The City of Central, commonly known as Central City, is the Home Rule Municipality in Gilpin and Clear Creek counties that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Gilpin County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 663 at the 2010 United States Census. The city is a historic mining settlement founded in 1859 during the Pike's Peak Gold Rush and came to be known as the "Richest Square Mile on Earth". Central City and the adjacent city of Black Hawk form the federally designated Central City/Black Hawk Historic District. The city is now a part of the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area.