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Rio Grande County, Colorado

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

—newspaper titles

—digitized titles

13historic places

—earliest paper

1874formed

11,539pop. 2020

6cemeteries

—CW battlefields

At a glance

Summary

The National Register of Historic Places includes 13 listed properties in the county, first listed in 1985. Most listings are in or near Monte Vista, South Fork, Del Norte.

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 Rio Grande titles at the Library of Congress.

National Register of Historic Places

NPS NRHP

8 of 13 listings mapped; some locations are restricted by NPS to protect sensitive sites.

13 listed properties

Property	City	Type	Listed
Carnegie Library	Monte Vista	Building	1995
Central School Auditorium and Gymnasium	Monte Vista	Building	1996
Creede Branch, Denver and Rio Grande Railroad	South Fork	District	2002
Denver & Rio Grande Railroad South Fork Water Tank	South Fork	Structure	2002
El Monte Hotel	Monte Vista	Building	1990
First Methodist Episcopal Church	Monte Vista	Building	2003
Keck Homestead	Del Norte	Building	1998
Monte Vista Downtown Historic District	Monte Vista	District	1991
Monte Vista Library	Monte Vista	Building	1995
Spruce Lodge	South Fork	Building	2008
Sutherland Bridge	Del Norte	Structure	1985
US Post Office and Federal Building-Monte Vista Main	Monte Vista	Building	1986
Wheeler Bridge	Del Norte	Structure	1985

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

County formation

Newberry AHCB

Rio Grande was formed in 1874 (1874-02-10) from Conejos, Costilla.

RIO GRANDE created from CONEJOS and COSTILLA.

Source: Newberry Library, Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

Population by decade

Census

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

1880	1900	1920	1940	1950	1960	1980	2000	2020
1,944	4,080	7,855	12,404	12,832	11,160	10,511	12,413	11,539

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

Cemeteries & historical places

USGS GNIS

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

Cemeteries — 6 of 6 listed

Name	Lat	Lon
Del Norte Cemetery	37.68782	-106.35065
Lariat Cemetery	37.59	-106.2003
Monte Vista Cemetery	37.59083	-106.19696
Rock Creek Cemetery	37.50861	-106.21335
San Luis Valley Cemetery	37.59666	-106.21085
Valdeses Cemetery	37.6475	-106.25363

Historical populated places — 1 of 1

Name	Lat	Lon
Summitville	37.43056	-106.59226

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 Rio Grande County, Colorado

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