Abandoned Southern Colorado and the San Luis Valley

A photographic journey through the region's vanishing steel mills, coal towns, and forgotten farming communities.

Abandoned Southern Colorado and the San Luis Valley is a collection of photographs that takes readers on a tour of southern Colorado and the San Luis Valley. Author and photographer Jeff Eberle spent much of the last decade traveling the backroads and 4 x 4 trails of Colorado in an effort to capture a few final images of the state's rapidly vanishing past. Take one last look at important pieces of the puzzle that make up Colorado's history, including the forlorn and dormant steel mills of Pueblo, the coal towns of Las Animas and Huerfano counties, the forgotten Dust Bowl farming communities reaching to the Kansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico borders, and the unique Hispanic flavor of the legendary San Luis Valley. The author hopes to help raise awareness and public interest in the preservation and protection of Colorado's historic sites and structures. What one might see as merely an old, rusty eyesore, another sees as an aged beauty who stood silent witness to the hard work and struggle that gave birth to the Colorado we know and love today.