Limon, CO

Limon is Lincoln County’s statutory town at the meeting point of Interstate 70, U.S. Highways 24, 40, and 287, and Colorado 71. The 2020 census counted 2,043 residents, making it the county’s largest municipality. The town’s “Hub City” nickname is literal geography: Kansas Pacific trains followed the Smoky Hill Trail across the plains in 1870, and the later Rock Island line met the Union Pacific at Limon, turning the settlement into a regional rail center. That transportation role still shows up in the local economy.

The Limon Correctional Facility is a major employer, the Kyle Railroad reaches its western terminus here, and the Union Pacific interchange keeps freight part of the town’s working landscape. The Limon Heritage Museum and Railroad Park make the history tangible with a restored 1910 depot, an 1894 one-room schoolhouse, railroad cars, farm machinery, and windmills. Limon’s local scoop is an eastern Colorado town where highway junctions, freight rails, a correctional facility, and a hands-on museum all grow out of the same prairie crossroads.