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Greeley City Information
With the expansive prairie out one door and the towering Rocky Mountains out the other, Greeley is a city of unlikely combinations that complement each other beautifully. Experience the best of the Contemporary West in a place where you can feel equally comfortable in a cowboy hat or a business suit. Where you can explore miles of wide-open prairie or pristine forest and get back in time for the symphony. Attend university lectures one day and the local rodeo the next. Browse through galleries and museums or play in our parks. Enjoy a balance of economic stability and cultural diversity. Leisurely if you want it to be, fast-paced when you are ready for adventure, our city accommodates both with an easy charm.
It's no wonder Greeley is filled with easy smiles and boundless possibilities, with the snowcapped Rocky Mountains on one side and sprawling farmlands on the other. Greeley is simply everything good about America - rodeos and picnics, antique fairs and live theater, afternoon hikes and fishing trips. There are limitless opportunities for family outings, lazy afternoons and affordable adventures. Greeley continues to epitomize the American West, with its open spaces, open hearts and a history as expansive and colorful as its surroundings.
It was Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, who popularized the phrase, "Go West young man, go West," but it was his visionary agricultural editor, Nathan C. Meeker, who spearheaded one of the most successful colonization experiments ever attempted in the "Great American Desert."
Meeker called for ambitious individuals with high moral standards and money to form a colony based upon the following principles: cooperation, irrigation, agriculture, temperance, religion and education. The call elicited 3,000 responses and 59 individuals who ultimately formed a joint stock company called Union Colony in December 1869.
On October 12 of the following year, Horace Greeley paid his one and only visit to the town that bore his name. By that time, colonists had erected houses on town lots close to the confluence of the South Platte and Cache la Poudre rivers, established a newspaper, built irrigation canals and designed streets to be 100 feet wide and ultimately lined with beautiful trees.
A reading room opened in 1870 followed by the first school in 1872, a courthouse in 1883 and a college in 1889. Greeley's concern for the financial well being of the community led him to require the original settlers to be solid enough to allow the community a good start. This foresight helped the city of Greeley to become succssful when other similar ventures failed.
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