Moffat County is named for David Moffat, the railroad financier

The name on the county map belongs to a person. David Moffat was a Denver banker and financier who backed a rail line over the mountains into northwest Colorado — a route planned to push on toward Salt Lake City. Reaching the region’s coal was part of the appeal, though not the whole story. The route became known as the Moffat Road.

That railroad helps explain the map. Building a line across the mountains was slow and costly, and the project ran short of money before reaching its farthest goals. But where the rails reached, towns and shipping points grew, and the Yampa valley opened to the rest of the state for hauling coal, cattle, and goods. Craig grew into the area’s main town and became the county seat.

The county itself was carved out of neighboring Routt County in the early 1900s and given Moffat’s name. So the identity of the place is tied to two threads that still run through it today: the resources in the ground and the transportation links that connected them to the wider world.

Knowing this backstory makes the present easier to read. The county’s long relationship with coal — and the questions it now faces as energy changes — did not appear overnight. It goes back to the era that named the place.

For the documented history of the county’s founding and its railroad era, see History Colorado and the Colorado State Archives.