From the Baca House looking south is located one of the town’s three buildings listed in the National Registry of Historic Sites, the U.S. Post Office. Built in 1910 in pure new-classic style, the building features Ionic columns topped by a Greek pediment. It is built on the site of a gargoyle of a building, a three-story pile of stone with small windows and many turrets and towers. Originally a private home, it was for several years The Trinidad Club, an exclusive, quiet, and formal men’s club back when the little city offered many amenities normally found only in metropolitan areas.
Where there is now the post office parking lot was a handsome, mansard-roofed three-story home. Those two houses, plus the Chappell home on the corner (now a funeral home), and the two large homes in the museum complex, gave this block the moniker of Millionaire’s Row in the late 1800s. Probably none of the families was of true millionaire status, an enormous fortune in those days, but there is no doubt they were all quite wealthy and enjoyed a gracious life here.
And it was right smack dab in the middle of this bastion of reactionary wealth that another dramatic episode took place during the 1913-14 miners’ strike. The nationally famous (or infamous) Mother Jones was in town. A union organizer, a fiery public speaker, and a great morale-booster for the union, the little white-haired spitfire had been in and out of Trinidad and the surrounding coal camps several times since the strike began, inspiring the miners and becoming loved by their women. In January 1914, she arrived again, defying an order from General John Chase, commander of the Colorado Militia that was trying to maintain order. Warned she was coming, General Chase met her at the railroad station and promptly incarcerated her “for her own protection” in a guarded room at Mt. San Rafael Hospital, some 12 blocks east of here. The miners were infuriated.
From the far-flung coal camps and the tent colonies where the strikers huddled, they came to town on a cold January 22nd, 1914. More than a thousand of them gathered at Castle Hall (today’s Eagle Hall about a block west of the Commercial Street bridge). The general had warned the miners not to approach the hospital or there would be violence, so it was decided only the women and children would march in protest. About 400 of them straggled in ragged lines east to Commercial, across the river and up to Main, intimidated and confused at first, but becoming increasingly bold. Shouting their hatred up at the second floor of the Columbian, they turned east on Main, headed for the hospital.
In the intersection of Main and Walnut at the end of this block, the cavalry waited in a solid phalanx. General Chase rode back and forth on his nervous horse. The women stopped and milled about, shouting, surging forward, pushed by those behind. The general’s horse slipped (or jumped from a jabbing umbrella) and fell. The general lost his seat, his dignity, and his temper in one fell swoop. Whether or not he cried “Charge!” was never determined in later hearings, but charge the cavalry did, sabers drawn and bayonets bared. The women fell back, throwing rocks, curses, and screams at the mounted men. In the melee, arms were slashed, feet crushed under hooves, and one ear was severed. The women finally scattered and Mother Jones remained in the hospital until union lawyers gained her release.
