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Dolores County, Colorado

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

—newspaper titles

—digitized titles

5historic places

—earliest paper

1881formed

2,326pop. 2020

3cemeteries

—CW battlefields

At a glance

Summary

The National Register of Historic Places includes 5 listed properties in the county, first listed in 1974. Most listings are in or near Rico, Cahone, Dolores.

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 Dolores titles at the Library of Congress.

National Register of Historic Places

NPS NRHP

3 of 5 listings mapped; some locations are restricted by NPS to protect sensitive sites.

5 listed properties

Property	City	Type	Listed
Ansel Hall Ruin	Cahone	Site	1997
Beaver Creek Massacre Site	Dolores	Site	1986
Dey Building	Rico	Building	1999
Kauffman, William, House	Rico	Building	1982
Rico City Hall	Rico	Building	1974

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

County formation

Newberry AHCB

Dolores was formed in 1881 (1881-02-19) from Ouray.

DOLORES created from OURAY.

Source: Newberry Library, Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

Population by decade

Census

Dolores County population from 1890 to 2020 (Census historical series).

1890	1900	1920	1940	1950	1960	1980	2000	2020
1,498	1,134	1,243	1,958	1,966	2,196	1,658	1,844	2,326

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).

Site	Type	Dist.
Mesa Verde National Park	Park unit	56.3 km

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

Cemeteries & historical places

USGS GNIS

3 cemeteries and 0 historical populated places (ghost towns / former settlements) recorded in USGS GNIS for this county.

Cemeteries — 3 of 3 listed

Name	Lat	Lon
Nash Cemetery	37.85804	-108.43063
Peel Cemetery	37.86554	-108.94898
Rico Cemetery	37.67906	-108.03471

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 Dolores County, Colorado

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