Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
4 places in town are on the National Register. Below: 5 old photos and papers, maps from 1955 on, and the census since 1890.
The Westcliffe post office opened in 1881, the earliest record of the town by name.
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
The country’s official list of buildings and places worth saving.
National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places. Photos from Wikimedia Commons, credited on each place’s page.
From Wikipedia’s history of Westcliffe.
Westcliffe had its start in 1881 when the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad was extended to that point. The town was originally named Clifton but was later renamed Westcliffe after Westcliffe-on-Sea, England, by William Abraham Bell, a businessman who owned a large amount of land in the area.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
BuiltWestcliff School is built
On the mapFirst mapped by the U.S. Geological Survey
In the archiveFrontier Pathways Scenic and Historic Byway - Group at Westcliffe Information CenterOne decade in the archive so far: the 1990s. Scroll each row; tap a photo for its story.
The U.S. Geological Survey’s map of Westcliffe.
1955Westcliffe sheet · 1:24,000U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (public domain), via Esri’s collection of the scans. The red ring marks the center of Westcliffe.
Between 192 and 568 people in every census since 1890.
14 censuses, 1890–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Westcliffe’s Wikipedia page.
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
Each neighbor’s History grade, on the same three inputs.
The Westcliffe post office opened in 1881, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
4 listings: 4 buildings, among them the Hope Lutheran Church (listed 1978, the first). 6 historic buildings in all.
What the archives can’t tell you, neighbors can.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikimedia Commons (5), Wikidata (1), the National Register of Historic Places (4), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock) and the USGS Geographic Names Information System. Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
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