History
As was the case in much of western Colorado, Garfield County historically belonged to the Ute people. For much of the 19th century, this land was guaranteed to the Ute peoples by Treaty with the United States government. The native inhabitants of the area were largely removed and sent to reservations in the early 1880s in the wake of the Meeker Massacre, in which a band of Ute members attacked the Indian agency on their reservation near the modern-day town of Meeker, killing 11 employees, including Indian agent (and town namesake) Nathan Meeker. This removal opened up vast swaths of western Colorado to white settlement.
Garfield County was founded on February 10, 1883, named in memory of President James A. Garfield, who was assassinated in September 1881. In April 1883, the town of Carbonate was incorporated and named the county seat. However, this was short-lived; Carbonate's remote location, difficult access, and severe winter weather made the town essentially impassable for much of the year. After just a few months, the city of Glenwood Springs was named the new county seat. Carbonate's post office closed in 1886, and by 1890, the town was completely abandoned.
In 1887, the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad arrived in Glenwood Springs, further fueling settlement and commerce in the surrounding area. Also in 1887, construction began on the Glenwood Hot Springs Resort, after the hot springs and vapor caves had been purchased by Walter Devereaux for $125,000 (equivalent to $4.25 million in 2025). [6] In yet a third notable event to occur in 1887, the notorious old west gunslinger Doc Holliday died in Glenwood Springs from tuberculosis; a walking trail leading to his grave site remains a prominent tourist attraction in the city.
In 1896, a methane gas explosion in the Vulcan Mine on the Grand Hogback, near the town of New Castle, killed 49 workers and started a coal fire which still burns to this day. The mine eventually reopened, but suffered another explosion in 1913, killing an additional 37 workers. These underground coal fires have led the part of the Grand Hogback near the mine to be dubbed "Burning Mountain". [7]
In 1904, US President Theodore Roosevelt went on a three-week bear hunt in Garfield County, an account of which was published in three 1905 issues of Outdoor Life Magazine. [8] In 1905, the area was once again the target of old west gunslingers, as the outlaw Kid Curry and two accomplices robbed a train three miles west of the town of Grand Valley (now known as Parachute).
The county (specifically the city of Glenwood Springs) was one of the first areas in the United States to install electric lights. Some of the first in the area were installed inside the Fairy Caves of Iron Mountain, now part of Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park. The county was also the site of the first hydroelectric plant constructed in Colorado, built at Rifle Falls State Park in 1910. The plant changed the flow of the falls from one large waterfall to the three distinct falls seen today.
In 1965, Colorado voters approved the creation of a community college district on the Western Slope, establishing Colorado Mountain College. The same year, construction began on the college's Spring Valley campus, just south of Glenwood Springs. The Spring Valley campus, along with the Leadville campus, were CMC's original two campuses, known at the time of their creation as the West and East campuses, respectively. Classes began at Spring Valley in fall 1967; by 1974, the college had opened another campus in Rifle, and later opened facilities in downtown Glenwood Springs and Carbondale. Today, CMC is one of the largest community college systems in the state, serving more than 17,000 students across 11 campuses in western Colorado. [9] [10]
In 1969, the unincorporated community of Rulison, seven miles east of Parachute, was the site of the Project Rulison nuclear tests, which were conducted to see if underground detonation of nuclear weapons could liberate natural gas pockets, streamlining the process of gas and oil drilling and reducing the number of wells necessary to access deposits. While the tests were successful in liberating large gas deposits, the technology has never been used for commercial purposes due to public concern of nuclear contamination.
Garfield County received national attention after serial killer Ted Bundy escaped from the Garfield County Jail on the night of December 30, 1977, an escape which went undetected for 17 hours due to most of the jail's staff being on Christmas break. Bundy ultimately travelled to Florida and continued his nationwide murder spree, making the list of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives before being captured in February 1978. [11]
On May 2, 1982, Exxon Mobil abruptly announced that, effective immediately, they would be shutting down oil shale operations in the region. As a result of this announcement, over 2,000 people found themselves instantly unemployed; this day came to be known as "Black Sunday" in Garfield County, marking the end of western Colorado's oil shale boom. Other oil companies in the area followed suit in ceasing oil shale operations, and between 1982 and 1985, over 24,000 people left Garfield and Mesa counties in search of oil work, causing a recession in western Colorado. [12]
On July 6, 1994, 14 firefighters were killed battling the South Canyon Fire on Storm King Mountain, seven miles west of Glenwood Springs. The Storm King Mountain Memorial Trail closely follows the path the firefighters hiked to the fire; the path is lined with plaques and memorials, and the site of the blaze contains crosses where each responder fell. The South Canyon Fire remains the deadliest wildfire in Colorado history. [13] [14] Due to the fire's destruction of the mountain's vegetation, heavy rain in September 1994 caused a mudslide which buried 30 cars and injured two people on Interstate 70.
In May 2024, NBC News reported that Garfield County was the hardest county in America to buy a house in, due largely to high costs and heavy competition between buyers; Garfield County's population has increased by more than 40% since the turn of the century. Other cost factors likely result from the economic influence of Glenwood Springs and the nearby resort cities of Aspen and Vail. The neighboring Routt and Mesa counties were ranked numbers two and three, respectively. [15]
Government
Structure
Garfield County is governed by a board of three county commissioners, who oversee the county's financial affairs, infrastructure developments, public health matters, and general economic development. [23]
County offices
As the seat of Garfield County, the city of Glenwood Springs is home to many of the county's offices, including all of its elected offices (with the exception of the coroner's office, which is located in the town of Silt). The Garfield County courthouse, sheriff's office, jail, and county administration building are all located on 8th Street in downtown Glenwood Springs. The county also maintains several other offices and public services in the city of Rifle, including the Garfield County Landfill, the Rifle Garfield County Airport, and the county's emergency services dispatch center.
Emergency services
Garfield County is served by multiple emergency service agencies:
Law enforcement
- Carbondale Police Department
- Colorado State Patrol – Glenwood Springs Troop
- Garfield County Sheriff's Office
- Glenwood Springs Police Department
- New Castle Police Department
- Parachute Police Department
- Rifle Police Department
- Silt Police Department
Fire departments
- Carbondale & Rural Fire Protection District
- Colorado River Fire Rescue
- Glenwood Springs Fire Department
- Grand Valley Fire Protection District
SPEAR
In 2022, Garfield County formed the Special Problem Enforcement and Response (SPEAR) team as a merger between two joint task forces: the Two Rivers Drug Enforcement Team (TRIDENT), which focused on illegal drug activity, and the Threat Assessment Group (TAG), which focused on gang activity. SPEAR functions as a multi-jurisdictional major crimes task force; member agencies include the Garfield County Sheriff's Office, Glenwood Springs Police Department, Rifle Police Department, Drug Enforcement Administration, Department of Homeland Security, United States Marshals Service, and a dedicated deputy district attorney. SPEAR also maintains partnerships with the Colorado State Patrol and Colorado Bureau of Investigation. [24]
AHRT
The Garfield County All-Hazards Response Team (AHRT) is a multi-agency SWAT team providing tactical and high-risk law enforcement response. AHRT is composed of officers, detectives, and EMTs from several different agencies in the county.
Public transportation
Public transportation in the county is provided by the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority. RFTA is the second-largest public transportation entity in Colorado (behind the Denver area's Regional Transportation District), and the largest rural public transit provider in the United States, operating busses across a nearly 70-mile stretch from Rifle to Aspen. Local transportation services in the county include Ride Glenwood Springs, the Carbondale Circulator, and the Parachute Area Transit System.
Bustang, Colorado's inter-city bus service, runs its east-west route from Denver Union Station to Grand Junction, making stops in Glenwood Springs, Rifle, and Parachute.
Amtrak, running from Chicago, Illinois to Emeryville, California, makes a stop in Glenwood Springs.
Garfield County is home to two airports: Rifle Garfield County Airport is located just east of the city of Rifle, while KGWS Sumers Airpark (formerly known as the Glenwood Springs Municipal Airport) is located in south Glenwood Springs.
Prison
The Rifle Correctional Center, operated by the Colorado Department of Corrections, is a 192-bed minimum security prison located in unincorporated Garfield County, nine miles north of Rifle.
Elected officials
| Position | Elected Official |
|---|
| County Commissioner | Tom Jankovsky |
| County Commissioner | Perry Will |
| County Commissioner | Mike Samson |
| Assessor | Jim Yellico |
| Clerk & Recorder | Jackie Harmon |
| Coroner | Robert Glassmire |
| Sheriff | Lou Vallario |
| Surveyor | Scott Aibner |
| Treasurer/Public Trustee | Carrie Couey |
Garfield County lies within Colorado's 9th Judicial District, represented by District Attorney Benjamin Sollars. [25] The 9th District, which serves Garfield, Pitkin and Rio Blanco counties, operates its main office at the Garfield County Courthouse in Glenwood Springs.
Politics
Voting participation rates in Garfield County are above the U.S. national average. [26] [27] In the 2018 general election, 65% of eligible voters participated. In the 2020 presidential election, 84.47% eligible voters participated. The county leans slightly Republican based on vote totals in elections from 2008 to 2018, with an estimated range of 2 to 1,000 votes often determining candidate outcomes for the county.
Garfield County has primarily voted for Republican Party candidates in presidential elections throughout its history, with the county only failing to back the Republican candidate ten times from 1884 to 2020. Although the county includes the relatively liberal cities of Carbondale and Glenwood Springs, this is somewhat outweighed by the nearby towns of Rifle, Silt, Parachute, and Battlement Mesa. Until 2020, the most recent Democratic win was by Bill Clinton in 1992, but Republicans were held to a plurality of the county's votes in half of the six following presidential elections prior to 2020. Notably, Barack Obama lost the county to John McCain by two votes in 2008.
In 2020, Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the county since Clinton in 1992, with about 50% of the vote. No Democratic presidential candidate has won a majority of the vote in the county since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, although in 2020, Biden was just 26 votes shy of having the majority of the vote in the county. The county's leftward trend continued significantly in 2022, during which it backed the Democratic candidates and eventual winners in every statewide race. In 2024 it once again went Democratic, voting for Kamala Harris, though by a slightly narrower plurality than in 2020.
The county lies in Colorado's 3rd congressional district, represented by Republican Jeff Hurd.
United States
Colorado 
