The church was originally called Nuestra Señora de los Siete Dolores, Plaza de Los Leones and is now St. Mary's, Walsenburg; this register of burials covers 1876 to 1895.

Long before English speakers set eyes upon it, the volcanic plug on the south bank of the Huerfano River was tagged with a moniker that means the orphan. Spanish conquistadors saw it as a rock pile that God dumped in the middle of nowhere, an odd little cone far removed from the regular foothills edging the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range. In the 18th century, this outcropping and the river that bears the same name were famous landmarks for Native...