Alamosa, Colorado

The City of Alamosa is the Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Alamosa County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 8,780 at the 2010 United States Census. The city is the commercial center of the San Luis Valley in south-central Colorado, and is the home of Adams State University.

History

Alamosa was established in May 1878 by the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad and quickly became an important rail center. The railroad had an extensive construction, repair and shipping facility in Alamosa for many years and headquartered its remaining narrow gauge service here with trackage reaching many points throughout southwest Colorado and northern New Mexico. Alamosa is now a notable tourist town with many nearby attractions, including the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve and Colorado Gators Reptile Park. The town hosts "Summer Fest on the Rio" which occurs the first weekend in June and the Early Iron car show over the Labor Day weekend. The city takes its name from the Spanish adjective Alamosa, meaning "of cottonwood", for the cottonwood forests which grow along the Rio Grande and throughout town.

Alamosa (disambiguation)

Alamosa may stand for:

2927 Alamosa

2927 Alamosa, provisional designation 1981 TM, is a stony asteroid from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, about 12 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 5 October 1981, by American astronomer Norman Thomas at Lowell's Anderson Mesa Station in Flagstaff, Arizona.

The S-type asteroid orbits the Sun at a distance of 2.1–3.0 AU once every 4.03 years (1,473 days). The body's orbit is tilted by 17 degrees to the plane of the ecliptic and shows an eccentricity of 0.17. It has a rotation period of 4.4 hours and an albedo of 0.20, assumed by the Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link (CALL).

The minor planet was named for the discoverer's birthplace, Alamosa, Colorado, the central town of the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado, located on the upper Rio Grande River. Almosa is Spanish for cottonwood tree.

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