Longmont began as a planned colony organized in Chicago

Most old Colorado towns grew up by accident around a mine, a railroad, or a river crossing. Longmont was different: it was planned on paper in Chicago and sold to settlers through memberships, like shares in a company.

In 1870 a group of organizers in Chicago started the Chicago-Colorado Colony. They sold memberships, and the money raised bought thousands of acres of land for a townsite and surrounding farms. In 1871 the colony picked its spot in the St. Vrain Valley, laid out the original townsite, and named the new town Longmont. The name comes from Longs Peak, the high mountain to the west, which itself was named for Major Stephen Long, an early American explorer of the region.

Because it was a colony town, Longmont started with a tidy, deliberate plan rather than a tangle of mining claims. That orderly origin still shows in the grid of the old town center and in the early focus on farming the valley’s good soil rather than chasing ore in the hills.

If you want the founding story straight from the source, the City of Longmont’s museum keeps the history of the colony and the families who located the town. It is a clear example of how some Front Range towns were built on purpose, by plan, from a long way off.