Two History Alumnae Step Into New Roles at Pueblo Heritage Museum
As the nation counts down to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and Colorado marks 150 years of statehood, two CSU Pueblo history graduates now hold the titles that let them shape how Pueblo tells its own story.
Lexi Topping was promoted to assistant director at the Pueblo Heritage Museum. Kerowyn Kersten now serves as associate curator. Both studied history at CSU Pueblo. They sat in the same classrooms, joined Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society, together, and graduated within a year of each other. Then they landed at the same museum through two different doors.
Kersten got there first. She interned at the museum in 2021 and later built an exhibit on Pueblo during the Progressive Era for a class taught by Professor Judy E. Gaughan. The project put her name in front of museum staff before she ever applied for a job.
Topping’s path started at a bank. She was working there after graduation when the museum held a ghost hunt event, and a former classmate spotted her in the crowd. “We’re getting ready to hire in a week, so have your resume ready,” she told her. Topping applied and started as a museum aide, then worked her way up from there.
Now the two run much of the museum together. They plan First Friday art shows, heritage night lectures, and the exhibits that fill the galleries inside the former freight station across from Union Depot. Kersten researches and builds exhibits and manages the museum’s collections and archives, including donations from Pueblo families who find historical items while cleaning out a home. Topping oversees how the museum presents Pueblo’s history to the public and runs day to day operations alongside her.
Their next project ties directly into this year’s national milestones. The museum opens a Colorado women’s suffrage exhibit on July 10, timed to the state’s 150th anniversary and the run up to America’s 250th. The exhibit covers Colorado’s early adoption of women’s suffrage in 1893 and the role that history played in pushing the national movement forward.
Topping and Kersten say the goal behind nearly everything they do stays the same: prove Pueblo mattered, and still matters, on a national scale. The museum’s collection backs that up. Pueblo once produced saddles for companies including Frazier, Gallup, and McConnell, earning a reputation as a saddle making hub in North America. Archaeological finds in the collection date back to roughly 1020 BCE. The Pueblo Dodgers played as a farm team for the Brooklyn Dodgers before that franchise moved to Los Angeles, and Babe Ruth played exhibition games at Runyon Field three separate times, drawn back by friendships with local figures including sports columnist Damon Runyon.
“A lot of people think Pueblo is a vacuum, like nothing ever happened here,” Kersten said. “But when these events were happening in New York or Pittsburgh, the same things were happening in Pueblo at the same time.”
Topping grew up in Walsenburg and moved to Pueblo after developing an appreciation for the city on childhood visits. Kersten grew up in Pueblo and never left.
“I want people to know we’re here,” Kersten said. “We have so much to offer this community.”
