For high school football fans in southern Colorado, there is no better place for watching a game than at Pueblo’s Dutch Clark Stadium. Memories from old rivalry games, including Central-Centennial—the oldest high school rivalry west of the Mississippi River—or Pueblo East and cross-town rival Pueblo South can still be the topic of discussion decades later. It’s probably safe to say that nearly everyone of a certain age in Pueblo has a Dutch Clark memory.
Earl ‘Dutch’ Clark, who graduated from Pueblo Central High School and earned 16 letters while there, is one of the NFL’s first ever members of its Hall of Fame. The stadium, once known simply as District 60 Stadium, also has a statue along with a profile portrait of Clark in one of the facility’s buildings.
But like anything, old Dutch is and has been showing its age for quite a while. The stadium is a ‘boomer,’ dedicated in 1950. It’ll soon turn 75, but not a ‘cool, movie star 75.’ As an old cowboy might say, some parts of the place are looking like a pony that’s been ‘rode hard and put away wet.’
Its asphalt is cracked, and patchwork repairs make it look like a poorly designed jigsaw puzzle. Exterior lighting, what little there is, is more than ready for a little 21st century upgrade. Its drainage remains 50’s era efficient, that is, mostly inefficient. And while the games played there might be epic, it’s hard to overlook its fault lines.
But the city’s taken notice and is set to begin a $5.2 million upgrade that will transition the facility from baby boomer relic to Gen Alpha. (Gen Alpha succeeds Gen Z.) Funding for the two-phased stadium’s overdue facelift comes from a 2019 bond issue passed by Pueblo voters. The vote also approved the construction of five new schools in the city. The new schools, including new versions of Pueblo East and Centennial, open in the Fall.
Pueblo artist Jean Latka is all for the stadium improve- ments, but says it needs more than nuts-and-bolts upgrades. That’s why she and fellow artist, Jean Eskra, have raised thousands of dollars to plant nearly 60 trees and more than 250 shrubs in the stadium’s parking lot.
Trees Please continues to beautify and shade Pueblo “I would have to say,” said Latka in a recent telephone interview, “I’m motivated by beauty.” And trees, she and Eskra believe, are one of the simplest forms of beauty a city can have. Latka, a Chicago area native, has lived in Pueblo for more than fifty years. She came for a visit, a self-described “lost teenager” and fell in love with the city. Pueblo’s diversity, industrial patina and blue collar vibe, sold her. She married, raised a family and, along with her husband, created a thriving ceramics and pottery business, Latka Studios, whose work has found homes across the country, including monu- mental pieces in municipal squares in a number of cities. Outside of the pottery wheel, trees rank high.
She and Eskra, also her sister-in-law—they married brothers—have been planting trees around Pueblo for more than 30 years. Every single tree they’ve planted has been bought and paid for through donations, nearly $350,000 in donations. The trees the pair have planted have all been carefully considered. They’ve chosen strong, resilient shade trees including elm, Kentucky coffee, golden rain, oak and pear. It’s estimated that they’re responsible for more than 5,000 trees across the city.
Interestingly, the women began their crusade on a lark. “We were both complaining about trees,” she recalled. The city had been clearing them, she said. “But nobody’s replanting. That’s when we decided to begin Trees Please, the name given their three-decade crusade to cool Pueblo.
“We get the trees wholesale,” she said. “They average $150-$300 each.” Latka, who describes herself as ‘a tree-planting activist,’ says putting trees in the ground is common sense, especially in an era of climate change. “We need to cool our streets because they absorb our heat all day long and radiate all night long.” Summertime temperatures in Pueblo can heat asphalt to as high as 200 degrees. It’s also a heat that takes hours to cool. “That’s why we plant deciduous shade trees knowing eventually they’ll cool things off.”
While trees are a vital cog in the war on climate change, they would also be essential even absent climate change. Trees clean the air and soil, produce oxygen and decrease storm runoff. They are a first-line defense for the earth against carbon dioxide, a significant factor in global warming. A forest, experts say, is what is referred to as a carbon storage area that provides an extra layer of protection from greenhouse gases.
Trees have adorned the planet for millions of years and served an essential and noble purpose. The late President John Kennedy used to tell the story of a French nobleman who asked his gardener to plant a tree. When the gardener objected that it was a slow-growing tree that would not provide shade for a hundred years, the nobleman replied, “In that case, there is no time to lose! Plant it this afternoon!”
Latka and Eskra are either artists moonlighting as arborists or arborists who do art. What is certain is that their vocation and avocation will live on for generations and that they will have done their part.
