FORT COLLINS – Colorado’s only statewide general-interest magazine can’t seem to get enough of Cortez and Montezuma County.

Half of Colorado Life magazine’s 2018 issues have featured or will feature major articles from the Cortez area, said Colorado Life Editor Matt Masich, partly because he and the publication’s writers and photographers look for any excuse to return to the Four Corners region.

“When you visit Colorado towns for a living, you find that each place has its idiosyncrasies, but you also notice a lot of similarities between towns,” Masich said in a press release.

“And then there’s Cortez, which I find fascinating because it’s so uniquely itself and so unlike any other place I’ve been to in Colorado,” Masich said. “From my perspective as a storyteller, Montezuma County is basically a gold mine of great stories waiting to be shared with a statewide audience.”

Last year, after Colorado Life ran a small article on Cortez’s Kelly Place Bed and Breakfast, he received a letter from a couple in Morrison who said the story inspired them to move to Cortez. Encouraged by the positive reception, Colorado Life featured the Four Corners Monument in its May/June issue.

A story in Colorado Life’s September/October 2018 issue, which hits newsstands and subscribers around Labor Day, tells how the “fruit sleuths” of the McElmo Canyon-based Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project are tracking down and saving the county’s heritage apple varieties. Cortez gets its turn in the statewide spotlight with a photo-heavy, eight-page feature in the November/December 2018 issue devoted to the community’s most interesting people and places.

Colorado Life’s coverage is making an impact, said Kelly Kirkpatrick, director of tourism for the Mesa Verde Country Visitor Information Bureau.

“Life in Southwest Colorado has a different pace than much of the state, one that connects the past with the future,” Kirkpatrick said. “This valley has so much history, but such a vitality in the people that choose to live here. Colorado Life takes these stories of our community and makes them real to their readers.”

Colorado Life Magazine publishes six issues a year in celebration of the nature, history, wildlife and people of Colorado. The magazine is based in Fort Collins and is family-owned by Chris and Angela Amundson. For more information, call 970-480-0148 or visit www.ColoradoLifeMagazine.com.