Dotsero: Dot Zero on the Map

The name Dotsero comes from dot zero, the reference point Ferdinand Hayden used on his eighteen seventy-seven survey maps of western Colorado. When the Denver and Rio Grande Western built the Dotsero Cutoff in nineteen thirty-four, this junction became the link that finally gave Denver a direct rail route to Salt Lake City. Before the cutoff, trains had to loop hundreds of miles south through Pueblo.

The new line shaved the route considerably and made Dotsero one of the more consequential unmarked dots on the Colorado map. The town sits at the mouth of the Colorado River canyon and shares its name with an even older geological feature nearby: the Dotsero volcanic crater, which erupted roughly four thousand years ago. It is the youngest volcano in Colorado.

So at this small census-designated place, you have a railroad junction named for a surveyor's reference point, sitting next to the state's most recently active volcano. Neither one gets much attention from passing drivers on Interstate Seventy.