Crestone, Colorado

From Wikinfo

Footbridge under construction

Crestone is a town located in Saguache County, Colorado with about 75 year round residents. It lies 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. For many years it was a ghost town with only 40 year round residents. In the 1970s a large land development, the Baca Grande, was established to the south and west and several hundred homes have been built.

Center of Crestone

Crestone was founded in 1880 by the platting of two homesteads which lay north of the Baca Grant by George Adams, the owner of the Grant , a Mexican land grant. It became the local center, replacing Teton a local mining camp lying to the southeast, (all the houses in Teton were moved to Crestone). Lots were sold by the Grant, but sales were slow, a substantial number remaining in the ownership of the Baca Grant at the time of the creation of the Baca Grande which was platted on the lands of the Baca Grant land itself (and on acquired land lying directly to the north of the ranch and to the west of Crestone).

Hoffman's Old Cabin

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 monastry, several Tibetan centers, and miscellaneous new age happenings. The Crestone-Baca community is notable for the large number of lifestyle migrants from urban areas, a part of non-economic, urban-to-rural migration in the American middle-class.

Crestone is easily accessible to visitors, a Forest Service campground is about a half mile north of town, and other lodging is available. There are opportunities for camping, fishing, hiking, climbing as well as spiritual explorations.

Modern Victorian

Crestone is located near the 38th parallel, in the San Luis Valley in south central Colorado. It is platted on a quarter section of land, (160 acres). A stream, North Crestone Creek, runs through it and much of the land near the creek, the main part of town, is well watered in normal times, but during a prolonged drought the creek may dry up and underground water levels may fall.

Trucks

History

The first settlement in the the Crestone area occurred after the 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 where the town of Crestone now is. The land was deeded to the Bacas' attorney, but soon passed by tax sale to a third party. The ranch headquarters were on Crestone, Creek to the southwest of the present site 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, but no big strikes. 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.

Environmental activism

The Crestone area is a center of environmental activism of the BANANA variety. This tendency has been directed at diverse targets but in 2007 and 2008 was focused on exploratory Oil and gas drilling on the nearby Baca National Wildlife Refuge^[1]

Demographics

The US census of 2000 gives a misleading idea of the area. About half of the homes in Crestone itself are used only on a seasonal basis. In addition the Crestone community is much larger, consisting also of several hundred homes in the Baca Grande subdivision, the surrounding rural area, and the small town of Moffat, Colorado which hosts the local schools. (There is also a charter school)

As of the census of 2000, there are 73 people in 45 households including 18 traditional families residing in 79 housing units.

Crestone is probably named after the district of Crestonia in Macedonia, a district where gold was found. It is mentioned in Thucydides History_of_the_Peloponnesian_War. In the Nineteenth Century a classical education might have included the reading of History_of_the_Peloponnesian_War