[4] Crestone is located at the foot of the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo Range, in the northern part of the San Luis Valley.

Crestone was platted in 1880 by George Adams, owner of the neighboring Luis Maria Baca Grant No.

Much of this spiritual development was catalyzed by the couple Hanne and Maurice Strong in the 1970s, who set out to make it an interfaith center.

The Crestones, as they are known collectively, in turn, took their name from the Spanish word crestón, which, according to Walter Borneman and Lyndon Lampert's book A Climbing Guide to Colorado’s Fourteeners, means: “the top of a cock’s comb”; “the crest of a helmet”; or, in miners’ jargon, “an outcropping of ore”.

The Baca Grant was one of the first large tracts of land to be fenced in the West and was the home of prize Hereford cattle.

In addition to ranching, there was some mining in the area to the east and south of Crestone of small shallow iron oxide copper gold ore deposits.

Maurice Strong, owner of a controlling interest, and his fiancée, Hanne Marstrand, visited the development and "fell in love with it".

The population gradually began to increase and by 2006 several hundred homes had been built and small spiritual communities had become established.

It is platted on a quarter section of land, or 160 acres (0.65 km2), on the alluvial fan of North Crestone Creek.

[9] The eastern portion of Road T forms the north boundary of the Baca National Wildlife Refuge.Mountain terrain east of Crestone is managed by the Rio Grande National Forest including part of the Sangre de Cristo Wilderness.

The combined office of the United States Forest Service and the BLM is in Saguache, Colorado, the county seat.

The Crestone community is much larger, consisting also of several hundred homes in the Baca Grande subdivision, the surrounding rural area, and the small town of Moffat, Colorado.

According to its website, the institute "provides grants and some financial support in Crestone/Baca, Colorado to qualified religious and spiritual projects."

[14] Crestone is one of only a handful of places in the United States where open-air funeral pyres are legally permitted.

CEOLP is a non-denominational community-based group promoting informed end-of-life choices and supporting their fulfillment.

[21] The Annual San Luis Valley Energy Fair is held in Crestone's town parks over Labor Day weekend each year.

Black bears are also common, but usually only at night when they raid apple trees and the dumpsters at the cafes and stores in downtown Crestone.

Local sympathizers complained bitterly the wrong bear had been killed, receiving extensive coverage through Channel 9 in Denver which was distributed nationally by the Associated Press,[24] prompting an investigation of the incident by the Division of Parks and Wildlife and possible re-evaluation of management of bears in mixed rural-urban communities such as Crestone.