A Colorado gas station had the cheapest gas prices in the country, for a brief time

For a brief moment, Colorado was home to the cheapest gas in the country. A gas station in the Northern Colorado city of Evans dropped its price for regular unleaded to $1.99 per gallon.

But the deal was short-lived, available for just one day and only for drivers paying with cash.

"It's a relative rarity that we see a pop-up in Colorado," said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy. "Colorado has some of the lower gasoline taxes, and we do have a major refinery, the Suncor refinery."

According to GasBuddy, the average price of gas in Colorado is currently $2.79 per gallon, nearly 20 cents below the national average of $2.98. Prices have dropped about 40 cents compared to this time last year.

Still, De Haan cautions that sub-$2 prices are unlikely to become widespread.

"For those that are eagerly awaiting sub-$2 prices, I hate to put the kibosh on it, but this is probably not something that's going to pop up in most stations," he said. "We might see more than a handful of stations in late winter [offer lower prices] once we start getting away from using this winter gasoline. But the fact of the matter is, I don't think that most Coloradans are going to see a sub-$2 price."

De Haan attributes the recent drop in prices to broader economic trends, not political policy.

"We are kind of back to normal now," he said. "The shocks and imbalances, the pace of inflation has greatly cooled off, and that's a lot of the reason why gas prices are kind of back in this more familiar territory ... while politicians may be eager to take credit or point fingers, a lot of this is simply economics at work right now."

While the $1.99 deal didn't stick around long, it was a brief moment where Colorado led the way ... at least at the pump.