Journal 50: How the Great Depression Changed Cuchara

Did anything good really come out of the Great Depression? If so, how did those hard years leave a lasting mark on Cuchara and shape the beginnings of Pinehaven?

As the curator of the Cabin in the Pines Blog, I am always researching how history may have impacted Cuchara, the land the Pinehaven cabin community is built upon, or Pinehaven’s development. I recently stumbled across a dissertation written by Mathew Tate, entitled, Trials and Tribulations of an Orphan County: A History of Huerfano County During the Great Depression.(1) Matt’s work got me wondering how the great depression might have influenced the development of Pinehaven and its founders. 

Huerfano County is in the heart of southern Colorado’s Cuchara Valley, and the Great Depression left marks that are still visible today. New Deal highways that snake through the mountains, coal towns emptied by collapse, and a community forever reshaped by hardship all testify to that era. Nicknamed the “Orphan County,” Huerfano reinvented itself in the shadow of the Spanish Peaks, carrying forward five powerful legacies that were economic, social, and political, and continue to define its identity nearly a century later.

Highways of Hope Paved Cuchara’s Future

When Huerfano County’s coal economy crumbled in the Great Depression, hope rolled in not from the mines but from the bulldozers and crews of New Deal work programs. Roosevelt’s federal projects turned idle hands into road builders, laying down the very arteries that would carry the county toward its future. In the mid-1930s, Civil Works Administration (CWA) and Works Progress Administration (WPA) teams crisscrossed the region, blasting through mountains, bridging valleys, and stitching together isolated communities. 

Highway 10 became a vital east-west shortcut from Walsenburg to La Junta, opening doors to new markets, while the rugged mountain road to Cuchara was upgraded into what we now know as State Highway 12. Those Depression-era Road crews didn’t just open the mountains to traffic, they opened them to dreamers. Without Highway 12, John Vories, the Pierotti family, and later cabin owners would never have had access to the quiet valley that became Pinehaven. Every winding turn up the pass became part of the lifeline that carried families to the very doorstep of our cabin community. 

Today, that winding route is celebrated as the “Highway of Legends,” a National Scenic Byway that still follows the path carved by Depression-era workers who built more than roads, they built lifelines of survival and symbols of resilience.(2) If the Great Depression hadn’t carved a road into Cuchara, the village and Pinehaven might never have grown into the cabin resort community it is today.

Necessity Became the Engine of Change

The Great Depression didn’t just reshape Huerfano County’s landscape, it drained it of people. In 1930, the county was alive with nearly 17,000 residents, the peak of a coal boom that had drawn miners and immigrants for generations. But when the mines went silent, so did the county’s heartbeat.(3) Historian Matthew Tate notes that in the decades following the collapse, Huerfano’s population plunged by 65 percent.(4) Coal camps emptied almost overnight as families packed wagons and trucks, heading for work in Denver, Pueblo, or the shipyards of California. Schools shut their doors, post offices closed, and once-bustling company towns slipped into ghostly silence. The county was left with boarded windows, abandoned buildings, and the lingering echoes of a coal frontier that had once thrived.(5)

Yet in loss, the seeds of reinvention took root. Forced to imagine life beyond coal, communities like Walsenburg, La Veta, and Cuchara began charting new paths. La Veta, Cuchara, and Gardner slowly transformed into small hubs for tourism, arts, and seasonal cabins. With fewer people came space for a different kind of growth that was slower, more seasonal, and rooted not in industry, but in the lifestyle and mountain landscapes that continue to define Huerfano County today. Pinehaven emerged not despite the depopulation, but because of it. It turning absence into opportunity and layer claim to the very mountains that others had been forced to leave behind.

The New Working Class Became Empowered

For Huerfano County’s working class, the Great Depression became a crucible that reshaped both labor and politics. Long before 1929, the region was already scarred by fierce labor wars, most notoriously the 1913–14 Coalfield Strike and the Ludlow Massacre just south of the county line. Those clashes pitted a diverse immigrant workforce against powerful mine owners, with divisions often running deep along ethnic lines. But when the Depression hit, hardship forged unity. Old rivalries gave way to solidarity as survival demanded common cause. By the mid-1930s, Roosevelt’s New Deal had strengthened unions, and the United Mine Workers of America finally won recognition in Huerfano’s mines. It was a turning point that ushered in fairer wages, a louder voice for workers, and a new political alignment that turned the county Democratic for decades.(6) That legacy of the working class still beats at the heart of Huerfano’s culture today. It’s telling that the earliest visitors to Cuchara Camps and Pinehaven were not the wealthy elite, but working people seeking rest in the mountains

Today, Huerfano County’s working class contributes far more than labor. They carry forward a legacy of grit, solidarity, and self-reliance that continues to define the community’s character. That enduring spirit not only anchors the county’s identity but also fuels its ability to adapt and reinvent itself just as it did in the crucible of the Great Depression.

Tourism Became the New Economy

With coal mining reduced to a faint echo of its glory days, Huerfano County had little choice but to seek a new economic lifeline. In the Cuchara Valley, that lifeline became tourism and outdoor recreation, a transformation unexpectedly sparked by the Great Depression. Federal work crews carved roads into the Spanish Peaks, opened access to Bear and Blue Lakes, and pushed routes across Cuchara Pass, setting the stage for the valley’s reinvention as a mountain retreat. 

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), launched in 1933 under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, became the best-known of these programs, improving state and national parks, trails, and forests nationwide. The CCC put millions of young men to work building trails, planting trees, reforesting scarred hillsides, fighting erosion, and raising cabins, fire lookouts, stone walls, and other facilities, many still in use today.(7)

By 1937, Cuchara Camps had blossomed into a lively destination with more than 83 cabins, electric power, and summer dance festivals that drew crowds even in lean times. 

Pinehaven was born into this transformation. When John C. Vories purchased land and envisioned a “haven among the pines”, he was tapping into the same momentum that had turned Cuchara Camps into a retreat. Pinehaven cabins became part of the broader shift from coalfields to campgrounds, anchoring the community’s identity in tourism and recreation rather than industry.(8)

Renewed Identity and Cultural Grit

The Great Depression left Huerfano County with more than shuttered mines and empty towns, it left a cultural legacy. The nickname “Orphan County” summed up both the bitterness of abandonment by coal companies and the state, and the fierce pride of those who endured. In the face of hardship weekly dances, church gatherings, and festivals lifted spirits when paychecks could not. Out of this crucible emerged the Spanish Peaks Fiesta, a tradition that still thrives today, binding memory to identity. Even now, locals recall the Depression not as the death of prosperity, but as the moment their community’s character was forged.(9)

Glancing Back and Looking Forward

The Great Depression not only reshaped the Cuchara Valley and Pinehaven in profound ways, but it also created a new trajectory into the future. Out of those hard years came highways that opened the mountains, the emptying of coal camps through mass depopulation, a labor movement that reshaped politics, the birth of a tourism economy, and a spirit of resilience that still lingers in local memory. Though Huerfano County continues to wrestle with poverty and decline, its identity is inseparable from the survival, reinvention, and cultural pride forged in the 1930s.  Pinehaven itself is proof of what the Depression left behind, not ruin, but a rebirth that continues to echo in every cabin tucked beneath the Spanish Peaks.(10)

← Return to Table of Contents

Footnotes

Parenthetical numbers in the text (e.g., 5) correspond to the sequentially numbered citations listed below.

1. Matthew Tate. Trials and Tribulations of an Orphan County: A History of Huerfano County during The Great Depression. Master’s thesis, Adams State University, 2021.

2. Matthew Tate. Trials and Tribulations of an Orphan County: A History of Huerfano County during The Great Depression. Master’s thesis, Adams State University, 2021, Pages 69–72, 100–105.

3. Nancy Christofferson, “Huerfano County History: The 1920s and 1930s,” Huerfano County Historical Society.

4. Matthew Tate. Trials and Tribulations of an Orphan County: A History of Huerfano County during The Great Depression. Master’s thesis, Adams State University, 2021, Pages 69–72, 100–105.

5. Huerfano County Historical Society, “The 1940s and 1950s.”

6. Matthew Tate. Trials and Tribulations of an Orphan County: A History of Huerfano County during The Great Depression. Master’s thesis, Adams State University, 2021, Pages 69-72

7. National Park Service, “The Civilian Conservation Corps,” U.S. Department of the Interior, last updated April 24, 2023, https://www.nps.gov/subjects/civilianconservationcorps/index.htm.

8. Nancy Christofferson, “Huerfano County History: The 1920s and 1930s,” Huerfano County Historical Society.

9. Matthew Tate. Trials and Tribulations of an Orphan County: A History of Huerfano County during The Great Depression. Master’s thesis, Adams State University, 2021, Pages 32-33.

10. Author’s note: In preparing this article, the author used AI-assisted tools for research support, proofreading, fact-checking, and stylistic refinement. The narrative, analysis, and historical interpretations are the author’s own, and responsibility for accuracy rests solely with the author.  The blog’s research methodology statement is available at:

https://cabininthepinescuchara.blogspot.com/2019/03/methodology-sources-and-use-of-research.html