Greeley Masonry

About Greeley

Greeley is the home rule municipality city that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Weld County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 108,795 at the 2020 United States Census, an increase of 17.12% since the 2010 United States Census. Greeley is the tenth most populous city in Colorado. Greeley is the principal city of the Greeley, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area and is a major city of the Front Range Urban Corridor. Greeley is located in northern Colorado and is situated 49 miles (79 km) north-northeast of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver. Greeley is also a mid-sized college town, home to the University of Northern Colorado and Aims Community College. == History == === Union Colony === Greeley began as the Union Colony of Colorado, which was founded in 1869 by Nathan C. Meeker, an agricultural reporter for the New York Tribune as an experimental utopian farming community "based on temperance, religion, agriculture, education and family values," with the backing of the Tribune's editor Horace Greeley, who popularized the phrase "Go West, young man". A committee which included Meeker and former Civil War general Robert Alexander Cameron traveled to Colorado to find a suitable site, and purchased 12,000 acres at the confluence of the Cache la Poudre and South Platte Rivers. The site, formerly known as the "Island Grove Ranch", included the area of Latham, an Overland Trail station, and was halfway between Cheyenne, Wyoming and Denver, Colorado along the tracks of the Denver Pacific Railroad.By May, 500 people had arrived to take up residence in the new colony. The name Union Colony was later changed to Greeley in honor of Horace Greeley, who had come to Colorado in the 1859 Pike's Peak Gold Rush.