Local city information for Crestone, CO

Crestone is a Statutory Town in Saguache County in Southwestern Colorado, United States. The population was 73 at the 2000 census. It is a small village at the foot of the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo Range, in the northern part of the San Luis Valley. Crestone was a small mining town, but little paying ore was discovered. In the 1970s a large land development, the Baca Grande, was established to the south and west and several hundred homes have been built.

The Crestone area, which includes the Baca Grande and Moffat, Colorado, is a spiritual and new age center with several world religions represented; including a Hindu temple, a Zen center, a coed Carmelite monastery, several Tibetan centers, and miscellaneous new age happenings.

Crestone is easily accessible to visitors, a National Forest Service campground is about 3/4 of a mile north of town, and other lodging is available including several bed and breakfasts. Activities in the area include camping, fishing, hiking, climbing, as well as spiritual explorations.

Crestone is named for the 14,000-foot peaks that lie just east of the town: Crestone Peak and Crestone Needle. The Crestones, as they're known collectively, in turn took their name from the Spanish word crestón , which according to Walter Borneman and Lyndon Lampert's book ''A Climbing Guide to Colorado's Fourteeners means "the top of a cock’s comb", "the crest of a helmet," or in miner’s lexicon, "an outcropping of ore."


The first settlement in the Crestone area occurred after the American Civil War with the granting of the Luis Maria Baca Grant No. 4 to the heirs of the original Baca Grant at Las Vegas, New Mexico. Title to the grant at Las Vegas was clouded by a second grant of the same land. The Baca heirs were offered alternative lands from the public lands of the United States. The tract selected near Crestone was 12.5 miles on a side and was located to the south of the town of Crestone. The Bacas deeded the land to their attorney, but it soon passed by tax sale to a third party. The ranch headquarters were on Crestone Creek to the southwest of Crestone. The Baca Grant was one of the first large tracts of land to be fenced in the West and in its heyday was the home of prize Hereford cattle.

In addition to ranching there was some mining in the area to the east of Crestone, with some small and one moderate sized gold strike. Iron ore was another story. One mine slightly to the north is reputed to have produced much of the iron for the western portion of the transcontinental railroad. In 1880 the town of Crestone was platted by George Adams, the owner of the Baca Grant. In 1900, with the help of Eastern investors, George Adams ignited a minor boom, reopening one of the more promising mines and building a railroad spur to the town and the mines along the Range south of town. However, lacking good ore, the boom was short-lived. A long period of decline followed.

By 1948 Crestone had declined to its post-war population of 40 souls, mostly retired folks and cowboys who worked on the Grant, as the Baca Grant was called. Many of the old cabins were used as vacation homes. By 1971 the Baca Grant came into the ownership of the Arizona-Colorado Land and Cattle Company which subdivided a portion of the Grant creating the Baca Grande, a subdivision originally platted for about 10,000 lots. At great expense underground utilities were installed and roads built. However, sales lagged and by 1979 the development was considered a liability by the corporation, now AZL. Maurice Strong, owner of a controlling interest in AZL and his fiancee Hanne Marstrand visited the development and "fell in love with it." The Strongs were inspired to create a world spiritual center and began granting parcels of land to traditional spiritual organizations.

The population gradually began to increase and by 2006 several hundred homes had been built and a number of small spiritual communities had become established. As the Baca Grande contained no provision for business uses, Crestone became the business center of the community and having enacted a small sales tax was in a position to finance further improvements.

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