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Alamosa County

Alamosa County, named for the Spanish word for “cottonwood grove,” is located in the high San Luis Valley of south central Colorado. At 7,544 feet, the valley is bordered by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains on the east and the San Juan Mountains to the…

Barlow and Sanderson Stagecoach

The Barlow and Sanderson stagecoach in Monte Vista is a mud wagon like those that operated in the 1870s and 1880s along Barlow and Sanderson lines in the San Luis Valley. The only regional example of its type, the stagecoach was acquired by the Monte…

Bison Reintroduction

Conservation efforts and reintroduction of the American bison (Bison bison) in Colorado began in Denver during the early twentieth century. By that time, the bison population had declined precipitously since the mid-nineteenth century because of…

Capilla de San Antonio de Padua (Lasauses)

Built in 1928–30, Capilla de San Antonio de Padua is a Catholic church in Lasauses in the San Luis Valley. Constructed in the Territorial Adobe style, the church incorporated one wall of an earlier church on the same site, which was built in 1880 but…

Capilla de San Isidro

Built in about 1894, Capilla de San Isidro is a Catholic church in Los Fuertes in the San Luis Valley. The church is dedicated to St. Isidore, the patron saint of farming, and continues to play an important role in the local community, with Mass…

Capilla de Viejo San Acacio

Founded in the 1850s or 1860s by Hispano settlers near the Culebra River, the Catholic Capilla de Viejo San Acacio in the San Luis Valley is the oldest non–Native American religious space in Colorado. Over the years the church has had many repairs and…

Colorado: An Overview

Colorado, “the Centennial State,” was the thirty-eighth state to enter the Union on August 1, 1876. Its diverse geography encompasses 104,094 square miles of the American West and includes swathes of the Great Plains, southern Rocky Mountains, and the…

Conejos County

Conejos County covers 1,287 square miles of the southern San Luis Valley and eastern San Juan Mountains in south central Colorado. It is bordered by Archuleta County to the west, Rio Grande and Alamosa Counties to the north, Costilla County to the east,…

Conejos Indian Agency

The Conejos Indian Agency was established in the San Luis Valley for the Ute Indians in 1860. It was an important place where annuity goods were distributed to the Utes and treaty negotiations took place. After the Treaty of 1868 established a…

Conejos Treaty

Signed in October 1863 at Conejos in the San Luis Valley, the Conejos Treaty was an agreement between the US government and the Tabeguache band of Nuche (Ute people). It granted the United States the rights to all land in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains east…

Costilla County

Costilla County lies in south-central Colorado within the San Luis Valley. It covers nearly 1,227 square miles and ranges in elevation from 8,400 to 10,300 feet. Costilla County borders Conejos County to the west, Alamosa County to the northwest,…

Cottonwood Trees

One of the most ecologically and culturally significant trees in Colorado, the plains cottonwood (Populus deltoides monilifera) thrives near rivers and riparian areas throughout the state. It is one of the only tree species to grow on Colorado’s Great…

First Baptist Church of Moffat

The First Baptist Church of Moffat is a two-story concrete-block building constructed in 1911 at the corner of Fourth and Lincoln Streets (401 Lincoln Avenue, Moffat, Colorado). In the 1920s, residents bought the church from the Baptist Association to…

Fort Garland

The US Army operated Fort Garland in the San Luis Valley for twenty-five years, from 1858 to 1883. The fort was built to protect early settlers from Native American raids in the years before treaties, reservations, and removal made that mission obsolete…

Iglesia de San Francisco de Assisi

Located in San Francisco in the southeastern San Luis Valley, Iglesia de San Francisco de Assisi is a Catholic church featuring Gothic and Mission Revival elements. Constructed in the 1950s using concrete blocks and casement windows, the building shows…

Iglesia de San Pedro y San Pablo

Located in San Pedro in the San Luis Valley, Iglesia de San Pedro y San Pablo (Church of St. Peter and St. Paul) is a Catholic church built in 1933–34 under the supervision of Father Onofre Martorell. The cruciform-plan Territorial Adobe building…

Lafayette Head

Major Lafayette Head (1825–97) was an Indian agent to the Ute tribe for nine years after serving in the Mexican American War. In 1877, he became the first lieutenant governor of Colorado. He was influential in the early development of towns across the…

Mexican Land Grants in Colorado

From the sixteenth century to the mid-nineteenth, the king of Spain and the Mexican government awarded land grants to individuals and communities throughout the American Southwest. All seven of Colorado’s land grants, comprising more than 8 million acres…

Pike’s Stockade

The Pike Stockade is a reconstruction of a small fortress built by the soldiers of the 1806–7 Zebulon Pike expedition. It is located on the Rio Conejos, a tributary of the Rio Grande, in the San Luis Valley, seventeen miles southeast of Alamosa…

Rio Grande County

Rio Grande County is located in the western San Luis Valley in south-central Colorado. It covers 912 square miles and ranges in elevation from 7,000 feet on the valley floor to over 13,000 feet atop several mountain peaks. Del Norte is the county seat,…

Saguache

The town of Saguache in the northern San Luis Valley began as an agricultural community after Ute Indians were removed from the area in the 1860s. Saguache boomed in the 1870s and 1880s, when it became an important starting-off point for miners headed to…

Saguache County

Known as the northern gateway to the San Luis Valley, Saguache County covers 3,168 miles between the Sangre de Cristo and San Juan Mountain ranges in southern Colorado. The word Saguache, pronounced “Sa-watch,” is derived from the Ute language and means …

San Luis

The oldest continuously occupied town in Colorado, San Luis sits along Culebra Creek, just west of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the southeast portion of the San Luis Valley. In April 1851, Hispanos from Taos, New Mexico, founded San Luis on the…

San Luis Valley

Covering nearly 8,000 square miles in southern Colorado, the San Luis Valley is the largest valley in the state and the largest high-altitude desert in North America. Known as “the Valley” by locals and other Coloradans, the San Luis Valley is bordered…

San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council

The San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council (SLVEC) helps to safeguard over 3.1 million acres of public lands and natural resources in the six counties comprising the San Luis Valley, noted for their unchanged landscapes, biological richness, early settlement…

San Rafael Presbyterian Church

Located in Mogote in the southern San Luis Valley (4907 Co Rd 9, Antonito, CO 81120), San Rafael Presbyterian Church was probably built in 1895–97 and used regularly until 1965. It is the second-oldest church in Conejos County and one of the few…

Sangre de Cristo Land Grant

The Sangre de Cristo land grant was a Mexican land grant possessed in January 1844 by Narciso Beaubien and Stephen Luis Lee. Covering almost 1.4 million acres in the San Luis Valley and Sangre de Cristo Mountains in southern Colorado, the grant gave rise…

Spring Creek Fire

Started by an illegal campfire on June 27, 2018, the Spring Creek Fire raced across 108,045 acres of forested foothills in southern Colorado, near La Veta Pass on the eastern edge of the San Luis Valley. By the time it was fully contained on September 10…

St. Francis of Assisi Mission Church

Built in 1881, St. Francis of Assisi Mission Church is a Catholic church in Los Valdeses, a town along the Rio Grande about halfway between Del Norte and Monte Vista. One of the few Hispano churches in the San Luis Valley with a cruciform plan, St…

State Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Home

Located east of Monte Vista in the San Luis Valley (3694 Sherman Ave, Monte Vista, Colorado), the State Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Home was established in 1889 as a home for aging and disabled Civil War veterans in Colorado. The facility grew over the years…

Stewart’s Cattle Guard Archaeological Site

The Stewart’s Cattle Guard Archaeological Site in the San Luis Valley represents a late summer or early fall bison hunting camp occupied by Folsom peoples in the Paleo-Indian period (before 6000 BCE). The site was discovered in the late 1970s and…

Treaty of Abiquiú

Considered to be the first official treaty between the United States and the Ute people of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, the Treaty of Abiquiú was made in 1849 with the intention of establishing peaceful relations between the two groups…

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

Signed on February 2, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War (1846–48). In the treaty, the Republic of Mexico agreed to cede 55 percent of its territory, some 525,000 square miles, to the United States. This land eventually…

Trujillo Homesteads

Located in rural Alamosa County along the western boundary of Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, the Trujillo Homesteads were settled in the 1860s and 1870s by Teofilo Trujillo and his son, Pedro. The history of the homesteads illustrates the…

Wendy Videlock


 
 
 Wendy Videlock is a writer, visual artist, teacher, and a life-long student of the world. She lives on the Western Slope of Colorado in Palisade. Her books include Nevertheless (San Jose, CA: Able Muse Press, 2011), Slingshots &…