Article by Kenneth Jesson
History – December 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
FOR MANY YEARS, San Luis has been heralded as Colorado’s oldest town, but there were towns in what would one day become Colorado 700 years before San Luis was founded in 1851. Located in Montezuma County, just north of the New Mexico border, there are a large number of abandoned settlements that could be regarded as Colorado’s oldest towns. The most spectacular of them are located in Mesa Verde National Park.