Costilla County, Colorado · near San Luis · APN 718-05-790: Ten Minutes From Colorado's Oldest Town, a Camp Spot of Your Own

A Piece of Colorado You Can Stand On This Season

Maybe you've wanted land in Colorado for years, and every listing you open is priced like it comes with a ski lift. You're not after a homestead yet. You want a spot to pitch a tent, look at the mountains, and say it's yours. This lot is that spot.

It's flat open ground near eight thousand feet, with Blanca Peak to the north and the Sangre de Cristos running down the east side of the valley. Bring the tent for a couple of weeks a season, cook dinner over the camp stove, and watch the stars come out like somebody turned up the dimmer (the valley has very little light to compete with). Elk and wild horses move through this country, so keep the binoculars handy.

San Luis is about ten minutes away. The town's People's Ditch was dug by hand in 1851 and holds Colorado's priority number one water right, the oldest recorded in the state, and it's still carrying water to the fields outside town.

Here's the plain version: at a half acre, the lot is under the county's one-acre minimum for a septic system, so it's camp ground, not a building lot, and camping is capped at 14 days in any three months. There's no road built to the lot yet either, so plan on finding the best route in from Highway 159. The price reflects all of that already, which makes it an easy piece of the valley to hold.

Folks around San Luis have been working this valley since before Colorado was a state, and a half acre is a reasonable place to start your own chapter of it.