Christopher Columbus Monument

This bronze bust of Christopher Columbus has a distinction few people know. Unveiled in Pueblo on the twelfth of October, nineteen oh five, it is said to have been the first monument west of the Mississippi River raised to honor the explorer. It was conceived back in eighteen ninety-two by two local Italian immigrants, Hector Chiariglione and Columbo Delliquadri, and paid for by donations from Italian American communities across the country.

An Italian sculptor made the bust. The sandstone pedestal carries carved reliefs of the two hemispheres and two clasped hands, meant to symbolize friendship between Italy and the United States. For more than a century it has stood at the heart of Pueblo's heavily Italian neighborhood, a fiercely defended emblem of immigrant heritage and, in recent years, the center of intense public debate.