Montrose: Named From a Novel, Built on Ute Land
Near Ridgway, Colorado
Montrose was founded in eighteen eighty-two, one of a string of towns that appeared on the Western Slope almost immediately after the Ute people were removed from the region. A prospector named Joe Selig chose the name from his favorite Walter Scott novel, A Legend of Montrose, after rejecting options including Pomona and Dad's Town.
The Denver and Rio Grande Railroad arrived the same year, linking Montrose to Gunnison and establishing it as an outfitting hub for the San Juan mining towns to the south. Montrose County was organized in eighteen eighty-three with the town as county seat. Its location in the fertile Uncompahgre Valley, fed by the river of the same name, made it as much an agricultural center as a mining supply town. Peaches and other fruit grew exceptionally well here. Today Montrose is the largest city on the Western Slope south of Grand Junction, and the valley farms that replaced the Ute homeland still produce some of Colorado's best stone fruit.
