Beginning in the central Rocky Mountains near Leadville, the Arkansas River runs nearly 1,500 miles across the Great Plains before emptying into the Mississippi River. The Arkansas is the lifeblood of cities and agricultural communities along its course,…

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 (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…

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…

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…

The tension between aridity and irrigated agriculture has been a defining characteristic of Colorado for much of its modern history. On average, the state receives less than fifteen inches of annual precipitation, making it the seventh driest state in…

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,…

The Bee Family Farm is a historic farm located between Fort Collins and Wellington. In operation as a working farm since 1894, it is now an outdoor museum that preserves and displays the family’s historic artifacts, buildings, and fields to help visitors…

Washington County, named for the first US president, is a county of 2,524 square miles on Colorado’s eastern Great Plains. It is bordered to the north by Logan County, to the east by Yuma County, to the south by Kit Carson and Lincoln Counties, and to…