Cortez, Colorado

Cortez was founded in eighteen eighty-six by the Montezuma Valley Water Supply Company, which brought workers here to build the irrigation network of canals, tunnels, and ditches that made farming possible on the high desert plateau. A post office opened in eighteen eighty-seven, and when Montezuma County was carved out of La Plata County in eighteen eighty-nine, Cortez became its county seat. The early economy ran on alfalfa, wheat, potatoes, and apples, with McElmo Canyon orchards gaining a modest national reputation for Delicious apples.

Everything changed in nineteen oh six when Mesa Verde was designated a National Park. Cortez became the gateway town for visitors traveling to the cliff dwellings, and hotels, roads, and restaurants followed. Today Cortez is a working agricultural and tourism town of about nine thousand people, a few miles from one of the great archaeological parks in the hemisphere.