Ten things worth knowing about Fort Collins

Every city has a handful of stories residents love to pass along. Fort Collins has more than most, thanks to a river, a college, a farm colony and a long memory kept by its museum and library. Here are ten, each one checked against the people who keep the record.

1. It is named for an Ohio cavalry colonel

In July 1862, soldiers were sent from Fort Laramie to a spot near present-day Laporte to guard the Overland Stage route. General James Craig named the post Camp Collins after Lieutenant Colonel William O. Collins, who commanded the 11th Ohio Cavalry. The name stuck when the camp moved and became a fort.

2. The city's birthday comes from a flood

On the night of June 9, 1864, the Cache la Poudre River flooded and destroyed Camp Collins. No one died, but the Army needed higher ground. Joseph Mason pointed out land near today's Willow Street, and on August 20, 1864, Colonel Collins signed the order creating the new military reservation there. The Fort Collins Historical Society treats that date as the town's birthday. The fort itself had no walls or stockade, and the last soldiers left in 1866.

3. The first people here were Arapaho and Cheyenne

The City of Fort Collins recognizes the area as the homeland of the Hinono'eiteen (Arapaho) and Tsétsėhéstȧhese (Cheyenne). An Arapaho band led by Warshinun, known to settlers as Friday, proposed a reservation along the Poudre in the 1860s, but none was created. The City says the land now protected as Arapaho Bend Natural Area was a common Arapaho gathering place.

4. The wide streets were a choice

Franklin Avery surveyed the new town in 1873 and used the open ground to lay out unusually wide streets, according to the Poudre Landmarks Foundation. You can still see the result along Mountain Avenue, and Avery's own 1879 sandstone house still stands at Mountain and Meldrum, owned by the City and cared for by the Poudre Landmarks Foundation; check the foundation's site for visiting.

5. Old Town helped inspire Disneyland

Harper Goff was born in 1911 and grew up in Fort Collins, where his father owned the Fort Collins Express Courier. As an art director for Walt Disney, he drew on his hometown when designing Main Street, U.S.A. The Fort Collins History Connection, which compared the buildings side by side, including the old firehouse on Walnut Street and the Linden Hotel, rates the story true.

6. The river's name comes from hidden gunpowder

The Cache la Poudre takes its name from French-Canadian trappers who, as the story goes, buried a store of gunpowder during a blizzard in the early 1800s. Today it is the only river in Colorado with a national Wild and Scenic designation, and its canyon road, Highway 14 toward Walden, is a state Scenic and Historic Byway.

7. There is a town under Horsetooth Reservoir

Stout grew up in the 1860s as a camp for sandstone quarry workers in the foothills west of town. When the Colorado-Big Thompson water project built Horsetooth Reservoir in the 1940s, Stout was evacuated and flooded. Its remains lie under the water that Larimer County now manages for boating, camping and fishing.

8. A dry town became a beer town

Fort Collins did not allow liquor sales until 1969, according to Visit Fort Collins. Today the visitor bureau credits the city with about 70 percent of Colorado's craft beer and more than 20 craft breweries. Odell Brewing, independent since 1989 and now fully employee owned, brews all of its packaged beer at its East Lincoln Avenue brewery, where it offers weekend tours, a patio and daily food trucks.

9. The streetcars still run

Fort Collins once had a city streetcar line, and two of its Birney cars survive. The Fort Collins Municipal Railway Society restored the trolley to its 1919 style beginning in 1977, and since 1984 volunteers have run it on part of its old route between City Park and Old Town, on weekends and holidays from May through September.

10. It is serious about bikes, and sunshine

The League of American Bicyclists renewed Fort Collins's Platinum rating this year, its fifth since 2013, according to the Rocky Mountain Collegian, and the City says Fort Collins is one of just five communities in the U.S. to hold Platinum status. The visitor bureau counts more than 280 miles of trails, and says the city averages around 300 days of sunshine a year, which helps explain why so many residents ride all winter.

Where to dig deeper

The Fort Collins History Connection, run by the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery and Poudre Libraries, holds the timeline, photos and legends behind most of these stories. The City's Full Story Fort Collins pages add Indigenous and neighborhood history, and the museum on Mason Court keeps the archive itself.