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The first Dolores County
Courthouse was an attractive structure of hand hewn logs, their appearance added
to by chinking of snow, white lime and sand. Twenty three by forty eight feet
in size with one room 23 x23 feet on the second floor accessible only by an
outside stairway, the building was hardly large enough to store the records
of the county acquired when Dolores county was divided from Ouray county. The
structure was dismantled and the logs were used as skids and for scaffolding
to start construction on the new stone and brick courthouse that was to take
two years to build. This building, located on the corner of Commercial St. and
Mantz Ave. still stands today and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The courthouse served as a county courthouse for 53 years until the greater
population of Dove Creek was successful in having the county seat moved there
in 1946. Dolores county conveyed the courthouse to the Town of Rico on April
2, 1956 and it is now used as the Town Offices, Public hearings, town and community
meetings and the Rico branch of the Dolores County Library. |
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