Mancos, Colorado

Mancos is the gateway to Mesa Verde National Park. The town was founded in 1894 near the site where the Spanish Dominguez-Escalante Expedition of 1776 first crossed the Mancos River. Cattle ranchers had been settling in the Mancos Valley since the 1870's. The school building that houses Mancos High School is the oldest school building in Colorado that is still in use as a school.

At the time it was founded, Mancos and Dolores were the principal towns in the region, Cortez being just a bend in the wagon trail. Mancos was a stop along the Denver, Rio Grande & Southern Railway between Durango and Telluride. The ranchers in Mancos Valley shipped timber, beef and other farm products to those mining camps.

There's still a lot of farming and ranching going on here but a lot of business also comes from tourism these days. Being at the base of Mesa Verde brings a lot of traffic into town.