John "Arch" Archuleta

John “Archie” Archuleta “made that stuff happen because he was just so passionate, so hard working, so disciplined,” according to his son. “He created his success.”

John “Arch” Archuleta, the man who was instrumental in helping create a University of Colorado engineering program at Colorado Mesa University, has died. He was 82.

Born Salvador Juan Antonio Archuleta on April 1, 1938, in the small farming community of Trujillo south of Pagosa Springs, Archuleta was the eldest of three boys in a family of farmers, ranchers and sheepherders with deep roots in the state.

After learning how to work the land, Archuleta’s family eventually moved to Golden, where he graduated from high school in 1956 and later CU’s Boulder campus, where he earned his degree in structural engineering in 1962.

He immediately became one of three founding partners in the Boulder engineering firm then known as Johnson, Voiland and Archuleta, a company that exists today as JVA Consulting Engineers.

During that time, he married Charmaine Ames, another Golden High School grad, and had four children, who eventually gave him six grandchildren.

While that marriage would end in divorce in 1974, Archuleta would go on to remarry Bonnie Deutscher and have three more children, moving to East Orchard Mesa by the mid-90s where he started a vineyard and created the luxury subdivision called Bonnie Brook Vineyard Estates.

It was then that Archuleta started to get involved with CMU, then known as Mesa State College, to help create a CU engineering program here. The campus building where that program is run now bears his name.

His eldest son, who now is an attorney in Boulder, said his father was the kind of person who just couldn’t slow down.

“He was really an amazing guy with his level of energy,” David Archuleta said. “I remember one time when I was in law school, we went on a hike on Mount Princeton. I thought I was in fairly decent shape. I must have been 25 and he was like 50ish. We couldn’t catch him. He was gone.”

David Archuleta said his father was much like that with just about everything he did in life.

“He loved life. He had unbelievable energy. He did what he wanted when he wanted,” David Archuleta said. “He tried to help out as many people as he could. He was just not content to sit still.”

An avid golfer, Archuleta spent much of his last years living near his second family in an assisted living center in California, which David Archleta said was frustrating for him because a heart condition forced him to slow down.

“He was just so bummed because he really couldn’t do all the stuff that he wanted to do,” David Archuleta said. “When we talked to him about life and everything, he’d say, ‘Hey, when it’s my time to go don’t anybody feel sorry for me because I’ve had an unbelievably lucky life.’ He made that stuff happen because he was just so passionate, so hard working, so disciplined. He created his success.”