San Luis Valley

The bronze names San Luis the first permanent settlement in Colorado, and the state agrees, but the claim needs a qualifier. In 1849 Manuel and Pedro Manzanares and their families built La Plaza de los Manzanares on Costilla Creek, eighteen miles south; renamed Garcia when its post office took that name in 1915, it is still lived in, though it was never incorporated. A Costilla plaza of the same year sat inside Colorado Territory in 1861, until an 1869 survey of the 37th parallel put it in New Mexico. San Luis wins on its long public record.

What the plaque says

This tablet is the property of the State of Colorado San Luis Valley Commemorating the historical importance of the Pioneers who were responsible for the first permanent settlement in Colorado 1851 Erected by the State Historical Society of Colorado from the Mrs. J. N. Hall Foundation and by the citizens of the San Luis Valley 1951

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Shrine of the Stations of the Cross — 0.3 mi
  A parish's own Calvary on the mesa above Colorado's oldest town, with bronze stations by a San Luis sculptor whose models went to the Vatican.

More markers nearby

• San Luis Peoples Ditch — 0.3 mi
• Colorado's Earliest Settlements — 0.7 mi
• Fort Garland — 16 mi