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1936 Border Closure

For ten days in 1936, Colorado governor Edwin “Big Ed” Johnson declared martial law in the state, which allowed him to close Colorado’s southern border to migrant workers from nearby states and Mexico. Amid record unemployment during the Great Depression…

Brush

Brush is an agricultural community in Morgan County on the plains of eastern Colorado. It is located just east of Fort Morgan at the convergence of US Highway 34, US Highway 6, and State Highway 71 and is situated along the historic Texas Montana Trail…

Charles Boettcher

Charles Boettcher (1852–1948) was an entrepreneur and philanthropist best known for founding the Great Western Sugar Company and the Boettcher Foundation, an organization that made the Boettcher name synonymous with generosity in Colorado. Boettcher…

Debus Farm

The Debus Farm is a historic sugar beet farm in Logan County, located north of the South Platte River near the intersection of US 138 and County Road 67. Founded by the German Russian Debus family in 1925, the farm is a prominent example of the…

Fort Morgan

Fort Morgan is a city of about 12,000 people along the South Platte River, about seventy miles northeast of Denver. It is part of the high plains region that an early explorer, Major Stephen Long, called the “Great American Desert.” As the center of a…

Grand Junction

With a population of nearly 60,000, Grand Junction is the largest city on Colorado’s Western Slope. The city takes its name from its location at the junction of the Gunnison and Colorado (formerly the Grand) Rivers, in the heart of the Grand Valley…

Great Western Sugar Company

The Great Western Sugar Company was co-founded by Charles Boettcher in 1900 after he observed the hardy, profitable sugar beet crop while vacationing in Europe. In Colorado, the sugar beet industry he helped launch proved a boon to the state and local…

Logan County

Logan County, named for Civil War General John A. Logan, covers 1,845 miles of the Great Plains in northeast Colorado. It is bordered to the north by the state of Nebraska, to the east by Sedgwick and Phillips Counties, to the southeast by Yuma County,…

Longmont

Longmont is a city of about 92,000 along the Front Range in eastern Boulder County. Named after the prominent Longs Peak to the west, the city was founded in 1871 by members of the Chicago-Colorado Colony, near the confluence of Left Hand and St. Vrain…

Prowers County

Prowers County covers 1,644 square miles of the Great Plains and Arkansas River valley in southeastern Colorado. The rectangular county is bordered to the north by Kiowa County, to the east by the state of Kansas, to the south by Baca County, and to the…

Sterling

Sterling is the county seat of Logan County in northeastern Colorado. Founded by homesteaders along the South Platte River in 1881, Sterling quickly developed into a commercial hub on Colorado’s eastern plains. Although it has been through its share of…