At the foot of the mountains, 38 miles east of Cañon City and 150 miles west of the Kansas border, the heavily industrialized city of Pueblo (pop. 102,121) spreads to both sides of the Arkansas River. Colorado’s third-largest city, Pueblo was founded by legendary black fur-trapper Jim Beckwourth in 1842, but the town really grew in the 1870s following the arrival of the railroad and the discovery nearby of vast amounts of coal. Steel mills, including some of the largest west of the Mississippi, still stand around the fringes of the pleasant, tree-lined downtown area, but Pueblo is increasingly more bucolic than brawny, and the historic areas are slowly filling up with artsy cafés, bookshops, and antique stores, especially along Union Avenue on the south side.
