Nucla, CO

Nucla is a statutory town in southwestern Montrose County, at the northern end of Colorado 97 and about four miles north of Naturita. The town sits in the San Miguel Basin beneath the Uncompahgre Plateau, with desert mesas, ranch land, and long views toward the Dolores and San Miguel country. Nucla began in 1904 as a cooperative settlement whose founders wanted a nucleus for scattered farms and mines; the name came from that ambition, not from uranium.

ATTRJeffrey Beall / CC BY 4.0

Mining later gave the town a much larger story. Uranium from the surrounding country fed the region's wartime and Cold War economy, and coal and electric generation became another major part of local work. When those industries contracted, Nucla and nearby Naturita had to carry a long mining history into a smaller modern economy. The Unaweep-Tabeguache Scenic and Historic Byway passes through the area, linking the town to canyon roads, ranch country, and the old mining landscape. Nucla remains a place where the town grid feels modest beside the plateau: a former cooperative experiment, a uranium and coal community, and a western Colorado gateway to wide-open country.