October 6, 1875: Pueblo receives first presidential visit
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As President Ulysses S. Grant’s train arrived in Pueblo on October 6, 1875, Republicans and Democrats alike crowded the area to get a glimpse of the first Commander-in-Chief to visit their town.
“The President does not at present bear much resemblance to the pictures of him published,” according to the Pueblo Chieftain the following day. “He is a stout, ruddy, comfortable looking middle aged gentleman dressed in black and wears a plug hat, which is, we must say, a size or two large for him.”
Grant, the winning general in the U.S. Civil War, was 54 years old and in the final quarter of his two term presidency upon his arrival in Pueblo. He was elected in 1868, just three years after the war. Much of his campaign was spent calling for the reconstruction of the South and the expansion of rights for newly freed African Americans.
“When the train bearing the presidential party stopped at the depot and the president was introduced, there was for a few moments a dead silence instead of the usual cheers, the crowd no doubt being so much overcome with awe at beholding for the first time a chief magistrate of the nation,” according to the Chieftain.
E.S. Nettleton, then the president of the South Pueblo Flouring Mill, arranged for a chorus of flour mill, water works, and planing mill whistles to greet his beloved president’s train upon arriving at the depot for the second visit. Unfortunately, Nettleton’s grand welcoming ceremony did not go as planned.
“The president’s train rolled slowly up to the depot, the bosses of all the aforementioned whistles stood to their ropes awaiting the signal from the flour mill,” according to the Chieftain. “Nettleton pulled and pulled and pulled at this rope but his whistle was silent-not a sound would emit.”
Grant was joined by his wife and a sizable party of cabinet members. The party stopped by the Lindell Hotel on 5th Street and Sante Fe Avenue where they were greeted by Gov. John Long Routt, Mayor James Rice, and other residents eager to shake hands. Party members were reportedly impressed by the newly incorporated town.
“This is the first visit ever paid to Pueblo by any prominent government official, and our citizens feel all the more flattered from the fact that the president spent the previous night in Denver and was not persuaded that every man that lives south of the divide is a cut throat or a horse thief, and the whole country a dreary waste of alkali and sage brush.”