This might be a good time to head out and buy a new calendar. The price of the 2025’s is falling and that can only mean, it’s time to wrap up some of the stories LaVozColorado featured on Pueblo and southern Colorado over the past year.
As 2025 began in Pueblo, the ‘Home of Heroes,’ it once again showed its respect for veterans. Pueblo Transit began offering free rides for veterans. The only thing a vet needs for a free lift, said Ben Valdez, Director of Pueblo Transit, is a military discharge document (DD 214), a VA ID card or retired military ID.
Pueblo Community College and Pueblo Transit also announced in October a similar service for PCC students. A $50,000, three-year program paid for by the college now allows anyone with a valid PCC ID to ride free anytime.
It was last March when LaVozColorado reported that Pueblo will be home to one of three Leonard da Vinci museums in the world. Astonishingly, Pueblo will join Milan, Italy, Melbourne, Australia and Sao Paolo, Brazil with da Vinci Museums. The museum will be in the heart of the city in the old Professional Bull Riders headquarters. It is set to open in March 2026.
Pueblo, as late poet Carl Sandberg once said of his Chicago, also has big shoulders along with its big heart. The Pueblo Rescue Mission had been teetering toward a sad end. But thanks to a $464,000 contribution from the city, it will remain open. Councilman Dennis Flores praised the Rescue Mission vote. “We have an obligation to manage our homeless situation,” he said. The soon to be term-limited councilmember and Pueblo native called the decision nothing more than “simple morality.”
In June, LaVozColorado wrote about one of Pueblo’s unique communities. ‘The Lanes,’ an area of Pueblo County just south and east of center city, has long been home to one Pueblo’s most diverse communities. It is called the ‘Lanes’ because it is how the various roads are numerically identified.
Pueblo native, now Denver resident, Lawrence Gonzales and his family were one of the first Latino families to move in. Gonzales family patriarch and legendary Pueblo musician Ralph “Blackie” Gonzales first settled the family into a three-room home in ‘The Lanes.’ In a June interview, Gonzales said when the family moved into a new home—one with four bedrooms—it was like television’s “Jeffersons.” They were ‘moving on up.’
Early in the 20th Century, the ‘Lanes’ were settled by European immigrants—mostly Italian—including the DeLucas, Mauros and Concettas. The community is known for its many farms and food stands which feature the county’s bountiful produce.
It is one of Colorado’s best kept secrets. But Pueblo played a significant role in the winning of WWII. It trained crews that carried out bombing missions over Europe. Today, a number of artifacts from the earliest days of the war are on display at the airport’s Weisbrod Air Museum. Visitors, said museum president Jeanne Sandidge, can wander through exhibits featuring everything from WWII’s workhorse B-29 to a modern-day fighter, the F-15.
In August, Pueblo opened a new water park right on the Arkansas River. As LaVozColorado wrote, “The city, with a big helping hand from the Pueblo Water Works, finally tamed an often-dangerous part of the river, turning it into what may now be southern Colorado’s most inviting surfing, boogie boarding and watersports venue.”
The face of public education took on a whole new look in Pueblo in 2025. Pueblo District 60, Pueblo Community College and Colorado State University-Pueblo all took on new leadership.
Dr. Barbara Kimzey left her post in the Virginia school system to lead Pueblo’s District 60 schools for the 2024-25 school year. Dr. Chato Hazelbaker assumed the reins of Pueblo Community College and Dr. Rhonda Epper was named the 17th president of southern Colorado’s higher education keystone.
Dr. Epper had served as president of Trinidad State College since 2019. She will officially assume her new role on March 23, 2026. A University of Texas graduate, Epper earned her MBA and Ph.D. at the University of Denver. Prior to her TSC job, Epper served as provost and vice president for academic affairs at the Community College of Denver.
As 2025 came to an end, one of Pueblo spiritual cornerstones celebrated its 100-year anniversary. Saint Leander Church, a beacon for the city’s eastside Catholics, marked its centennial as summer wound down. The church, which sits at the corner of 6th and Monument, is the spiritual connective tissue for generations of eastside Catholic families who have counted on the church through good times and bad. For a century, it has held countless baptisms, First Communions, weddings and funerals.
Gerald Cordova, Chairman of the Saint Leander Finance Council and ‘trail boss’ for its 100-year anniversary, said the church—the one he grew up in—-is and always will be ‘the home you can always return to.’
