Dolores grew up around a railroad, and its oldest hotel still shows it

Dolores sits along the Dolores River north of Cortez, and the reason the town is shaped the way it is comes down to the railroad.

In the early 1890s the Rio Grande Southern Railroad pushed through this valley on its long, looping route between Durango and Ridgway by way of Telluride. Towns along narrow-gauge lines like this one grew up around the depot, the siding, and the eating houses that fed passengers and crews. Dolores was one of those rail towns.

A piece of that era still stands. According to History Colorado, the Southern Hotel is the oldest building in Dolores and was the town’s first hotel. It even took its name from the Rio Grande Southern. For years it was the only hotel in town and served as a railroad eating house, one of the stops where travelers could get a meal on the long ride between Durango and Telluride.

The railroad itself is gone, abandoned and scrapped in the early 1950s, but the riverside town it created remained. Knowing this helps explain why Dolores feels different from nearby Cortez, which grew from irrigation, or Mancos, which grew from ranching. Each town carries the mark of how it began.

To read the documented history of the Southern Hotel and the railroad, see History Colorado’s pages for Dolores and the Rio Grande Southern.