Nucla is still made up of citizens with a “get it done” attitude. Now primarily a support town for agricultural operations, Nucla is the mid-point on the Rimrocker Trail, a 124-mile 4×4 trail from the City of Montrose to Moab. Nucla offers a B&B, grocery store, coffee shop, ATV rentals, and gas station.

Nucla is located at 5823 feet above sea level at the base of the Uncompahgre Plateau and the San Miguel Basin. In 1894 a ditch company called the Colorado Cooperative Company organized a colony of its members to build a 17 mile ditch to bring water from its head gate in the San Miguel Canyon northeast of Norwood to the head of the Tabeguache plateau. The name Tabeguache is an Indian word meaning “The Sunny Side’. The ditch reached completion in late 1904. The new town site, Nucla, was staked out on a little flat in Tabeguache Park. The colonists, not wanting to waste an acre of good farmland, situated the town site on a rocky hill unfit for farming. C.U. Williams, a member of the Company, proposed the name “Nucla ” for the new town, he and many of the colonists believing that it would become the nucleus of the area. The arrival of water to the Tabeguache plateau was the beginning of farming and ranching that continues today.