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List of municipalities in Colorado

list of municipalities in the U.S. State of Colorado

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 3, 2026
Entity authorityQ257955 ↗
Source-derived summary

The U.S. State of Colorado has 272 active municipalities, comprising 197 towns, 73 cities, and two consolidated city and county governments. The City and County of Denver, the state capital, is the oldest municipality in Colorado. On December 3, 1859, the extralegal Territory of Jefferson granted a charter to the consolidated City of Denver, Auraria, and Highland. The Town of Keystone, incorporated on April 3, 2023, is the newest Colorado municipality. On July 28, 2026, the Colorado Secretary of State declared that the Town of Hartman had been abandoned after all the town trustees had resigned.

Colorado municipalities range in population from the City and County of Denver with a 2020 population of 715,522, to the Town of Carbonate, which has had no year-round population since the 1890 Census due to its severe winter weather and difficult access. The City of Black Hawk with a 2020 population of 127 is the least populous Colorado city, while the Town of Castle Rock with a 2020 population of 73,158 is the most populous Colorado town.

At the 2020 United States Census, 4,299,942 of the 5,773,714 Colorado residents (74.47%) lived in one of the 271 municipalities active at the time. Another 714,417 residents (12.37%) lived in one of the 210 census-designated places, while the remaining 759,355 residents (13.15%) lived in the many rural and mountainous areas of the state.

In 2020, only 1,968 square miles (5,097 km2) of Colorado's 103,642 square miles (268,431 km2) of land area (1.90%) were incorporated in the 271 active municipalities.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “List of municipalities in Colorado” as list of municipalities in the U.S. State of Colorado. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1859, 2023, 2026, 2020—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where List, municipalities and Colorado can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as list of municipalities in the U.S. State of Colorado. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q257955. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1859, 2023, 2026 and 2020.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow List of municipalities in Colorado primary sources, List of municipalities in Colorado archive and List research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “List of municipalities in Colorado” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.