Restoration • Education • Museum • Events
A preservation initiative of the Golden Landmarks Association
"Pullman
House - A Survivor Of Yesteryear"
1940 painting
by Herndon Davis
Image courtesy
Denver Public Library, Western History Department
This project is a continuing effort to rebuild and restore the historic log house of George M. Pullman, the famed sleeper railcar maker who lived in Colorado during the 1860s. The Pullman House is among the oldest remaining buildings of Colorado, built in the fall of 1859 near Golden as a way station at the crossroads leading to the most famous gold fields in the region. In 1860 it was purchased by Pullman and associates who assembled its land together with neighboring parcels into the Cold Spring Ranch, among the best-known way station ranches in Colorado Territory. Pullman used this ranch and other businesses to raise the money he needed to realize his dream of creating the famed Pullman Palace Car Company.
For 106 years this building stood, passing through the hands
of George Pullman, a prominent hotelkeeper, and two Jefferson County sheriffs.
It was enlarged to 5 times its original size, and became many different colorful
things. It served as a way station for stagecoaches, team-drawn wagons,
trains, and automobiles. Where pioneers once paid in gold dust became a place
to buy television sets. The march of modernization spelled doom for the frontier
structure in 1965, and three newspapers including the Rocky
Mountain News and Denver
Post lamented its destruction. However, the logs of the original 1859 structure
survived, having been numbered, dismantled and spirited up to the mountains
of Central City, where they lay in state for 32 years.
In 1997 the Pullman logs were returned to their home, in amazingly good condition. They were a gift of the Gilpin County Historical Society to the Golden Landmarks Association, and plans are now being put into action for this building's long-delayed return to its original home of Pleasant View. Efforts are underway to resurrect this famous lost landmark as a place to tell the story of the history George Pullman himself was very fond of.
More Pullman History
The historic Pullman Village, which was the company town George Pullman built outside of Chicago starting in 1880. Now a designated national historic landmark district. Quite a far leap from a frontier log ranch house.
The non-profit foundation who
have worked since 1960 to save, preserve and restore the many historic places
in Pullman Village.
Website design and content by Richard J. Gardner