Foreclosure Homes in Cotopaxi, CO 8 Results

Cotopaxi is a census-designated place and U.S. post office in Fremont County, Colorado, United States. The population as of the 2010 census was 47, most of whom are Caucasian. The Cotopaxi Post Office has the ZIP code 81223. It was a small train stop on the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad along the Arkansas River. Though there is a store serving the main highway through the town (U.S. 50), there are no major businesses in Cotopaxi (owing to the small population) except for a whitewater rafting business that attracts thousands of tourists each year to ride on the Arkansas River.

History

The township was named after Cotopaxi Volcano, one of the highest active volcanoes in the world, located in Ecuador. Henry Thomas was the man responsible for naming Cotopaxi. He was an early prospector to the western territory in the mid-nineteenth century. Cotopaxi is also known for its early failed colony of approximately 63 Russian-Jewish immigrants who first settled there in early 1882. These colonists, most of whom were related, traveled to Colorado in hopes of starting a successful farming community and to reap the benefits of the new Homestead Act, which would grant each head male of a family 160 acres (65 ha) of land. When the colonists arrived in Cotopaxi, they discovered that only half of the houses that were promised to be built upon their arrival had actually been erected; this forced many of the families to live out of small makeshift canvas houses during the first winter.