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Despite cooler temperatures and longer nights, Pueblo residents can sleep an extra hour as Daylight Saving Time ends on Sunday, November 3.
This morning, the clocks will go back an hour at 2 a.m. as Pueblo switches to Mountain Standard Time. The clocks will remain the same until 3 a.m. on March 10, 2025, when Pueblo residents will lose an hour of sleep and switch to Daylight Saving Time.
Cell phones, computers and other internet-connected devices will automatically go back one hour early on the morning of November 3. However, older devices, including wall clocks, wristwatches and stove clocks, will need to be manually adjusted.
Why do we have daylight saving time?
Whatever you’ve heard, Benjamin Franklin is not the reason we need to change our clocks twice a year. In fact, according to the Franklin Institute, the connection between the Founding Father and daylight saving time is based on a satirical essay Franklin wrote to the people of Paris.
In his essay “An Economic Project,” Franklin tells Parisians that they can save money by foregoing candles in bed and rising with the sun. He jokingly suggests that taxes should be imposed on shuttered windows, that guards should regulate the number of candles that can be purchased per family per week, and that guards should prevent carriages from driving after sunset.
“Every morning, as soon as the sun rises, the bells should ring in every church. And if that is not enough, then cannon should be fired in every street, as an effectual rouse of idlers, and open their eyes to what really interests them,” Franklin wrote in “An Economic Project.”
George Hudson, a New Zealand entomologist, proposed changing the time during the autumn and spring equinoxes in 1895, more than a century after Franklin’s death, according to Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Volume 28, 1895.
Daylight saving time as we know it today was not introduced in the United States until March 31, 1918. According to the Library of Congress, it was introduced during World War I to save electricity.
While it’s nice to get an extra hour of sleep in November, how many are happy to lose an hour in March? The Chieftain spoke with Dr. Craig Shapiro, a local board-certified sleep medicine physician at Pueblo Pulmonary Associates, in 2023, about the negative health effects of losing that hour of sleep, including mood swings and heart problems.
More about summer time: Pueblo will fall “backwards” on Sunday like most U.S. cities as daylight saving time ends
Why does Colorado still change the clocks every two years?
Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed a law in 2022 that allows the state to forgo clock changes and instead observe daylight saving time year-round. The law requires four other states in the Mountain Time Zone to enact similar laws. Montana, Wyoming and Utah have passed similar laws, according to The Coloradoan.
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Pueblo Chieftain reporter James Bartolo can be reached at [email protected]. Support local news, subscribe to The Pueblo Chieftain at subscribe.chieftain.com
