New civic plaza celebrates Colorado’ s historic‘ first town’
By Bob Brown
San Luis is a small, agricultural community in south-central Colorado with an intriguing, indeed historic, tale to tell.
“ San Luis is a town like no other in Colorado,” said Susan Sanderford, who recently retired as Town manager.“ We may be poor in terms of money( the average annual income is about $ 28,000), but we are rich in history and culture.”
San Luis proudly wears the title of“ the oldest town in Colorado,” having been established on April 5, 1851, by Spanish settlers who moved to the area when it was still part of the New Mexico Territory.
“ We are a town of firsts,” Sanderford said.“ Ours was the first town in the state, we had the first market, the first courthouse, and many other firsts.”
Earlier this year, a new civic plaza was opened in the center of San Luis as an expression of residents’ pride in their history and in hopes of enticing others to come visit and learn the San Luis story.
“ It truly is a unique community,” said David Land, who led a team of experts from five different Ayres divisions in creating the concept and vision, developing engineering and bidding documents, and overseeing construction of the new civic plaza in the center of San Luis.
Maria Esker, an Ayres landscape designer who helped develop designs for the plaza and drew up construction documents based on those designs, agrees with Land ' s assessment.
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