Hooper, Colorado

Hooper is about 30 miles north of Alamosa on State Route 17, right against the Saguache County line.

Hooper was one of those towns that came into being in the San Luis Valley during the land boom that followed the arrival of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad in Alamosa. Railroad spurs were built in all directions, one of them coming out of Alamosa and heading north through Mosca and into Hooper. However, between weather fluctuations, water problems and stock market whims, most of the rail lines in the San Luis Valley were abandoned and then pulled up completely.

Today there are several places where what remains as a town was started back in the late 1800's at the place where the railroad built a station house and loading platform.

Just a couple of miles west of Hooper the valley floor is abundant with irrigated crops and lots of work for farmhands. But not so Hooper... Hooper happens to be just east of the landform that separates the drainages in the center of San Luis Valley. To the west of that subtle rise in the ground, everythng flows to the Rio Grande. To the east is a large basin with no natural outlet. So years ago when the United States and Mexico were wrangling in court over the water that no longer flows in the Rio Grande all the way to Mexico, the US opted to build a system that would pump the water out of this basin and deliver it to the Rio Grande so that it would make the journey to Mexico and satisfy some of the complaint.