PUEBLO – There’s a paper trail for the company that helped build and develop Pueblo, Southern Colorado and the West — and it’s massive.

In 2003, the Bessemer Historical Society — Now the Steelworks Center of the West — in Pueblo received a donation from Colorado Fuel & Iron that included more than 100,000 photographs, 150 films, an entire room of maps — 30,000 of them — and hundreds of books including financial documents and meeting minutes.

The archives, housed in the old CF&I administration building, is one of the biggest public archives in the country. The documents, photos and news clippings tell the stories of several individuals, and collectively, they tell the story of Southern Colorado — as for many years the steel mill was ingrained in everyday life. CF&I built schools, opened a hospital, published a newspaper and ran a company store.

The mill wasn’t just a job. It was literally a part of life for Puebloans and people living near and working in more than 60 Southern Colorado mines that supplied the mill. Every aspect of the company is documented.

Research is by appointment only at the center. Interim director Chris Scheck said many people come to research their family.

Beyond the office, where people can sprawl out documents, most rooms at the archives look like this:

The Map Room:

Some documents are more popular than others. But even the mundane tell stories of the company. Museum curator Victoria Miller said the thickness of the financial ledgers most often indicate the fiscal health of the mill…

And as the years progressed, so did the documents. Here, Schrek is looking at a hand-written document. Later, of course, documents were typed up instead.

And fatalgrams were hand-drawn. When an accident resulted in death, the mill would file a report. To do so, they recreated the scene with real people and then sketched the scene.

The mill’s administration building even had a typewriter repair shop. It’s not open for public viewing. But walking into the shop is like walking into history.

“It’s as they (the repairmen) just got up and left one day,” Shreck said.

Tools are still in desks, and typewriters still awaiting repair. Ribbons hang in the back, and news clippings still hang around the office.