57 Fun Facts About Fort Collins

Fort Collins was founded in 1864 as what kind of settlement?

Fort Collins began in 1864 as a U.S. Army outpost, Camp Collins, built to guard the Overland Trail stage route; it never had walls and was decommissioned in 1867.

Colonel William O. Collins commanded which Wyoming Army post when he authorized the site named for him?

Collins commanded Fort Laramie as colonel of the 11th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry; his son Caspar, killed in 1865, gave his name to Fort Caspar near present-day Casper, Wyoming.

What wiped out the original Camp Collins near Laporte in June 1864, prompting the move downriver?

A flood on the Cache la Poudre in June 1864 swept through the camp near Laporte, and the garrison rebuilt on higher ground downstream at the site of today's Old Town.

Fort Collins is the seat of which Colorado county?

Fort Collins is the seat of Larimer County, one of the 17 original counties of Colorado Territory created in 1861 and named for General William Larimer; the seat moved there from Laporte.

In what year did the county seat move from Laporte to Fort Collins?

The county seat moved from Laporte to Fort Collins in 1868, one year after Camp Collins was decommissioned; the settlement's first school had opened in 1866.

Roughly how many people lived in Fort Collins at the 2020 census?

The 2020 census counted 169,810 residents in Fort Collins, about 170,000, up from 143,986 at the 2010 census.

Roughly how high above sea level does Fort Collins sit?

Fort Collins sits at roughly 4,982 feet above sea level, just under a mile high, where the Great Plains meet the Front Range foothills.

Fort Collins's river is named for a cache of what, buried by French trappers?

French trappers caught in a snowstorm buried gunpowder by the river to lighten their load; the river's name, Cache la Poudre, means roughly 'hide the powder.'

The Poudre River empties into which larger river a few miles east of Greeley?

The river drops about 6,155 feet between its headwaters in Rocky Mountain National Park and its mouth, which is why the current is so swift.

In October 1986, 76 miles of the Cache la Poudre received which federal designation?

Congress made 76 miles of the Cache la Poudre a National Wild and Scenic River in October 1986, the first such designation in Colorado; 30 miles are classed wild and 46 recreational.

How do locals pronounce "Poudre"?

Locals say POO-der, an anglicized version of the French poudre; the canyon the river carved runs roughly 40 miles through the foothills northwest of the city.

Horsetooth Reservoir was built in 1949 as part of which federal water project?

Horsetooth Reservoir stores Colorado-Big Thompson Project water carried east under the Continental Divide through the Alva B. Adams Tunnel, and it is held back by four earthen dams.

Filling Horsetooth Reservoir drowned part of which small community, whose schoolhouse is still underwater?

Stout, an 1880s sandstone-quarry town, lies under the south end of Horsetooth Reservoir; residents moved out before the water rose in 1949, and the schoolhouse remains submerged.

Which landmark appears in the official seal of the City of Fort Collins?

Horsetooth Rock, the tooth-shaped pegmatite outcrop crowning the ridge west of the city, is the landmark on the Fort Collins city seal and gave its name to the reservoir and road below.

CSU was chartered in 1870 under what name?

Chartered in 1870 as Colorado Agricultural College, the school held no classes until 1879, when its first term resembled a college-prep academy more than a college.

In what year did the Colorado General Assembly approve the name Colorado State University?

The General Assembly approved the Colorado State University name in 1957, replacing Colorado A&M; President William E. Morgan argued doctoral graduates deserved degrees from a university rather than an A&M.

What was the name of Colorado State's first ram mascot, introduced in 1946?

The first live ram, Buck, arrived in 1946; earlier mascots included a sweater-wearing black bear cub and a bulldog named Peanuts, and the ram was later renamed CAM after a halftime naming contest.

Students of which school were blamed for the 1918 poisoning of Peanuts, the college's bulldog mascot?

Students from CU Boulder, the college's arch-rival, were blamed when Peanuts, the bulldog mascot, was poisoned in 1918; alumnus Glenn Morris, the 1936 Olympic decathlon champion, later donated a replacement bulldog.

CSU's hillside letter above the old Hughes Stadium site honors teams once known as what?

The teams were the Aggies, a nickname from the school's agricultural-college days; students laid out the giant hillside 'A' in their honor in the 1920s.

What are Colorado State University's official school colors?

Colorado State's official colors are green and gold, worn by the Rams since the school's agricultural-college days; the football field is named for longtime coach Sonny Lubick.

Autism advocate Temple Grandin joined the CSU faculty in 1990 in which field?

She earned her doctorate in animal science at Illinois in 1989 and is known for designing humane livestock-handling systems.

Six-time Olympic gold medalist Amy Van Dyken, one of CSU's most famous athletes, competed in which sport?

Amy Van Dyken swam for CSU before winning four swimming gold medals at Atlanta 1996 and two more at Sydney 2000.

The Oval at the heart of the CSU campus is lined with 65 trees of which species?

The Oval, laid out in 1909 and 2,065 feet around, is ringed by 65 American elms, a species made scarce in such numbers by Dutch elm disease.

Which Fort Collins-born Disney artist contributed ideas for Main Street, U.S.A.?

Goff met Walt Disney in a London model shop in 1951 when both wanted to buy the same model train, and he later designed the Nautilus for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Along with Fort Collins, which Missouri town inspired the look of Disney's Main Street, U.S.A.?

Walt Disney spent part of his childhood in Marceline, while the Fort Collins connection came through a Disney artist who grew up riding the town's trolley.

Old Town Fort Collins was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in what year?

Old Town Fort Collins was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978; the district's commercial buildings are largely Late Victorian and Romanesque Revival.

In what year did student activism end Fort Collins' alcohol ban, in force since the late 1890s?

Fort Collins went dry in 1896 and stayed that way until 1969, when a repeal campaign backed by CSU students overturned the ban, decades before the city became a craft-beer capital.

Kim Jordan co-founded New Belgium Brewing in 1991 with which partner?

Jeff Lebesch, an electrical engineer and Jordan's husband at the time, began home-brewing after a 1989 bicycle tour of Belgium, which also inspired the Fat Tire name.

In 1999 New Belgium became the first U.S. brewery powered entirely by what?

In 1999 New Belgium's employees voted to buy all of the brewery's electricity from wind power, giving up part of their bonuses to cover the premium and making it the first wind-powered U.S. brewery.

In 2019 New Belgium was bought by Lion, the Australian subsidiary of which Japanese beverage group?

Lion, the Sydney-based arm of Japan's Kirin Holdings, announced the New Belgium purchase in November 2019 and completed it in early 2020.

Before New Belgium reformulated Fat Tire in January 2023, what style of beer was it?

Fat Tire was an amber ale, sold as Fat Tire Amber Ale from 1991 until the January 2023 recipe change made it lighter in color and crisper.

Odell Brewing opened in 1989 inside a converted 1915 building that had been what?

Odell opened in 1989 in a converted 1915 grain elevator, making it Fort Collins's first craft brewery; its founders were Doug Odell, his wife Wynne and his sister Corkie.

In what year did Anheuser-Busch open its Fort Collins brewery?

Anheuser-Busch opened its Fort Collins brewery in 1988 on the city's northeast edge, bringing a mass-market brewer to a town that soon grew a craft-beer cluster around it.

The Fort Collins Municipal Railway was North America's last streetcar system to run only which type of car?

The city took over the failing private trolley line in 1919 and ran only single-truck Birney safety cars, bought new from the American Car Company, until the end.

Along which street does the restored heritage streetcar run on summer weekends?

Restored Car 21 runs along West Mountain Avenue between City Park and Howes Street; its first public trips came on December 29, 1984, 77 years to the day after electric streetcar service began.

Fort Collins was the last city in Colorado to operate streetcars; in what year did regular service end?

Regular service ended on June 30, 1951, a year after the Denver Tramway's last streetcars ran in 1950, leaving Fort Collins as Colorado's final streetcar city.

The MAX bus rapid transit line, opened in 2014, runs along which transitway corridor?

MAX runs along the Mason Corridor, a five-mile transitway beside the BNSF tracks parallel to College Avenue, from downtown to south of Harmony Road.

Which magazine named Fort Collins the best place to live in the United States in 2006?

Money magazine ranked Fort Collins No. 1 on its 2006 Best Places to Live list of small cities, an honor the city and CSU cited for years afterward.

Which Bicycle Friendly Community level did Fort Collins earn in 2013, shared by only four US cities?

The League of American Bicyclists rated Fort Collins Platinum in 2013, a level then held only by Boulder, Davis and Portland; PeopleForBikes ranked it the top U.S. cycling city in 2018.

Hattie McDaniel lived as a child in a Fort Collins house on which street?

The McDaniel family lived at 317 Cherry Street around 1900, when Hattie was a small girl, and a plaque marks the house today.

Which future Supreme Court justice, nicknamed "Whizzer", was born in Fort Collins in 1917?

White finished second in the 1937 Heisman voting for the Colorado Buffaloes before turning to law and serving on the Court from 1962 to 1993.

During the 2009 "balloon boy" hoax, where was six-year-old Falcon Heene eventually found?

Falcon had been hiding in a cardboard box in the attic above the family garage the whole time; his father Richard later pleaded guilty to attempting to influence a public servant.

Which agency operates time-signal station WWV near Fort Collins?

NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, runs WWV from a site north of Fort Collins that it shares with WWVB, the 60 kHz station that sets radio-controlled clocks.

OtterBox, the phone-case maker headquartered in Fort Collins, started in 1998 by making what?

OtterBox began with waterproof gear boxes, the rugged 'otter boxes' founder Curt Richardson designed to keep valuables dry; phone cases came years later.

Woodward, the aerospace-controls firm in Fort Collins, began in 1870 making speed governors for what?

Amos Woodward patented a governor for waterwheels in 1870 in Rockford, Illinois, founding the company that moved its headquarters to Fort Collins in 2007.

The Lindenmeier site in Colorado is the most extensive campsite yet found from which prehistoric culture?

Lindenmeier, north of Fort Collins, is the largest known Folsom campsite, with dates of roughly 12,300 years ago; it became a National Historic Landmark in 1961.

The Cameron Peak Fire, which started in the upper Poudre Canyon in August 2020, set what Colorado record?

It burned 208,663 acres over 112 days and passed the Pine Gulch Fire, which had set the same record only seven weeks earlier.

By the early 1900s, sugar-beet by-products made Fort Collins the world capital of what?

Lambs fattened on beet tops and pulp from the sugar factories made Fort Collins the self-styled lamb feeding capital of the world in the early 1900s.

How many people did the July 1997 Spring Creek flood kill in Fort Collins?

The rainfall was the heaviest on record for a Colorado urban area, and the waters swamped CSU's library, causing about $140 million in damage there alone.

Which philanthropist gave $12,500 for the city's first purpose-built public library, completed in 1904?

Andrew Carnegie's $12,500 grant built the 1904 library in Library Park; his usual condition was that the city fund it and keep it free, and the building later became the Carnegie Center for Creativity.

Fort Collins ranks where among Colorado cities by population, per the 2020 census?

Fort Collins was Colorado's fourth-largest city at the 2020 census, behind Denver, Colorado Springs and Aurora and just ahead of Lakewood.

Roughly how far is Fort Collins from Cheyenne, Wyoming?

The city sits at the base of the northern Front Range foothills, about 60 miles north of Denver and 45 miles south of Cheyenne.

What triggered Fort Collins' first population boom in 1872?

The Agricultural Colony of 1872 brought hundreds of settlers, who took lots south of the original townsite; friction between newcomers and old settlers shaped politics in the town incorporated in 1873.

Which company started the Fort Collins trolley service in 1907?

The Denver and Interurban Railroad, a Colorado and Southern subsidiary, opened the Fort Collins streetcar line on December 29, 1907; the city bought it out after the company gave up local service in 1918.

How many members sit on the Fort Collins City Council, including the mayor?

The council has seven members: a mayor elected citywide for a two-year term and six district members serving staggered four-year terms, under a council-manager system.

Roughly how many miles of designated bikeways does Fort Collins have?

Fort Collins counts over 280 miles of designated bikeways, including the paved Spring Creek and Poudre River trails and the dirt Foothills Trail along Horsetooth Reservoir.

Which Fort Collins venue is home to the city's symphony orchestra?

The Lincoln Center, the city-owned performing arts complex on West Magnolia Street, is home to the Fort Collins Symphony and also hosts touring Broadway productions.