Larimer County, Colorado
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Larimer County is a county located in the U.S. state of Colorado. It is located along the Front Range, at the edge of the Colorado Eastern Plains along the border with Wyoming. As of 2000, the population is 251,494. The county seat and largest city is Fort Collins. The county was named for William Larimer, Jr., the founder of Denver.
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History
Larimer County was created in 1861 as one of seventeen original counties in the Colorado Territory; however, its western boundary was disputed. Controversy existed as to whether Larimer County ended at the Medicine Bow Range or at the Continental Divide thirty miles further west. An 1886 Colorado Supreme Court decision set the boundary at the Continental Divide, although the land between the Medicine Bow Range and the divide was made part of Jackson County in 1909.
Unlike that of much of Colorado, which was founded on the mining of gold and silver, the settlement of Larimer County was based almost entirely on agriculture, an industry that few that possible in the region during the initial days of the Colorado Gold Rush. The mining boom almost entirely passed the county by. It would take the introduction of irrigation to the region in the 1860s to bring the first widespread settlement to the area.
At the time of the arrival of Europeans in the early 19th century, the present-day county was occupied by Native Americans, with the Utes occupying the mountainous areas and the Cheyenne and Arapaho living on the piedmont areas along the base of the foothills. French fur trappers infiltrated the area in the early decades of the 19th century, soon after the area became part of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase and was organized as part of the Missouri Territory. In 1828 William H. Ashley ascended the Cache la Poudre River on his way to the Green River in present-day Utah. The river itself received its name in the middle 1830s from an obscure incident in which French-speaking trapping hid gunpowder along its banks, somewhere near present-day Laporte or Bellvue. In 1848 a group of Cherokee crossed through the county following the North Fork of the Poudre to the Laramie Plains on their way to California along a route that became known as the Cherokee Trail.
The area of county was officially opened to white settlement following negotiations with the Cheyenne and Arapaho in the 1858 Treaty of Fort Laramie, by which time the area was part of the Nebraska Territory. The first U.S. settlers arrived that same year in a party led by Antoine Janis from Fort Laramie. Janis, who had visited the area near Bellvue in 1844 and proclaimed it "the most beautiful place on earth", returned to file his official claim and helped found the first U.S. settlement in present-day Colorado, called Colona, just west of Laporte. Nearly simultaneously, Mario Madeno established Namaqua along the Big Thompson River just west of present-day Loveland. The first irrigation canals were established along the Poudre in the 1860s.
In 1862 the settlement established by Janis became a stagecoach stop along the Overland Trail, which was relocated south from its route in present-day Wyoming to the South Platte valley because of threats of attacks from Native Americans. In 1861, Laporte was designated as the first county seat after the organization of the Colorado Territory. In 1862, the United States Army established an outpost near Laporte that was designated as Camp Collins. A devastating flood in June 1864 wiped out the outpost, forcing the Army to seek a better location. At the urging of Joseph Mason, who had settled along the Poudre in 1860, the Army relocated its post downstream adjacent to Mason's land along the Overland stage route. The site of the new post became the nucleus of the town of Fort Collins, incorporated in 1873 after the withdrawl of the Army. By that time, Mason and others had convinced the leglislature of the Colorado Territorial Legislature to designate the new town as the county seat. In 1870, the legislature designated Fort Collins as the location of the state agricultural college (later Colorado State University), although the institution would exist only on paper for another decade while local residents sought money to for the first campus buildings. In 1873, Robert A. Cameron and other members of the Greeley Colony established the Fort Collins Agricultural Colony, which greatly expanded the grid plan and population of Fort Collins.
One of the primary goals of the early citizens of the county was the courting of railroads. County residents were disappointed when the Denver Pacific Railroad bypassed the county in 1870 in favor of Greeley. The first railroad finally arrived in the county in 1877 when the Colorado Central Railroad extended a line north from Golden via Longmont to Cheyenne. The town council of Fort Collins designated right-of-way through the center of town (and through the campus of the unbuilt college) for the line, creating a contentious issue to this day.
Along the new railroad sprung up the new platted towns of Loveland and Berthoud, named respectively after the president and chief surveyor of the Colorado Central. Likewise Wellington (founded in 1903) was named for a railroad employee. The Greeley, Salt Lake and Pacific Railroad arrived three years later as a subsidary of the Union Pacific Railroad, with the intention of creating a transcontinental line over Cameron Pass. Although the line was never extended over the mountains, it opened up the quarrying of stone for the railroad at Stout, furnishing another industry for the region. The brief attempt at the mining of gold in the region centered at the now ghost town of Manhattan in the Poudre Canyon.
The early growth of agriculture, which depended highly on irrigation, experienced a second boom in 1902 with the introduction of the cultivation of sugar beets, accompanied by the construction of the large processing plant of the Great Western Sugar Co. in Loveland. In the following decade, the sugar beat industry brough large numbers of German-Russians to the county. The neighborhoods of Fort Collins northeast of the Poudre were constructed largely to house these new families.
Geography
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 6,822 km² (2,634 mi²). 6,737 km² (2,601 mi²) of it is land and 84 km² (33 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 1.24% water.
Demographics
As of the census2 of 2000, there are 251,494 people, 97,164 households, and 63,156 families residing in the county. The population density is 37/km² (97/mi²). There are 105,392 housing units at an average density of 16/km² (40/mi²). The racial makeup of the county is 91.44% White, 0.66% Black or African American, 0.66% Native American, 1.56% Asian, 0.08% Pacific Islander, 3.41% from other races, and 2.19% from two or more races. 8.27% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race.
There are 97,164 households out of which 31.70% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 53.60% are married couples living together, 7.90% have a female householder with no husband present, and 35.00% are non-families. 23.40% of all households are made up of individuals and 6.30% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.52 and the average family size is 2.99.
In the county the population is spread out with 23.80% under the age of 18, 14.20% from 18 to 24, 30.70% from 25 to 44, 21.80% from 45 to 64, and 9.60% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 33 years. For every 100 females there are 99.90 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 98.20 males.
The median income for a household in the county is $48,655, and the median income for a family is $58,866. Males have a median income of $40,829 versus $27,859 for females. The per capita income for the county is $23,689. 9.20% of the population and 4.30% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 6.80% of those under the age of 18 and 4.40% of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line.
Cities and towns
Incorporated communities
- Berthoud (town)
- Estes Park (town)
- Fort Collins (city)
- Loveland (city)
- Timnath (town)
- Wellington (town)
- Windsor (town, historically in Weld County, but expanded into Larimer County in the 1990s).
Unincorporated communities
- Bellvue
- Buckeye
- Campion
- Cherokee Park
- Drake
- Glendevey
- Glen Haven
- Laporte
- Livermore
- Kinikinik
- Manhattan (ghost town)
- Masonville
- Pinewood Springs
- Poudre Park
- Red Feather Lakes
- Rustic
- Teds Place
- Virginia Dale
- Waverly
Features and attractions
- Poudre Canyon
- Virginia Dale
- Colorado State University
- Horsetooth Mountain
- Medicine Bow Mountains
- Front Range
- Rocky Mountain National Park
External links
