Painting with Salt Creek

Museum of Memory

Salt Creek Neighborhood Memory Project

The Salt Creek Neighborhood Memory Project brings together stories of life in the neighborhood during the 20th century. Led by Dawn DiPrince, the El Pueblo History Museum Director at the time and in partnership with long-time residents of the community, the goals of the Salt Creek Memory Project was to gather the collective memory of Salt Creek--a census-designated place in Pueblo County, Colorado--through the collection of individual oral histories of life in the neighborhood. 

Following a number of memory workshops, staff of El Pueblo History Museum along with a community-based committee collected oral histories of former and current residents of the community. Each oral history narrator had a professional portrait shoot taken by Kellie Cason-O'Connor at the location of their choice in the community. A local art instructor, Sophie Fernandez Healey, created a mural that brings together the stories from the Salt Creek community as a celebration of the neighborhood's history. As of 2020 the mural is on display at El Pueblo History Museum but the final goal is for it to find a permanent home in the community.

 

The Salt Creek community is primarily Mexican-American, Hispanic, and Chicano. The first people to live in Salt Creek made their properties based on the geography of the land (lower section). In the 1950s, the other half of Salt Creek was platted into square plots of land. The community is east of the Colorado Fuel and Iron (Evraz currently).

 

Explore more about this project in History Colorado's online collection.

Search for "Salt Creek Memory Project" or with Object ID: 2021.13.1.2

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History Colorado · Salt Creek Memory Project

Salt Creek Partners