Springfield, CO

Springfield is Baca County’s seat in southeastern Colorado, the town you use to get your bearings in a county of ranches, fields, and long straight highways. U.S. 287 and 385 run through the center, while U.S. 160 passes just south; Lamar is north and Boise City, Oklahoma, is south. Springfield grew from a cattle, farming, and stagecoach stop, and the county’s agricultural past still sets the scale of the surrounding landscape. The municipal airport sits four miles north.

ATTRJeffrey Beall / CC BY 4.0

The name came from Springfield, Missouri, where many early residents had lived. The Windsor Town Company established the town in 1887, and Jim and Frank Tipton secured the original eighty-acre townsite before incorporation in 1889. Springfield became the temporary county seat that year, then won the permanent seat after one election was thrown into confusion when two Boston delegates got lost in a snowstorm. Today the courthouse role still matters, but the local frame is bigger than government: it is the county’s service town, set among ranch roads, farms, grasslands, and the long-distance routes that cross the southeast corner of Colorado.