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is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous city of Montezuma County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 7,977 at the 2000 census. It is a popular stop for tourists, who don't necessarily tour the city, but stay there because of its central location of surrounding attractions such as Mesa Verde, Monument Valley, and the Four Corners.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 5.5 square miles (14.3 km²), of which, 5.5 square miles (14.2 km²) of it is land and 0.04 square miles (0.1 km²) of it (0.36%) is water.
Mesa Verde National Park, featuring old Indian cliff dwellings, is situated southeast of Cortez.
Cortez is a local commercial center, competing with Durango in the east, and Farmington, New Mexico in the south, and draws trade from Southeastern Utah, the extreme Northeastern corner of Arizona, the Shiprock area of Northwestern New Mexico, and San Miquel, Dolores, Montezuma, and parts of LaPlata County in Colorado. Its economy is based very heavily on tourism, both to nearby Mesa Verde National Park as well as to San Juan National Forest, BLM lands in the area (including Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, and both the Ute Mountain Indian Reservation and the Navajo Indian Reservation).