History :

Costilla County was inhabited by the ancestors of today's families well before Colorado became a state. Those first Hispano settlers brought with them a language and culture that still exists today, four hundred years after the Spanish first arrived in the Americas. Except for the Native Americans who were here first, this is the oldest community in Colorado.

Costilla County is located in south central Colorado, sharing its southern boundary with New Mexico . Many villages of the County were the last to be established on a Spanish/Mexican land grant in this country. It is home to Colorado's oldest Christian structure (the San Acacio Mission) and the nation's newest shrine, the Stations of the Cross. California's gold rush was about gold. Colorado's gold is water, and the state's first water rights, the San Luis Peoples Ditch, is located right here in Costilla County. And to top all that, Costilla County has the last working Commons in America where local residents have grazed their sheep, cattle and horses on six hundred shared, unfenced acres for hundreds of years.