HAPPY NEW YEAR!
The Salida Museum is open Saturday and Sunday , 12-4pm.
Admission: Senior $3, Adult $5, Kids $1
Special Tours
The Salida Museum is available for visitation on other days by request. Please call Arlene Shovald at 719-539-3139 to request a tour. We will do our best to accommodate your request.
Greetings to our Museum Visitors
Harriet Alexander, the woman who had the foresight to start the Salida Museum back in 1954, would be proud and pleased to know we are still up and running in 2025 at 406 ½ U.S. Highway 50, behind the Chamber of Commerce. Harriet started the museum in a small room at the Salida Hot Springs Aquatic Center, right next door. By 1966 the museum had outgrown that space and efforts began to provide the space we are in now and once again, are outgrowing.
Our exhibits include pretty much everything about Salida history, beginning around 1880, when Salida was founded and became a major railroad center.
The museum is staffed by volunteers who are passionate about preserving the past. Summer hours are generally noon to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, and winter hours are noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
Realizing that sometimes folks may be in town for a short visit at other times a volunteer may be available on “off days” by calling 719- 539 -3139. We will do our best to accommodate folks who are interested in learning about Salida history.
A century-old souvenir poster attests to the efforts of one man to establish a free home for consumptives (tuberculosis patients) in Salida. Dr. T. D. Bancroft took an option on land near Salida but the towns people raised serious objections and the project eventually failed. Bancroft’s name was in all the newspapers as he solicited donations, traveling and lecturing throughout Colorado and as far west as Portland, Oregon for the 1905 world’s fair. He associated his work to cure the white plague of consumption with Lincoln’s cure of the black plague of slavery. The poster depicts drops of the martyred president’s blood from the night he was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre.
Welcome to the Salida Museum
The City of Salida, Colorado, Heart of the Rockies, is in a prime location for many reasons and this is reflected in its varied and colorful history. The Salida Museum has a lovely collection of beautifully curated, local historical artifacts to help you explore the history of our area. The museum collection was first displayed in 1954 and has continued to grow and improve since then.
Explorers, miners, and ranchers were among the first to settle in the area, aided by an early agreement with the Ute Indians. Gold and Silver discoveries in the region in the 1870s caused the population to boom. More wagon trails were laid in to connect the mines with the Salida area for resupply as well as with markets on the Front Range.
Soon thereafter came the big push by railroads to reach the rich mining areas around Salida and to cross the rugged Rocky Mountains. Following a protracted fight on many levels to build track through the precipitous Royal Gorge east of Salida, the Denver and Rio Grande railroad arrived in Salida and the Upper Arkansas River valley in 1880.
1880 was a very busy year for our town! The railroad launched Salida into a period of rapid growth and was instrumental in helping it become a real community. First, many of the residents of tiny Cleora moved two miles west to resettle where the D&RG set up their work center along the Arkansas River. This new community was briefly named South Arkansas. Then, a few months later, the town was incorporated with the name of Salida. At this point it was called “The liveliest town in Colorado” by the Gunnison Review-Press.
Salida means exit in Spanish. Depending on your perspective, this is an exit from the canyon and the gateway to the mountains, or an exit from the mountains and the gateway to the eastern plains. In a perfect complement to the Salida Museum, downtown Salida is on the National Register of Historic Places and is Colorado’s largest historic district.