The county seat (1915, 6,843 feet), named for the creek where pioneers found wild doves, is a small agricultural town that boomed during the 1950s but fizzled with the collapse of the uranium market. Returning to its agrarian roots, Dove Creek now puffs itself as “The Pinto Bean Capital of the World.” Anasazi beans, a new hybrid, became a gourmet food in the early 1990s. Some 700 residents—about half the county's population—live here. Dove Creek has a few notable structures, such as the remains of a cabin once inhabited by Zane Grey, the western novelist who drew inspiration from the surrounding landscape for his novel Riders of the Purple Sage.
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