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About Dove Creek
Dove Creek is an agricultural community near the Utah border in western Colorado. It is named after Dove Creek, which flows through on the east end of town. Fields cover the land surrounding the town, which generally slopes downward from northeast to southwest, but broken hills and canyons. The elevation is high, ranging from 6,800 feet on Dove Creek to 6,900 at the water tanks on the north of town. Trees dot the landscape in rows along fields and in clumps in unirrigated areas. Sagebrush used to dominate the scenery, but has mostly been cleared.
A few miles to the northeast is the gorge of the Dolores River, a chasm 1,500 feet deep, cut by the largest river in the area. From its rim, small creeks, like Dove Creek, run down the slope towards the southwest, becoming larger as they go, and eventually turning into deep chasms as well, a network of which blocks travel to the southwest.
U.S. Highway 491 passes through Dove Creek. It crosses the town at a diagonal to the grid of streets, being a little off from east-west. Heading east, it makes a bend towards the south, coming eventually to Cortez. To the west it leads to its terminus at Monticello.
The major crop grown in the area of Dove Creek is pinto beans, which thrive in this climate.
Dove Creek was a way station on the Spanish Trail in the 1800s, and before that was used as a camping spot by the Escalante Expedition, a Mexican Franciscan party that explored much of the region. One of the first settlers was Daniel Brown Hunter who settled here in 1918. He was also a pinto bean farmer, and active in the community.
For More Information:
See the historic marker about Dove Creek and Wikipedia's Dove Creek article.