Bojon Town: How a Parish Bought a Hill Where a Smelter Had Stood
After the 1921 flood damaged St. Mary’s in the Grove, the parish bought 11 acres uphill for $25,000, according to the Pueblo Star-Journal. Sources differ on several dates.
According to a 2023 Pueblo Star-Journal article, St. Mary Help of Christians parish bought “an 11-acre stretch of land up the hill” for $25,000 after the 1921 flood badly damaged its first church. The land covered four city blocks. The hill became the neighborhood known as Bojon Town or Eiler Heights.
Who settled it
The Star-Journal says Slovenian, Croatian and Serbian steelworkers settled the area “from the late 1800s through the midcentury.” It attributes the largest wave of immigrants, between 1905 and 1915, to a source it identifies as Falsetto. It says the area is “sometimes referred to as Eiler Heights or Old Bojon Town.”
Historic Pueblo says “Bojon” is a term used frequently for immigrants from Slovenia. It says Eilers Avenue is named for the Eiler Smelter, which stood on land the church bought.
The parish and its buildings
The Star-Journal says Rev. Cyril Zupan bought land on Clark Street in the Grove in 1895 for the first church and school. Historic Pueblo dates the uphill purchase to 1921 and also gives $25,000. The Star-Journal does not date it beyond saying it came after the flood.
The sources disagree on the church. The Star-Journal says the new church opened in the early 1950s. Historic Pueblo says it was built in 1953.
They also disagree on St. Mary’s School. Historic Pueblo says it was built in 1923. The City of Pueblo’s inventory of cultural resources says 1924. The City inventory adds that the school used salvaged brick from the Eilers smelter, which it says the Catholic diocese bought and demolished in 1923.
Historic Pueblo says 36 lots went up for sale in 1940, after new sewer and water lines were completed. It says that made 18 home sites.
Status today
Historic Pueblo says Eiler Heights “is not protected by designation.” It says St. Mary’s School is separately designated a landmark.
The smelter’s legacy is also an environmental one. A county History and Art Walk brochure says lead and arsenic levels from the smelter triggered an EPA cleanup across the historic neighborhoods. The 2023 Star-Journal article said a soil cleanup was “expected to be complete by 2027,” citing EPA’s website.
That date could not be confirmed from the EPA pages we opened. As of October 17, EPA’s Colorado Smelter site page says high lead and arsenic levels were found in yards and homes in the study area. A September 1, 2026, EPA release proposes lowering the residential soil lead cleanup level to 240 ppm from 350 ppm, with comments accepted through October 1. It says previously sampled properties that missed the old threshold would be reevaluated. The release does not name neighborhoods or give a finish date. We found no EPA statement that the work is complete.
What we don’t know
- The exact date the parish bought the hill. Historic Pueblo says 1921; the Star-Journal does not say.
- Whether the school opened in 1923 or 1924, and whether the church dates to 1953 or the early 1950s.
- Which individual properties in Bojon Town have been sampled or cleaned. EPA’s property status dashboard, which we did not read, is the place to check.