Cuchara Valley got their names. One story tells of passers-by that found a number of spoons along the river and named it "Rio de los Cucharas" - "River of the Spoons" when translated from Spanish to English.
It has also been speculated that the name came from the valley's resemblance to the bowl portion of a spoon.
La Veta and Cuchara have relied principally on tourism and agriculture as sources of revenue, with a brief period in the mid to late 1800s when La Veta was a destination point for the early railroad.