Dove Creek: the county seat that calls itself the Pinto Bean Capital

Dolores County’s seat of government is Dove Creek, out on the high, open plateau in the far southwest of Colorado. Drive in during summer and you will see fields of beans, wheat, and sunflowers stretching across reddish soil. That farming is the reason the town exists.

Families came to homestead and dry-farm this mesa country in the early twentieth century. Without much irrigation, they leaned on crops that could handle a short season and limited water. Pinto beans did well, and over time so much of the area’s land went into beans that Dove Creek began calling itself the Pinto Bean Capital of the World. The title is a local slogan rather than an official designation, but it tells you what built the place. Anasazi beans, a speckled heirloom variety, are also grown in the area.

As the county seat, Dove Creek is where the county courthouse and many county offices sit. For a small, remote town, that gives it an outsized role: it is where much of the county’s business, government, and services come together.

Knowing the farm story helps explain the place. Beans and grain shaped the town’s calendar, its main street, and its identity, and that agricultural rhythm still runs through it.

For the town’s own account of its bean heritage, start with the official Town of Dove Creek website and the Dolores County site. For formal records, such as when the town was incorporated, the Colorado State Archives keeps municipal incorporation files.