County Past
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Custer County, Colorado

Historic newspapers, landmarks, and county history layers for genealogists and local historians.

—newspaper titles
—digitized titles
10historic places
—earliest paper
1877formed
4,704pop. 2020
5cemeteries
—CW battlefields

At a glance

Summary

The National Register of Historic Places includes 10 listed properties in the county, first listed in 1978. Most listings are in or near Westcliffe, Beulah, Wetmore.

Summary generated automatically from the source data on this page.

Newspapers

Library of Congress

Newspaper directory data for Colorado is not yet loaded on this site. Browse Custer titles at the Library of Congress.

National Register of Historic Places

NPS NRHP

8 of 10 listings mapped; some locations are restricted by NPS to protect sensitive sites.

10 listed properties
PropertyCityTypeListed
Beckwith RanchWestcliffeDistrict1998
Holdsworth House-Aspenholme-Pines LodgeWestcliffeBuilding2021
Hope Lutheran ChurchWestcliffeBuilding1978
Kennicott CabinWestcliffeBuilding1997
Mingus HomesteadBeulahDistrict1990
National Hotel-Wolff BuildingWestcliffeBuilding1987
Westcliff SchoolWestcliffeBuilding1989
Westcliffe JailWestcliffeBuilding1993
Wetmore Post OfficeWetmoreBuilding2008
Willows SchoolWestcliffeBuilding1993

Source: National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places. Property links open NRHP nomination files at the National Archives.

County formation

Newberry AHCB

Custer was formed in 1877 (1877-03-09) from Fremont.

CUSTER created from FREMONT and all of Non-County Area 2.

Source: Newberry Library, Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

Population by decade

Census

Custer County population from 1880 to 2020 (Census historical series).

8,0804,6001,120188019201950196020002020
188019001920194019501960198020002020
8,0802,9372,1722,2701,5731,3051,5283,5034,704

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau historical county population (Forstall 1790–1990) and public-domain / CC0 county population series through 2020.

National Park Service sites nearby

NPS

Park units within about 40 km of the county centroid (from NPS Public POIs; no API key).

SiteTypeDist.
Great Sand Dunes National Park and PreservePark unit40.2 km

Source: NPS National Datasets / Public POIs. The NPS Developer API requires a free key and was not used.

Cemeteries & historical places

USGS GNIS

5 cemeteries and 1 historical populated places (ghost towns / former settlements) recorded in USGS GNIS for this county.

Cemeteries — 5 of 5 listed
NameLatLon
Hope Cemetery38.04833-105.46972
Rosita Cemetery38.09111-105.35249
Silver Cliff Cemetery38.12243-105.44271
The Pines Cemetery38.17083-105.60138
Ula Cemetery38.15083-105.50555
Historical populated places — 1 of 1
NameLatLon
Ula38.15005-105.50192

Source: USGS Geographic Names Information System (public domain). Cemeteries from the 2021 NationalFile archive; historical places from GNIS HistoricalFeatures topical extract.

Historical markers

HMdb link

Marker text and photos from the Historical Marker Database (HMdb) are not embedded here. HMdb allows non-commercial reuse with attribution, but commercial/compensated use needs written permission; this is a commercial site, so we only link out.

Search HMdb for Custer County, Colorado

Terms: hmdb.org/copyright.asp. Linking is encouraged by HMdb.