Thousands line up to see, hear the president in 1962

Author’s note: Augusts can be scorching in Pueblo, and Aug. 17, 1962, was such a day. My mom, my 4-year-old brother, my grandparents and I sat for more than three hours on a curbing on East Fourth Street. We wanted front-row seats and got them.

Finally, led by police cars, a black convertible passed by slowly, heading west on East Fourth. All I remember was a man in a suit with a huge head of dark red hair, shining in the sun as if a spotlight was trained on him.

And then he was gone, and we returned home.

For my mom and my grandparents, old enough to appreciate the moment, it was one of the most exciting experience of their lives. For me, it was just a moment that wouldn’t mean anything until the following year, but certainly much more years later.

In all, more than 100,000 people lined U.S. 50, then East and West Fourth Street from Pueblo Memorial Airport to the Pueblo School District No. 60 Public School Stadium — Doesn’t Dutch Clark Stadium sound so much better? — to catch even a glimpse, maybe a wave.

The man perched atop a seat in the convertible, at times standing, was President John F. Kennedy.

Many presidents have visited Pueblo, especially in more recent decades thanks to the ease of air travel. But it was not common nearly 60 years ago.

Kennedy was immensely popular in Pueblo. He was a Democrat. He was a Roman Catholic. Many Catholics and non-Catholics in Pueblo had pictures of Kennedy on the walls of their homes. He was handsome, with charisma that could be viewed from outer space, although his challenge for the U.S. to land a man on the moon wouldn’t be realized for another six years.

And, of course, he would not be alive to see that happen, the victim of assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.

Kennedy visited Pueblo to celebrate the Fryingpan-Arkansas (water) Project, the massive and controversial project that upon completion would use a complicated system of transferring water from the Western Slope to Pueblo and eventually Colorado Springs, the latter delivery via the Southern Delivery System pipeline that runs north from Lake Pueblo.

Lake Pueblo/Pueblo dam was another major part of that project. And the project continues today as more funding becomes available for the Arkansas Valley Conduit. That's a planned pipeline that will deliver clean water directly to the Lower Arkansas Valley, bypassing the Arkansas River after the polluted Fountain Creek drains into the Arkansas River on Pueblo’s Lower East Side.

For Kennedy’s visit, Pueblo closed schools and offices.

At the stadium, 18,000 people attended his speech about the project, which he had just signed into law.

"I don’t think there is any more valuable lesson for a president or member of the House and Senate than to fly as we have flown today over some of the bleakest land in the United States and then to come to a river and see what grows next to it, and come to this city and come to this town and come to this platform and know how vitally important water is," Kennedy said as he began his speech.

Addressing the sense that the project was being done to the detriment of the Western Slope and downstream water users such as Las Vegas and Los Angeles, Kennedy said:

"What I preach is the interdependence of the United States," he said. "We are not 50 countries. We are one country of 50 states and one people, and I believe that those programs which make life better for some of our people will make life better for all of our people."

Kennedy left the stadium to the roar of the crowd.

Soon, the Fryingpan Arkansas project became reality, with a complicated network of tunnels, pipes and storage sites, with Western Slope water eventually ending up in Lake Pueblo and augmenting the Arkansas River's natural flow.

Thanks to that project, Pueblo and the Lower Arkansas Valley are guaranteed water every year. The ability to store and save water has meant that farms and ranches from Pueblo to Kansas know they will have water. No longer did they have to rely on the whims of weather to fill their ditches and fields.

Kennedy's visit to Pueblo was the shining moment in the project’s history, a day that Puebloans caught a glimpse of one of those dynamic presidents in U.S. history.

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