Arriving in the Pike's Peak region in 1858, Anthony Bott played a major role in the organization and development of Colorado City and El Paso County.

Eager to strike it rich, Anthony Bott joined a fifty-man and one-woman prospecting party from Westport, Missouri. Leaving Missouri in August 1858, the party arrived in the Pike's Peak region in the early fall, learning that two separate prospecting parties (the Greene Russell party from Georgia and the Lawrence, Kansas party) had reached the area earlier in the spring and summer.

Upon arriving in the Pike's Peak region, Anthony Bott and other members of the prospecting party not only searched for gold but also searched for town sites. Because of Ute Pass, Bott, George A. Bute, and others platted the town site of El Dorado in the latter part of 1858 on the present location of Colorado City. However, with the rival of Auroria, Denver City, and other mining supply towns to the north, El Dorado did not survive, dissolving in the spring of 1859.

Not wanting to abandon the idea of a town at the bottom of Ute Pass, Anthony Bott, along with several other town promoters, met in Denver City and organized the Colorado City Town Company on August 11, 1859, founding Colorado City on August 12. A few days later, on August 15, 1859, Bott and many of the same eager town promoters organized the El Paso Claim Club, a vigilante form of civil government, to record real estate claims and settle land disputes.

Even though Ute Pass provided passage to the South Park mining camps, the pass was only a trail. During the winter of 1859-1860, the Colorado City Town Company hired Anthony Bott as foreman of the construction crew that built the first wagon road through Ute Pass. The Town Company compensated the workers with town lots.

As busy as Anthony Bott was in the community, Bott apparently found time to explore the surrounding environment. In 1859, Anthony Bott, M.S. Beach, George Bute, A. D. Richardson, Lewis Tappan, several people from Golden City, and several women hiked to the summit of Pike's Peak, taking several days. At the summit, the hikers found evidence of others having reached the summit. Records indicate that members of the Lawrence, Kansas, prospecting party hiked to the summit in the summer of 1858.