Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Dotsero, CO

Dotsero is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) located in and governed by Eagle County, Colorado.

Dotsero sits at the confluence of the Eagle River and the Colorado River along U.S. Highway 6 and Interstate 70, near the head of Glenwood Canyon and about five miles west of Gypsum.

The population of the Dotsero CDP was 1,172 at the 2020 census, a 66.2 percent increase from the 705 residents counted in 2010, the first census for which the CDP was defined.

The 2020 census counted 327 households in Dotsero and 334 housing units, of which only 2.1 percent were vacant.

Dotsero is a young community, with a median age of 29.1 years at the 2020 census, when 70.9 percent of residents identified as Hispanic or Latino.

Dotsero grew up as a railroad junction on the Denver and Rio Grande Western line between Denver and Salt Lake City, which was built through the site in 1881 on its route over Tennessee Pass.

The Dotsero Cutoff, completed on June 15, 1934, connected Dotsero with Orestod — Dotsero spelled backwards — near Bond, finally giving Denver a direct rail link to Salt Lake City, while the old Tennessee Pass route has been dormant since 1997.

The name Dotsero comes from surveyor Ferdinand Hayden's 1877 survey of central and southwest Colorado, which used the site as his "Dot Zero" reference point for his maps.

Dotsero's own post office operated from June 29, 1883, until February 29, 1948, and the area is now served by the Gypsum post office under ZIP Code 81637.

Dotsero is built at the base of the Dotsero Volcano, which the U.S. Geological Survey says erupted about 4,140 years ago and which remains Colorado's only active volcano, and making cinder blocks from the volcano's material was the community's main industry for years.