The Detention Center
None — Mineral County operates no jail
- Operated byNot applicable — the county has no jail
- Whether the county holds prisonersNo. The Colorado Division of Criminal Justice's summary of county jail data under HB19-1297 states: "Counties not operating a jail: Archuleta, Cheyenne, Dolores, Hinsdale, Kiowa, Lake, Mineral, Ouray, Phillips, San Juan, Sedgwick." Mineral County is therefore outside the HB19-1297 jail reporting requirement.
- Where its prisoners goTo other counties' jails under contract. A Colorado Legislative Council Staff memorandum on county jails states: "Kiowa, Philips, Hinsdale, Mineral, Delores, Ouray, and San Juan counties contract with other county jails." Neither source names the specific receiving jail for Mineral County, and the county's own site does not say, so the partner jail is recorded as Not found rather than guessed.
- Which jail holds themNot found
- What was triedThe county's own site is at https://www.mineralcountycolorado.com/ (not the mineralcounty.colorado.gov address used earlier). Its Sheriff page, staff directory at /directory, elected officials page, commissioners page and finance page were all opened and none names a jail, a detention facility or a holding contract. The 2026 budget PDFs under /media/ could not be read.
Source: Colorado Division of Criminal Justice, Office of Research and Statistics — Summary of County Jail Data Pursuant to House Bill 19-1297 · checked 2026-08-24
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Terry Wetherill
- Runs the jailNo county jail to run. Mineral County operates no jail; the Sheriff's Office lists a sheriff, an executive assistant, an emergency manager and three deputies, and the county's own site has no jail or detention page.
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff under Colorado law
- Also serves asFire Warden — the county staff directory lists him as "Terry Wetherill, Sheriff/Fire Warden" and as a member of Mineral County Search & Rescue
- Sheriff's Office address1201 N Main St, PO Box 454, Creede, CO 81130; office (719) 658-2600, with non-emergency dispatch through Alamosa at (719) 589-5807
- DeputiesShane Birdsey, Cody McCutcheon and Boyd Wheelwright, as published on the county's Sheriff page
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Mineral County — Sheriff · checked 2026-08-24
The Judges
Colorado judges are appointed through a judicial nominating commission and then face retention elections. They are state judicial officers, not county officials. In Colorado the County Court judge normally sets bond at first appearance.
12th Judicial District Court — Chief Judge
- Amanda C. Hopkins
12th Judicial District Court — District Judges
- Kim Cortez-Rodriguez
- Michael A. Gonzales
- Crista Newmyer-Olsen
Mineral County Court — County Court Judges
- Ruth M. Acheson
- Jason Kelly
- Hollie G. Wheelwright
- The county's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-08-24
The County Commissioners
They pay for the jail. The sheriff runs it.
- What they controlThe detention budget, the building itself, and the agreements that let other agencies rent its beds.
- What they don'tDay-to-day operations. The sheriff is separately elected and answers to voters, not to the board.
- The boardBoard of County Commissioners →
Notes on the record
- Mineral County operates no jail. This is confirmed by the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice's HB19-1297 jail data report, which lists Mineral among eleven Colorado counties not operating a jail, and by a Colorado Legislative Council Staff memorandum stating that Mineral is among the counties that contract with other county jails. The specific receiving jail is not named in either source or on the county's own site.
- The county's working website is https://www.mineralcountycolorado.com/, not the mineralcounty.colorado.gov address tried in the earlier pass. On that site the Sheriff page names Sheriff Terry Wetherill and three deputies, and the staff directory names the Board of County Commissioners (R. Scott Lamb, Chair, District 1; Zeke Ward, District 2; Ramona Weber, District 3). No page on that site mentions a jail, detention or the housing of prisoners.
- All ten transparency checks are recorded no. For a county with no jail that is the expected finding rather than a gap: there is no facility to name, no roster to publish and no detention budget line the county publishes on its own site.
- Deaths: Colorado counties report jail deaths quarterly to the state Division of Criminal Justice under CRS 17-26-118 (HB19-1297), published on the state Jail Data Dashboard at https://ors.colorado.gov/ors-jaildata. That is the state publishing, and Mineral County is outside the reporting requirement in any case because it runs no jail.
- Board of County Commissioners — three members, as in every Colorado county that is not consolidated. No commissioner page on the county's own site could be opened, so no names are recorded.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Mineral County and what it costs the people who live here. Nationally, almost 77% of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of anything, and suicide was the leading single cause of those deaths (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019).
How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?
Your VOTE is POWERFUL.
The sheriff who runs this jail is elected. So are the commissioners who pay for it.
Names verified 2026-08-24 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered