Trinidad, Colorado

How Trinidad is governed

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0 of 14 positions listed. Gray dashed boxes are placeholders waiting for a name.

• Mayor

  Executive

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  The city's chief elected official. Presides over the executive branch, proposes the budget and represents the city.

  • City Manager / Administrator

    Executive

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    The professional administrator who runs day-to-day operations (in some cities appointed by the council instead of the mayor).

    • Police Chief

      Administration & departments

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      Leads the police department.

    • Fire Chief

      Administration & departments

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      Leads the fire and emergency services department.

    • Public Works Director

      Administration & departments

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      Streets, water, sewer, and city buildings.

    • Finance Director

      Administration & departments

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      The budget, taxes, and city accounts.

    • Planning & Zoning Director

      Administration & departments

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      Land use, zoning, building permits.

    • Parks & Recreation Director

      Administration & departments

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      Parks, programs, and public facilities.

• City Council

  Legislative

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  The elected body that passes ordinances, sets the tax rate and approves the budget.

  • City Clerk

    Administration & departments

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    Keeps the official records, runs meeting agendas and, often, local elections.

  • City Attorney

    Administration & departments

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    The city's lawyer; advises officials and prosecutes ordinance violations.

  • Boards & Commissions

    Legislative

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    Citizen advisory bodies, such as planning, zoning appeals and library boards.

• Municipal Court

  Judicial

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  Hears traffic, ordinance and other minor cases.

  • Municipal Judge

    Judicial

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    Presides over the municipal court.

Website

trinidad.co.gov

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Population over time

From 9,096 in 2010 to 8,329 in 2020 (−8.4%).

History

Early

Trinidad was first explored by Spanish and Mexican traders, who liked its proximity to the Santa Fe Trail. It was founded in 1862 soon after coal was discovered in the region. This led to an influx of immigrants eager to capitalize on this natural resource. By the late 1860s, the town had about 1,200 residents. Trinidad was officially incorporated in 1876, just a few months before Colorado became a state. In 1878 the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway reached Trinidad, making it easier for goods to be shipped from distant locations. In the 1880s Trinidad became home to a number of well-known people, including Bat Masterson, who briefly served as the town's marshal in 1882. By 1900 Trinidad's population had grown to 7,500 and it had two English-language newspapers and one in Spanish. In 1885, Holy Trinity Catholic Church was constructed.

In the early 1900s, Trinidad became nationally known for having the first woman sports editor of a newspaper, Ina Eloise Young. Her expertise was in baseball, and in 1908 she was the only woman sportswriter to cover the World Series. During the same time, Trinidad was home to a popular semiprofessional baseball team that was briefly coached by Damon Runyon.

On August 7, 1902, the Bowen Town coal mine, six miles north of Trinidad, experienced a horrific gas explosion, killing 13 miners. It was one of the worst mining disasters so far in the state; conditions in the mine provided the impetus for several labor strikes. At one point in late 1903, an estimated 3,000 miners, members of the United Mine Workers of America, went on strike. In 1904 Trinidad experienced several disasters. In mid-January a fire destroyed two blocks of the town's business section, causing more than $75,000 in damages. In late September, the Trinidad area and the region along the Purgatoire River endured an unusually heavy rainstorm, leading to severe flooding; the flood destroyed the Santa Fe railroad station, wiped out every bridge in town, and caused several hundred thousand dollars' worth of property damage. As Trinidad continued to grow, a number of new construction projects began in the downtown area, including a new library, a new city hall, an opera house, and a new hotel.

1913–1914 strike

Trinidad became the a focal point of the 1913-1914 United Mine Workers of America strike against the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel & Iron company, which has come to be known as the Colorado Coalfield War. The Colorado and Southern Railway stop that connected Trinidad with Denver and Walsenburg made the town strategically important for both the strikers and Colorado National Guard. On April 20, 1914, just 18 miles north of town, the events of the Ludlow Massacre occurred.

Late 20th century onward

Trinidad was dubbed the "Sex Change Capital of the World", because a local doctor had an international reputation for performing sex reassignment surgery. In the 1960s, Stanley Biber, a veteran surgeon returning from Korea, decided to move to Trinidad because he had heard that the town needed a surgeon. In 1969, a local social worker asked him to perform the surgery for her, which he learned by consulting diagrams and a New York surgeon. Biber attained a reputation as a good surgeon at a time when very few doctors were performing sex-change operations. At his peak he averaged four sex-change operations a day, and the term "taking a trip to Trinidad" became a euphemism for some seeking the procedures he offered. In 1995, Claudine Griggs published Passage through Trinidad: Journal of a Surgical Sex Change about her experience with Biber. Biber was featured in an episode of South Park, in which elementary school teacher Mr. Garrison undergoes a sex-change operation. Biber's surgical practice was taken over in 2003 by Marci Bowers. Bowers has since moved the practice to Burlingame, California. The 2008 documentary Trinidad focuses on Bowers and two of her patients.

Drop City, a counterculture artists' community, was formed in 1965 on land about 4 mi (6.4 km) north of Trinidad. Founded by art students and filmmakers from the University of Kansas and University of Colorado at Boulder, Drop City became known as the first rural "hippie commune", and received attention from Life and Time magazines, as well as from reporters around the world. Drop City was abandoned by the early 1970s, but influenced subsequent alternative-living projects across the country.

In 2015, Trinidad started to experience a new boom due to the marijuana industry. The town raised $4.4 million in tax revenue from $44 million in annual marijuana sales, about 5.13% of the state's total sales. In 2018 High Times called Trinidad "Weed Town, USA", noting that its 23 licensed retail marijuana dispensaries serving less than 10,000 people amounts to one dispensary per 352 people. "In one downtown block alone along Commercial Street, there were five dispensaries in a single building in town which the owner referred to as the "World's First Pot Mini Mall", others call it the 'weed mall'.

Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Other cities in Colorado

• Denver 715,522
• Colorado Springs 478,961
• Aurora 386,261
• Fort Collins 169,810
• Thornton 141,867
• Arvada 124,402
• Westminster 116,317
• Pueblo 111,876

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