page_title: Cortez, Colorado
section_title: Economy
hierarchical_section_title: Cortez, Colorado / Economy
caption_attribution_description: English: View looking SE on Main Street in Cortez, with the cliff faces of the Mesa Verde visible in the distance.
context_page_description: Cortez is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Montezuma County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 8,482 at the 2010 United States Census.
context_section_description: Cortez is a local commercial center, competing with Durango in the east, and Farmington, New Mexico in the south, and draws trade from southeastern Utah, the extreme northeastern corner of Arizona, the Shiprock area of Northwestern New Mexico, and San Miquel, Dolores, Montezuma, and parts of LaPlata County in Colorado. Its economy is based very heavily on tourism, both to nearby Mesa Verde National Park as well as to San Juan National Forest, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands in the area (including Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, as well as the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and Navajo Indian Reservations).
  Mesa Verde National Park, featuring Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings, is situated southeast of Cortez.
caption: View looking SE of Main Street in Cortez, with the cliff faces of the Mesa Verde visible in the distance.
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