Gunnison, Colorado

Gunnison takes its name from John W. Gunnison, a U.S. Army captain in the Corps of Topographical Engineers who led one of the 1853 Pacific Railroad Surveys west across the Rockies, looking for a viable central route for a transcontinental line between the 38th and 39th parallels. His party crossed the high country of what is now Gunnison County — coming over Cochetopa Pass and down the river that now bears his name — before Gunnison himself was killed later that year, in October 1853, in an attack on the Sevier River in Utah Territory. The valley he passed through was long the summer range of the Tabeguache (Uncompahgre) band of the Ute people. After the Ute were removed to reservations following the Meeker conflict of 1879, the Gunnison Valley was opened to settlement, and a townsite grew up on the flats where the Gunnison River gathers its tributaries. The town of Gunnison was incorporated on March 1, 1880, and became the county seat.

What turned the young town into a hub was the railroad and the mining boom it carried. When the Denver and Rio Grande pushed its narrow-gauge line into Gunnison in 1881, the town became the supply and shipping center for a burst of silver, gold, and coal camps scattered through the surrounding mountains — Crested Butte, Pitkin, Ohio City, and others. The ore boom cooled within a few years, but two things gave Gunnison lasting staying power. One was ranching: the wide, grassy valley proved ideal for hay and cattle, and stock-raising eventually eclipsed mining as the county's economic backbone. The other was school — the seed of what is now Western Colorado University.

Western began as the Colorado State Normal School, chartered by the legislature in 1901 and opened to students in 1911 as the first college on Colorado's Western Slope, founded to train the region's teachers. It was renamed Western State College in 1923 as it grew into a four-year institution, and after decades of growth it became Western Colorado University in 2019. The university, with a few thousand students, still anchors the town and gives a small ranching-and-railroad county seat the feel of a college community. Today Gunnison is a year-round mountain town — a ranching valley, a university campus, and a jumping-off point for the Gunnison River, Blue Mesa Reservoir, and the high country all at once.

Life in Gunnison is built around the outdoors and the river. The Gunnison River runs right through the valley — the stretch around and just above town is Gold Medal trout water — and just downstream it widens into Blue Mesa Reservoir, the largest body of water in Colorado and a magnet for anglers and boaters. Three miles south of town, the BLM's Hartman Rocks Recreation Area spreads across more than 14,000 acres of sagebrush and granite, laced with miles of singletrack that make it a beloved mountain-biking, hiking, and climbing spot. Crested Butte and its ski resort sit a short drive up the valley. In town, Western Colorado University keeps things lively year-round, and the main street has the easy, unfussy feel of a working ranching community rather than a polished resort. It's a place where a weekend can mean casting for trout, riding the rocks, and driving up to the peaks — all before dinner.