Just 13 miles north of New Mexico, Trinidad is becoming an arts and recreation hub

By Steve Graham

Trinidad might be Colorado’s next art and outdoor recreation mecca. “You better take a picture of Trinidad now because in three to five years, it’s going to be a whole different ballgame,” said Jared Chatterley, director for outdoor recreation for Trinidad.

The southern Colorado town has a burgeoning arts district, music and comedy festivals, a new bike race series and other draws for tourists and residents.

Comedian Steve Gillespie will headline at show on Friday, Oct. 22, at Main Street Live.

Chatterley is especially excited about a new series of gravel-grinding bike races and marathon-length trail runs.

The first Rad Dirt Fest hit Trinidad this month. It showcased the 1,500 miles of gravel roads that sprawl in every direction from the town, and was timed to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the Santa Fe Trail. Chatterley expects the races to draw 800 to 1,200 athletes to this town of roughly 9,000 residents.

Trinidad has weathered some dark history and many economic ups and downs. Most recently, the town had 26 marijuana dispensaries and plenty of purchases from across the New Mexico border, just 13 miles south of town. Some of that business is likely to drift back south, as recreational marijuana became legal in New Mexico this summer.

Regardless, boosters hope tourists will keep coming to Trinidad, walking the red brick streets and admiring the old buildings of a revitalized downtown.

“The pride of Trinidad is its architecture,” said Trinidad tourism manager Marty Hackett. “There have been booms and busts in the community, but buildings were never knocked down.”

The Bloom House Mansion, Holy Trinity Catholic Church, McCormick Building and several other notable downtown structures date to the 1880s. The town was established along the Santa Fe Trail in 1861, and became a coal hub for southern Colorado.

Several historic buildings are now part of the Corazón de Trinidad Creative District, which has grown from a state pilot project into a larger community of artists.

“It has enticed some creative individuals to move here and discover what we have here,” Hackett said.

The project is now expanding with the development of The Commons, a new mixed-use community space with affordable lofts and workspaces for artists.

“Now that we’re seeing a little boost in our economy, we’re seeing people restore those architectural buildings,” Hackett said.

The district also includes the A.R. Mitchell Museum of Western Art, celebrating Arthur Roy Mitchell, whose paintings graced the covers of more than 160 Western books and pulp magazine covers between 1920 and 1950.

Trinidad also is home to the Art Cartopia Museum, which grew out of the annual September ArtoCade, the nation’s second largest parade of drivable sculptures and art cars. Highlights include “Phoenix,” the dragon car with wings; “Boney Whipman,” the giant skeleton on a rocket-styled car; and the indescribably bedazzled “Earth, Wind and Fire.”

The downtown theater also is getting revived. The former Southern Colorado Repertory Theatre is now Main Street Live, which plans to offer more than its traditional community theatre productions.

Gloria Hall, president of the board of directors of Main Street Live, said the group has been reaching out to musicians, comedians, performance artists and others.

“We are really hoping to become known as a place for creatives to come,” she said. “We encourage all of that in our organization now.”

She moved to Trinidad 11 years ago, and has seen rapid growth in the arts scene in that time.

“Almost every week, we get an email from someone saying ‘I moved to town, and I have a background in theater,’” she said.

Main Street Live has plays and events scheduled every month through the end of 2021, including a melodrama adapted to Trinidad businesses and history. It was performed in July, then revived in October for the Santa Fe Trail Bicentennial.

The group is also hosting a playwriting contest for a scheduled November show, and crowdsourcing ideas for a December show.

Trinidad is also a draw for athletes and nature lovers.

“My goal is to make Trinidad the Disneyland of outdoor recreation,” Chatterley said. “It’s a place you can come and spend a week and do a different thing every day.”

He said the town is conducting a “visioning process” to establish more trout fishing and recreation along the Purgatoire River running through the town.

The town is also bordered by two state parks: Lake Trinidad and Fishers Peak. The latter is Colorado’s newest state park, and the second largest. But only 250 acres of the 19,000-acre park are open to the public. State parks officials are asking potential tourists to wait a couple of years for further development of the park.

East of town, the Comanche National Grassland is home of the Picketwire River Tracksite, with more than 1,300 dinosaur footprints that date back 150 million years.