‘True Grit’ in Southwestern Colorado : Ranches surround tiny Ridgway, a hamlet with a Hollywood heritage in the shadow of the San Juans.

Giant cottonwood trees shade the town park of Ridgway, a southwest Colorado hamlet of 450 people, where bars are named for movies (“True Grit” was filmed here) and streets are named for girls: Lena, Cora, Charlotte, Elizabeth.

Not just any girls, either. Local lore has it that Lena and the others--no last names, please--were famous madams in the wide-open 1890s, when Ridgway was a railroad hub for the booming silver mines.

The town park, on North Lena, is flanked by a boardwalk, which, on the day of my visit, creaked with the tread of boots--dusty cowboy boots from working ranches, and stylish new boots worn by East Coast vacationers whose T-shirts linked them with the new Doral Resort and Spa in nearby Telluride.

The boots passed by the Ridgway Gallery and turned in at the True Grit Cafe, where the menu runs to green chile burgers and bar talk was about the Labor Day rodeo at the Ouray County Fairgrounds. Memorabilia of John Wayne decks the cafe walls. He won an Oscar in 1969 for his crusty role as Rooster Cogburn, and is remembered affectionately for scenes shot in the park across the street.

Along the boardwalk, old Jack Daniels barrels have been planted with streamers of blue lobelia, marigolds and dog-faced pansies. Window boxes sprout with red geraniums. The air is fresh at almost 7,000 feet above sea level; in summer, darkness does not fall until 9 p.m.

But the tiny Ridgway Gallery--the real reason I drove this way--was closed and so I scanned the windows, studying two scenes of Indian village life. The Indians were dancing. Their headbands were robin’s-egg blue; their feathers shone like a full moon. There was something intimate about the work, something that made staring seem almost intrusive, like peeking into a stranger’s house while out on an evening stroll.

These are rare, old prints that have been colorized, a Denver friend had told me. The gallery owners--Meredith and Jorge Anchondo--specialize in hand-painting rotogravure pictures.

This notion so enchanted the new U.S. ambassador to Spain, Richard G. Capen Jr., that while on holiday in Colorado earlier this year, he commissioned the Anchandos to fashion his official gift to King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia: prints of Spanish explorers in the American West, that by now have made their way from the Ridgway boardwalk to the royal palace in Madrid.

Ridgway hunkers at the northern edge of the San Juan Mountains, whose jagged, snow-slashed beauty is reminiscent of Italy’s Dolomites. On all sides are prosperous ranches, rolling green land with big red barns and high Western gates topped with longhorns and cattle brands such as the Double D.

Then, between Ridgway and the cul-de-sac resort of Telluride, 38 miles southwest, the land suddenly breaks out in red rock: sheer canyons studded with pines and smoothed by rushing rivers, a setting not unlike Arizona’s Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon.

Earlier, as I drove north from Durango, I had passed all too swiftly through the mountain village of Ouray (you-ray)--a Victorian cutout, a pastiche of pastel frame houses turned bed-and-breakfasts and, on Main Street, the cheery St. Elmo Hotel. The summer population of 1,800 dwindles to 600 by winter.

Ouray calls itself the “Switzerland of America.” Steep hillsides are quilted with wildflowers, including the white and lavender Colorado columbine, which has the alpine bravura of edelweiss. But the Western frontier mood is inescapable: pitched roofs, wraparound porches and the red-brick Elks Lodge near the Antlers Motel.

This is hiking, four-wheel-driving and mountain-biking country. Ouray’s huge public swimming pools, fed by natural hot springs, are popular for those with sore muscles. More than 100 people were in the water when I drove by after 7 p.m., and a lifeguard, still wearing dark glasses, was on duty.

In the nine miles on to Ridgway--from one white-fenced ranch to the next--the low, late sun sparkled through the flying tails of chestnut horses and roans. Elongated shadows of poplar trees stretched across the road.

It could have been a scene from “How the West Was Won,” which also was filmed amid the gentle grandeur of Colorado’s Ouray County.