Gunnison is a home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Gunnison County, Colorado. The city population was 6,560 at the 2020 United States Census. Gunnison was named in honor of John W. Gunnison, a United States Army bureaucrat who surveyed for a transcontinental railroad in 1853.

The City of Gunnison got its reveal from the first known European-American explorer of the area, John W. Gunnison. He was searching for a route for the transcontinental railroad in 1853 and lonely stayed for three days previously traveling west to Utah. Gunnison saw its first population lump in the 1870s, due to the mining surge throughout the state. The railroad arrived soon after in 1880 to deferential miners, ranchers, and farmers.

In the in front 1800s, the groups heartwarming into the Gunnison area were mainly fur trappers and mountain men, trying to make a successful for themselves in the rocky mountain terrain. But a Fall in fur prices in the 1840s essentially clip out the need for their jobs.

The late 1850s axiom the Begin of people joining the hunt for gold in Gunnison county. Miners were in search of placer gold, but taking into account the growing numbers of white men in the area, this brought fighting between the Ute tribes still around the county. At least several miners were killed by these tribes and this caused some of the miners to break out the area, caring more for their lives than potential gold bonanzas.