Mancos, Colorado
Near Cortez, Colorado
The town of Mancos sits at the eastern gateway to Mesa Verde country, in a valley that the Old Spanish Trail trade route passed through from the eighteen twenties into the eighteen fifties. The name Mancos dates to the Dominguez and Escalante Expedition of seventeen seventy-six. Cattle ranchers began arriving in the eighteen seventies, supplying beef to mining camps in the San Juan and La Plata ranges.
The town itself was platted in the eighteen nineties as a stop along Otto Mears's Rio Grande Southern Railway, and it served as the primary commercial center for eastern Montezuma County. Today Mancos is a small arts and ranching community of fewer than two thousand people, positioned squarely between Mesa Verde National Park and the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad corridor.
