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History
Costilla County was inhabited by the ancestors of
today's families well before Colorado became a state. Those first
Hispano settlers brought with them a language and culture that still
exists today, four hundred years after the Spanish first arrived in the
Americas. Except for the Native Americans who were here first,
this is the oldest community in Colorado.
Costilla County is located in south central Colorado, sharing its
southern boundary with New Mexico (of which it was once a part).
Costilla is part of the San Luis Valley, an 8,000 square mile alpine
valley nicknamed the American Tibet, with an average altitude of 7800
feet above sea level. Costilla County is the home to Colorado's oldest
town, San Luis, founded in 1851. Many villages of the County were the
last to be established on a Spanish/Mexican land grant in this country.
It is home to Colorado's oldest Christian structure (the San Acacio
Mission) and the nation's newest shrine, the Stations of the Cross.
California's gold rush was about gold. Colorado's gold is water, and the
state's first water rights, the San Luis Peoples Ditch, is located right
here in Costilla County. And to top all that, Costilla County has the
last working Commons in America where local residents have grazed their
sheep, cattle and horses on six hundred shared, unfenced acres for
hundreds of years.
Adventure
You stand at waters edge of a high desert lake. The
mountains encircle you and extend as far as the eye can see. A
mid-summer storm has left a double rainbow framing distant peaks. You
have come to Costilla County, a special place in splendored, protected
isolation. Eleven-hundred square miles, nestled within the San Luis
Valley, dotted with historic towns and villages, threaded by dusty,
wind-
ing roads. This is where Colorado began, and this is where you begin
your Colorado experience. You will find ranches without dudes, farms
without petting pens and small-town eateries that consider rosemary
smoked lamb a foreign dish. "Nouvelle cuisine" and "boutique" have yet
to enter the local vernacular because Costilla County is no new age,
neatly packaged theme park. It is history and adventure at every turn
with all the necessary ingredients to entertain the whole family.
Come immerse yourself in a unique culture. Walk the roads of villages
that were founded by ancestors of today's inhabitants. Meet the people
who measure their history here in multiples of generations and speak a
Spanish that still contains words and phrases of ancient origins. In our
villages, visit some of the earliest structures erected in Colorado, the
small, sturdy mission churches, built by local labor all
those many years ago. If your timing is right, you might be lucky enough
to take part in a local celebration, most likely of religious origin.
Hike the Rio Grande Gorge and find petroglyphs, arrowheads or maybe
grinding stones left by civilizations we are just beginning to know.
A peak experience awaits the mountain climber. Colorado has fifty-four
peaks that exceed 14,000 feet and four of those can be accessed from
Costilla County, Little Bear, Lindsay and Culebra. Blanca at 14,345 is
higher than Pikes Peak. For the angler who relishes the Zen experience
of fly fishing, or for the bank sitter, streams and lakes abound in
cutthroat, rainbow, browns and pike. Elk, deer and mountain lion wander
the forests and mountains.
Visit the artists village of Jaroso or explore Fort Garland, once
commanded by Kit Carson. Find spiritual renewal as you tour the
internationally acclaimed Stations of the Cross Shrine in San Luis, and
then experience the grandeur of the Great Sand Dunes National Monument
near Blanca. A seeming millennium away from the outside, whirling, mad
dash world, Costilla County, year round, is the experience of a
lifetime.
Information courtesy of
The Costilla County Chamber of Commerce
P.O. Box 158
San Luis, CO 81152
(719) 672-3002
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