Julesburg moved four times - and one version was called the Wickedest City in the West

Most towns sit still. Julesburg has picked itself up and moved four separate times - the present town is the fourth place to carry the name.

It started with a trading post run by a French-Canadian trader named Jules Beni, who lent the town his name. That first Julesburg sat near a busy crossing of the South Platte and was burned during raids in early 1865. The settlement rebuilt nearby, then moved again to chase the Union Pacific, which had decided to lay its transcontinental rails along the north bank of the river.

That third version is the wild one. When the railroad’s end-of-track reached the area in June 1867, Julesburg ballooned almost overnight into a tent-and-plank boomtown of gamblers, saloons, and dance halls - estimates of its peak population vary widely, but it was crowded and armed enough to be called “the Wickedest City in the West.” When the tracklayers moved on, so did the crowd, and the town faded.

The fourth and current Julesburg grew up a few miles east at a rail junction in the 1880s and finally stayed put. To trace all four sites and the dates, start with the Colorado Encyclopedia’s article on the Julesburg Union Pacific Depot.