The Big S on Tenderfoot Mountain

Rising right above downtown Salida is a rounded hill that locals call S Mountain, though its proper name is Tenderfoot Mountain. On its flank sits a giant white letter S, big enough to see from miles away and even from a passing airplane. The letter is said to have been built in the early nineteen thirties by Salida High School students, and for years students were expected to climb up and whitewash it fresh.

It began as a wooden frame packed with rocks, a serious piece of civic labor on a steep slope, and it was later set in concrete so it would last. Circling up the mountain to reach the S is a narrow, winding road called Spiral Drive, built long ago by the community working together. Today the mountain is laced with hiking and mountain biking trails, and the view from the top takes in the whole town, the river, and the snowcapped peaks beyond.

The town below is young. The Denver and Rio Grande Railroad opened a narrow gauge station here in eighteen eighty, first called South Arkansas, and the name changed in eighteen eighty-one. Salida is Spanish for exit, because the Arkansas River leaves its valley here and heads into Bighorn Sheep Canyon.

The town was incorporated on March twenty-third, eighteen ninety-one, and sits at about seven thousand eighty-four feet. Its downtown historic district joined the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen eighty-four.