History

Saint John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church of Pueblo, Colorado carries a distinction that sets it apart from every other Greek Orthodox parish in the American West: it has never moved from its original location, making it the oldest Greek Orthodox community still celebrating the Divine Liturgy in the same location in the entire American West.

The story begins with the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, whose massive smelter complex, the largest west of the Mississippi, drew an estimated 3,000 to 3,500 Greek men to Pueblo to work its furnaces and forges, and with the major railroad lines and mines that employed Greek workers seasonally across the region. Between 1900 and 1920, an estimated 15,000 Greeks were present in Colorado, and Pueblo stood at the center of that western Greek world. In 1903, under the direction of Dr. Christos Argyriou, a Greek committee formed to address the spiritual needs of this community. In 1905 the Greek Orthodox Community Association of Pueblo, Colorado was registered with the state, with three explicit purposes: to build a church, to secure and maintain cemetery facilities, and to help Greeks establish themselves in the region.

Such was the drive of these early immigrants that by February 10, 1907, the Saint John the Baptist church structure at 1010 Spruce Street was fully completed, built largely through volunteer labor, a Classical Revival building with a full-width pedimented portico supported by large Ionic columns that stands among Pueblo's earliest and best-preserved examples of that architectural style. The Reverend Father Kalistos Papageorgopoulos served as the parish's first priest, and from its earliest days the parish served a geographic area stretching from just south of Denver to Raton, New Mexico, and from Garden City, Kansas to eastern Utah. That broad, multi-community character has continued to define the parish to the present day, with families regularly attending from Alamosa, Aspen, Canon City, Colorado Springs, Grand Junction, La Junta, Lamar, Leadville, Trinidad, Walsenburg, and communities in eastern Utah and southern Colorado.

On February 28, 2002, Saint John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in recognition of the architectural and historical significance of its 1907 building. In subsequent years a generous donation from Ted Argys of Salida, Colorado, in memory of his wife Helen, launched a renovation fund that has covered the Royal Altar, the Proskomidi, and the Honorteron in white marble, with the apse to follow, and centennial plaques inscribed with the names of deceased and living parishioners placed on the church walls.

Saint John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church at 1010 Spruce Street in Pueblo serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of southern Colorado as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Denver within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, its unchanged address after more than a century a quiet but powerful testament to the faith of the immigrant steelworkers who built it.