City Information

Located on the west edge of the San Luis Valley and at the base of the San Juan mountains, Del Norte was one of Colorado's first cities being founded in 1860. It became the Rio Grande County seat and was once considered for state capitol. Never a mining town itself, Del Norte was a supply town to the various mining camps of the San Juans.

Things being what they were, this was a wild frontier town at one time. The usual suspects were around to cause trouble and the locals formed a vigilante group to deal with them. One night the group broke into the jail to deal with a couple of rustlers inside. However the rustlers managed to fight their way out and escaped. The knuckle-head bunch of vigilantes were none to happy about that and proceeded to get drunk and then shot up the town themselves. Before they were done for the night they had accidentally killed one of their own party members.

The rails were built into Del Norte in 1881 to serve the freight being generated in the Summitville mining district. In the early days there were several smelters at Del Norte and they processed ore from around the state. There were also several stable banks and all of this combined to make Del Norte the commercial center of the southern end of Colorado for a while.

Although the mines did not ship up to expectations, the food processing industries did and today this is still a major source of revenue. Several local mills process the grains grown in the area.

In 1911 the old wooden depot was replaced with a more modern structure and it served the railroad until 1970 when it was taken over and used for town government offices. You can still see the depot today.