Monticello, named in honor of Thomas Jefferson's estate,[4] became the county seat in 1895 and was incorporated as a city in 1910.

[5] Monticello, along with much of San Juan County, experienced an increase in population and economic activity during the uranium boom from the late 1940s to the early 1960s.

[7] An 18-hole golf course, The Hideout, was built near the reclaimed site of the uranium mill using DOE cleanup funding in 2000.

[5] Early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began the first full-scale settling of what is now known as San Juan County, Utah.

After passing through Hole-In-The-Rock, the pioneers arrived in the San Juan County area and settled in Bluff on 6 April 1880.

[11] In that year, on a journey to northern Utah from the San Juan River settlements, Apostles Erastus Snow and Brigham Young Jr. passed through the current site of Monticello.

The Kansas and New Mexico Cattle and Land Company, operated by Edmund and Harold Carlisle, was located a few miles north of what is now Monticello, and the L.C.

[5] Notwithstanding the fact that others were utilizing the land, Hammond sent the families of George A. Adams, Frederick I. Jones, Parley R. Butt and Charles E. Walton from Bluff to establish a new settlement at what is now Monticello.

[13] By the first part of July 1887, the men had begun to plant crops, survey an irrigation ditch, and layout a townsite in the present-day Monticello area.

[5] Conflicts soon began with the Carlisle cowboys and Ute Indians over water and land rights, resulting in warning shots, heated disputes, and legal battles.

In the spring of 1888, the Adams and Butt families remained in Verdure while the rest of the settlers moved to North Montezuma and began construction of the town.

[5][13] Early names for the settlement were North Montezuma Creek, Piute Springs, and Hammond, after the stake president.

[4] In 1903 the Utah State Agricultural College in Logan established an experimental station in Verdure where various dry-farming techniques were tested for thirteen years.

In 1909, the Enlarged Homestead Act was passed, which provided 320 acres (1.3 km2) of non-irrigable land for a small price.

[5] Dry farming was a major occupation in the area up through the 1930s and is a vital part of the local economy today.

[5] The San Juan Record, the county newspaper, was established in Monticello by Oscar Walter McConkie in 1915, where it remains to this day.

[5] In 1948, the U.S. Federal Government purchased the mill and reopened it in 1949 as a converted uranium and vanadium processing plant.

[15] The Happy Jack Mine, located in White Canyon, San Juan County, was founded by Monticello natives Fletch Bronson and Joe Cooper.

Funding was provided to restore the former mill site and roughly 150 acres (0.61 km2) of surrounding land to a usable condition.

[14][16] Efforts have been made and are ongoing to secure compensation for the illness or death of family members exposed to the mill tailings.

From Monticello, a tree formation on the Blue Mountains can be seen, which resembles a horse's head and neck, which can be seen from any point in town.

Blue Mountain Entertainment is a local arts organization which provides funding to bring cultural performances to Monticello throughout the year.

Monticello was selected as the site for an extension of the George Wythe University; groundbreaking for the new facility took place in August 2008 but the project was never completed.