Brief by Central Staff
Local Lore – May 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
At some point, we’ll try to get official with these quizzes and give away T-shirts or something to the winners. But that would mean having rules and deadlines, none of which we’ve contrived yet.
In the April edition, we asked about old county seats, and here are the answers (our official source was Historical Atlas of Colorado):
1-J) Ula was the first seat of Custer County, and held that status from 1877 to 1878. Ula sat about five miles north of Silver Cliff.
2-B) Dayton was a formal name for the town of Twin Lakes, seat of Lake County 1866-68.
3-F) Wason (the post office at Martin Wason’s ranch) was the first seat of Mineral County, and lost that honor within the year to Creede.
4-E) Guadalupe was seat of Conejos County 1861-63, when a flood swept over the town. It sat just north of Conejos, the seat ever since.
5-D) Granite was the seat of Chaffee County in 1879. Buena Vista got it in 1880, and Salida in 1928.
6-C) Laurette, also known as Buckskin Joe, was seat of Park County 1862-66.
7-G) Badito was seat of Huerfano County 1868-74. It was near Gardner.
8-H) Parrott City was seat of La Plata County 1876-81, and sat about eight miles north of Hesperus.
9-I) San Miguel was seat of Costilla County 1861-63, and then the courthouse moved a couple of miles north to San Luis.
10-A) Boggsville was seat of Bent County 1870-72. It’s just south of the current seat of Las Animas.