Dear Action Line: As a child in Durango during the 1960s, I recall what basically amounted to a shantytown, called Santa Rita, located where today’s Santa Rita Park sits. We drove through there to get to the town dump. During winter, children would rush out of their shelters, uninvited, to hang onto the bumper of my father’s car and skate along the icy dirt road. Whatever happened to the people and place of Santa Rita? I look back and ask why more was not done for this clearly impoverished community. – Durango Kid
Dear Kid: Well, one person’s shantytown is another person’s humble and cherished home. Those who grew up in Santa Rita were not the wealthy or powerful, but they had a rich culture and remembered their place with pride.
It’s a little difficult to pinpoint the history of Santa Rita. Documentation is lacking, an indication of a long-held focus on area history. It was first called Mexican Flats (at least by 1902), and later dubbed El Parral (meaning grapevine, or grape arbor). By mid-century it was renamed Santa Rita in memory of a young girl who died there, according to a June 2000 story in El Valle, a bilingual newspaper.
This was a separate community on the south side of Durango and southwest of the mainline railroad tracks, which curled toward the southeast as they left town.
Most residents were of Hispanic descent, but Italians and Scandinavians also lived there. Residents had gardens, some had fruit trees, and people fished in the Animas River on a nearby sandbar. A spring provided water. In later years, there was a grocery store, a medical clinic and, briefly, a community newspaper. In 1965 a “Neighborhood House” was established and run by young Volunteers in Service to America workers from around the country. VISTA was part of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.
In a May 2005 El Valle story, Freddy Romero described it as “a really close-knit community.” After weddings at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, he said, attendees would walk down East Fifth Avenue, which at that time continued across the tracks and down to Santa Rita. There, they’d cram into a house for the wedding dance.
More than 30 families lived in El Parral, according to a story titled “Durango’s Hispanic Barrios” that appeared in the La Plata County Historical Society’s 1998 annual publication. Several other working-class neighborhoods, or barrios, existed just outside the downtown area in the first half of the 20th century.
“These barrios were almost self-sufficient,” the story said. “They had to be as Hispanos were not well accepted in Anglo businesses, despite their long history in the area.”
Robert McDaniel, Durango native and former director of the Animas Museum, also remembers going through Santa Rita to get to the dump, located at the time in what’s now the Bodo Industrial Park area. He also pointed out that today’s river trail bridge across the Animas was once the road bridge toward the dump. That road continued to become La Posta Road, down which other Hispanic and Ute families lived.
For Santa Rita, the beginning of the end came in the 1960s and 1970s, as the Colorado highway department purchased the land, which had been held privately, and constructed a new route for U.S. Highway 550-160. Hard to imagine now, but few bridges existed then across the Animas south of town. The highway (now State Highway 3) stayed on the east side of the river as it left town.
Part of a 1966 series in the Fort Lewis Independent about Santa Rita – “Highway: Hope or Hell?” – provides a window into residents’ anguish. The highway department told them they had until spring 1968 to leave. The department promised to pay for their houses’ value; most did not own the land under them, and many were renters.
Milaquias Romero told the Independent he might move to California.
“I don’t like to move out of here. I put too much money into this house. I put in running water.”
Said Margarita Montoya, an 18-year resident by 1966: “I’ll miss Santa Rita. … The only strange thing is that moving I will not know anybody and here I am friends with everybody.”
Sentimental value only went so far.
“I think it’s a good thing to knock the place out,” resident Jane Trujillo said. “But the thing is, where are they going to put the people?”
A newly formed Santa Rita association, which had developed streetlights and a paved avenue, wrote to the governor’s office: “Our houses are to be taken over by the highway, and there is little room for us to buy or rent in Durango. We would appreciate your help in evaluating the housing situation in Durango and in Santa Rita.”
The 2005 El Valle story noted that many young men were sent to Vietnam, and didn’t return to Santa Rita. Some old buildings burned – some by arson, according to Duane Smith’s “Rocky Mountain Boom Town” and other sources – and some were torn down. The residents dispersed, and ultimately were forced out by the new road. Some left the area, but many integrated into a gradually more-welcoming Durango.
The new highway through Santa Rita was complete in 1979, with new bridges at Santa Rita and the “high bridge” farther south. Development of Bodo Industrial Park then began. In 1988, Gateway Park was established in the old Santa Rita, next to the sewage treatment plant. A movement led by Durango’s Hispanic community was successful in renaming the park Santa Rita in 1999.
There it is in a nutshell. Plenty of former Santa Ritans and their descendants remain in Durango. As for the final question about “why more was not done,” it’s probably good to keep asking that.
Email questions and suggestions to actionline@durangoherald.com or mail them to Action Line, The Durango Herald, 1275 Main Ave., Durango, CO 81301. VISTA, the national version of the Peace Corps, has been incorporated into today’s AmeriCorps VISTA.
Editor’s note: The photo captions in an earlier version of this column incorrectly appeared with the wrong photos. The error was made in editing.
