UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
COLORADO
Pueblo County

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Pueblo is situated at an elevation of 4,692 ft (1,430 m) at the confluence of the Arkansas River and Fountain Creek 112 miles (180 km) south of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver, and 43 miles south of Colorado Springs. It is the county seat and the most populous city of Pueblo County, Colorado. The population was 106,595 as of the 2010 census, making it the 259th most populous city in the United States.

James Beckwourth and other trappers claimed to have helped construct the plaza that became known as El Pueblo or Fort Pueblo around 1842. About a dozen families lived there, trading with Native American tribes. The fort was raided in December 1854 by a war party of Utes and Jicarilla Apaches. The trading post was abandoned after the raid, but it became important again between 1858 and 1859 during the Colorado Gold Rush of 1859. The current city of Pueblo represents the consolidation of four towns: Pueblo (incorporated 1870), South Pueblo (incorporated 1873), Central Pueblo (incorporated 1882), and Bessemer (incorporated 1886). Pueblo, South Pueblo, and Central Pueblo legally consolidated as the City of Pueblo between March 9 and April 6, 1886. Bessemer joined Pueblo in 1894. The consolidated city was once a major economic and social center of Colorado, and was home to important early Colorado families. Until a series of major floods culminated in the Great Flood of 1921, Pueblo was considered the 'Saddle-Making capital of the World'. Roughly one-third of Pueblo's downtown businesses were lost in this flood, along with a substantial number of buildings. Pueblo has long struggled to come to grips with this loss, and has only recently begun a resurgence in growth.

The Carnegie Library in Pueblo, CO, was one of 35 libraries in Colorado built from 27 grants awarded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and is one of 1,689 in the United States and one of a total of 2,509 built between 1883 and 1929 from money donated by Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. The building also was named McClelland Public Library, for Andrew McClelland, a prominent wholesale merchant of Pueblo, who had also contributed to the library which had been founded in 1891. The Carnegie library in Pueblo was completed in 1904 at a cost of $70,000 (grant donated in 1902) and was located at 100 E. Abriendo Ave / 799 S. Union Ave. The building was demolished around 1965 to make way for a new library building, again named the McClelland Public Library. The site is today occupied by the Pueblo City-County Library Rawlings (Main Branch) (Robert Hoag Rawlings Public Library, built in 2000–2003 by acclaimed architect Antoine Predock).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pueblo,_Colorado; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Carnegie_libraries_in_Colorado; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library; http://www.pueblolibrary.org/about/rawlings; http://librarytechnology.org/libraries/library.pl?id=9650; http://www.predock.com/RobertHoag/RobertHoag.html; http://www.azahner.com/portfolio/hoag-rawlings-public-library; http://librarypostcards.blogspot.co.at/2011_04_01_archive.html http://www.kmitch.com/Pueblo/century1.html; http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-133209735.html; http://www.historypin.com/attach/uid44771/map/#!/geo:38.259806,-104.621183/zoom:15/dialog:142999/tab:details/; http://vrc.colorado.edu/index.php?mode=ImageDetail&v0=City&IMAGEID=123002&OBJECTID=964001&FILENAME=189216.jpg]