Donated by Felix Nieto.
This collection includes several digitized copies of photographs from the Dog Patch community near Pueblo, Colorado that were gathered through the Museum of Memory Dog Patch project. The Dog Patch community is primarily Mexican-American, Hispanic, and Chicano. Dog patch was ranch land before the community started building homes. St. Anne’s Church was moved from another location and became the cornerstone of the community. The community has an elementary school, Eastwood Height, which later changed to Baca Elementary. The community self-advocated for themselves throughout the years for sidewalks, paved roads, street lights, traffic lights and proper water lines.
The Dog Patch Memory project was developed after the successful completion of the Salt Creek Memory Project at El Pueblo History Museum. Dawn DiPrince, the Director of El Pueblo History Museum at the time, sought out another community within Pueblo for another memory project. Dog Patch, otherwise known as Eastwood Heights, was chosen because it was a community within Pueblo that was stereotyped as being poverty stricken, an undesirable place to live, and a place where only “Mexicans” lived. A committee of Dog Patch community members was assembled to help complete and guide the project. The memory project’s goals were to gather the collective memory of the community through several memory workshops, as well as through grassroots collecting of oral histories and photos. Individual oral histories collected by community members were completed along with a photo scanning day. From 2021 through 2023, oral histories and digital copies of photographs from project scanning days were added to History Colorado’s permanent collections.