Manassa was founded by Latter-day Saint pioneers in the late 1870s

The San Luis Valley holds more than one founding story, and Manassa carries a different one than its neighbors.

Most of the older communities around Conejos grew from Hispano families who moved north from northern New Mexico in the 1850s. Manassa came a generation later and from a different direction. In the late 1870s, Latter-day Saint (Mormon) pioneers settled here, laying out the town on a planned grid in the orderly way those communities often built. Nearby Sanford shares that same heritage.

That mix is part of what makes this small county interesting. Hispano Catholic settlements and Latter-day Saint farming towns grew up side by side on the same valley floor, sharing the same river water and the same hard winters. Today Manassa is one of the larger communities in the county, and its history still shows in the street layout and the families who have farmed here for generations.

For a newcomer, knowing this helps the map make sense: the towns here are not interchangeable, and each has its own roots. To learn the documented founding of Manassa and the valley’s settlement patterns, the Colorado Encyclopedia and History Colorado are good, careful starting points.