Ask the average person what Colorado’s largest city is and they’ll probably respond with “Denver… obviously.” Believe it or not, they’re wrong. Keep in mind we’re talking size, not population, and that we’re talking the actual city of Denver, not the Denver metro area. Under those terms, the largest city in Colorado is, in fact, Colorado Springs.

Spanning about 195 square miles, Colorado Springs easily beats Aurora’s 160 square miles and Denver’s 153. Population density is, of course, higher in Denver (around 4,700 residents per square mile compared to about 2,450 in Colorado Springs), but no other spot in the Centennial State can match Colorado Springs’ size.

Per Britannica, Colorado Springs is actually larger than 30 countries, dependencies, and territories around the globe, including places like Vatican City (0.17 square miles), Liechtenstein (62 square miles), Monaco (0.8 square miles), the U.S. Virgin Islands (134 square miles), Andorra (181 square miles), and the Gaza Strip (141 square miles).

When looking at full metropolitan areas, the story is quite a bit different. Denver’s full metro area (which is combined with metro areas of Aurora and Centennial) is about 8,345 square miles compared to Colorado Springs’ 2,684 – but keep in mind, Denver’s metro includes places as far west as Fairplay as far east as Deer Trail, two places that hardly feel like part of the Mile High City community. Meanwhile, the key ‘out-of-town’ components of Colorado Springs’ metro are Woodland Park and Fountain, which are undoubtedly home to plenty of Colorado Springs commuters.

It’s also worth noting that El Paso County, where Colorado Springs is located, is the most populous county in the state (764,448 residents to Denver County’s 744,323). Perhaps even more noteworthy is that the city of Colorado Springs is expected to surpass Denver’s population by 2050 following years of a back-and-forth race as the state climbs to around 8.5 million total residents. This would mean significant growth of 494,000-resident Colorado Springs compared to that of 729,000-resident Denver, but experts seem to think it’s inevitable.

While Colorado Springs doesn’t attract anything close to the attention that Denver does on a national scale despite its larger size, Colorado Springs was once home to the capital of then-territory Colorado. For a brief period of time, the now-quaint Old Colorado City neighborhood in Colorado Springs served as the first territorial capital of Colorado during portions of 1861 and 1862, with the capital then moved to Golden before finding a home in Denver in 1867.

Will Colorado’s capital status ever move back to Colorado Springs? That might be unlikely. That said, all signs seem to point to this Front Range city holding the claim of being both the state’s largest city and most populous one at some point this century.

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