Unincorporated Towns in Weld County

Located on the Crow Creek Branch of the Union Pacific Railroad, 14.5 miles northeast of Greeley, Barnesville was established in 1910 by Charles E. Barnes. The post office, serving a population of about 200 people, operated from 1910 to 1935. Barnesville was a beet dump site between 1909 and 1965 for the Greeley sugar factory. The actual townsite was vacated in 1955 and the station was closed in 1965 when the railroad line was abandoned. 

Briggsdale was named by landowner Frank N. Briggs for his father, George W. Briggs. George and Emily Briggs moved to Windsor and had a son, Frank, in 1870. Frank became president of the First National Bank in Windsor and ran a grocery store. His store clerk was Edwin L. Laycock.

Frank Briggs had land where the town of Briggsdale would soon be. Knowing that the Union Pacific was planning a rail line, and believing there would soon be irrigation (though not there yet), Briggs persuaded the Union Pacific to locate on his property. On June 24th, 1910, Edwin L. Laycock, “as part owner and founder of the town of Briggsdale” requested that a post office be established at the “terminus of the Crow Creek branch of the Union Pacific Railroad.”

Frank Briggs gave some of his lots to schools and churches and initiated the Briggsdale State Bank. The eldest son of Nellie and Frank Briggs, Paul, proved up on a nearby homestead and had a general merchandise store, cream station, and held dances in Briggsdale. Their music was provided by a player piano and a drum set, and occasionally a band would drop by. 

Though now abandoned, Buckingham was a thriving town with a hotel and a dozen other businesses on the Burlington-Missouri River Railroad. Named for the McCook Division Superintendent, C. D. Buckingham, the town was granted a post office in 1888. In 1911, the post office and townsite of Buckingham were moved to the other side of the tracks.

In 1914 Charles H. Deford moved with his family to Buckingham in a railroad car, living in the car until their house was built. Deford and Frank Doty bought the Buckingham townsite and began developing it.

The U. S. Government operated a Conscientious Objector’s Camp in Buckingham, detaining men who refused to serve in the military during WWII, between 1943-1946. The inmates worked on nearby farms and helped establish what became the Pawnee National Grasslands.

In 1909, Camfield became the most publicized town in Colorado. It was on the Pleasant Valley branch of the Union Pacific Railroad, bringing in dozens of settlers to build houses, stores and businesses before the rush of settlers arrived to reap the benefits from the 800 acres of proposed irrigated land. The town of Camfield was named for Daniel Camfield, owner of both the stylish Camfield Hotel in Greeley and the Laramie-Poudre Irrigation Company, which was to bring water to this parched region of Weld County.

Unfortunately, Daniel Camfield died in 1914 and all investments in the Laramie-Poudre Irrigation Company were lost. In 1921 the Camfield post office closed and the railroad removed its tracks in 1943.

In 1869, the Denver Pacific Railroad built a line from Cheyenne, Wyoming, into Colorado. The first stop, near a sandstone formation known as the Natural Fort, was Lone Tree Station named for nearby Lone Tree Creek. Residents were awarded a post office in 1872 along with a rail siding which was named Carr to honor the president of the Denver Pacific Railroad, Robert F. Carr.

Carr was a major shipping point for cattle and sheep in the 1870s, sending up to 113 train carloads out in a single month. In 1907, Carr’s town plat was filed by Milton Warner, who moved there from Boulder. By 1950, the town’s population was approximately two hundred people. Cattle ranching is still prevalent in the area today.

Cornish was located at the crossroads of historic native trails. The Cornish station was established in 1910 along the Crow Creek Branch of the Union Pacific Railroad, and named for a civil engineer for the railroad. Though a town plat was filed in 1911, development really began when the first business, the Miller Mercantile Company, opened in 1913.

Cornish ranchers, in tandem with the railroad, built large livestock pens for the cattle being shipped by train. Cowboys and local businessmen built rodeo grounds and a horse racing track for everyone’s entertainment.

In the 1930s, Eastern Colorado suffered from “black blizzards” - wind storms that blew away topsoil. Cornish storms revealed ancient campsites with thousands of lithic artifacts. Hundreds of people flocked to the area, searching for projectile points, and clues about the life of ancient peoples. Cornish school children and residents organized the first “Stone Age Fair” in 1934. The fair’s growth and popularity over the next six years necessitated its move to Loveland in 1940 to accommodate the crowds, where it continues as an annual event.

The wind also blew away the Cornish farmers’ livelihood, leading to closures of businesses, the church and the school. The grain elevator and sugar beet dump closed when the railroad left in 1965. Following the postmaster’s retirement in 1967, the Cornish Post Office was closed.

Dover station was established on the Union Pacific Railroad’s route from Denver to Cheyenne in 1902. It was located approximately a mile east of Lone Tree Creek, and some researchers believe that the nearby white chalk bluffs may have reminded English immigrant cattlemen of the White Cliffs of Dover. Within the first year, a school and sugar beet dump were built. In 1905, a post office was established and named Dover because it was “the name given for this place on all maps, also [the] railroad timetable.”

The townsite plat was filed in 1913, and by 1920 residents prospered by raising wheat and cattle. In 1930, Dover had grown to 229 residents; however, the following year drought and economic depression emptied the town, closing the post office. Dover’s school district dissolved in 1941, merging with Nunn’s. In 1960, the Dover townsite became part of an Ault subdivision.

When this town site was laid out in 1909, the original name was Zita, after a local rancher’s daughter. Then in 1910, the community relocated west of the original site and their new name was to be Gale, honoring Jesse S. Gale (1845-1927), a pioneer cattle rancher and Greeley banker. But that name was thought to sound too much like Gill, a neighboring community’s name, so Galeton was chosen instead.

The Galeton Post Office was established in 1910 and for over 50 years was located in Dillard’s Grocery Store, Colorado’s last general store post office. Galeton Coal Mine was located just east of Galeton, from 1935 to 1940. It was a wagon mine, meaning a mine that supplied only to local markets.

Gill was originally a station on the Crow Creek Valley branch of the Union Pacific Railroad, named after William Gill, who filed a plat for the town on his land in 1909. By the end of 1910, Gill had a sugar beet dump, a post office and a two-story general merchandise store, which also housed a bank and a number of rooms used for community gatherings.

A grain elevator built in Gill in 1911, burned to the ground twice and was twice rebuilt. By 1915, Gill had a number of businesses, including a blacksmith with a vehicle repair shop, a meat market, a grocery and a branch of Gilcrest Lumber. The railroad tracks were removed around 1965.

The Gowanda townsite was platted in 1910 on the Union Pacific Railroad line that began in Firestone and ended at Gowanda. It was likely named for the town of Gowanda, Erie County, New York.

Gowanda’s post office opened in 1915 and closed in 1930, partly because it had trouble competing against Platteville and the more established towns on the eastern side of the South Platte River. The Gowanda site is located on today’s Weld County Road 30, approximately a six minute drive west of Platteville.

Located on the Great Western Railway west of Johnstown, Buda was a beat piling ground and first for the Loveland sugar factory, then for the Johnstown sugar factory. At one time it also had a C. M. & E. Milling Company elevator.

Along the Colorado-Wyoming border on Crow Creek, a section house and flag station on the Sterling to Cheyenne branch of the Colorado-Wyoming division of the Burlington Missouri River Railroad was built. Its' first name was Devon, but with thousands of Hereford cattle raised and shipped from there by the J. W. Iliff Land and Cattle Company, the town that sprung up there became known as Hereford. Hereford Post Office was barely in Weld County, Colorado, while the railroad station was across the railroad tracks in Wyoming, then moved to Colorado in 1908.

Chicagoan, Fredrick Findeisen, a successful designer of a flush toilet and the Rayburn carburetor, took his money and built up the town of Hereford. He owned nearly every business and had his family members manage them. The 1930s drought and depression took their toll on Hereford. Hereford school was abandoned in 1940 and the few remaining students were bused to Grover.

Tradition has it that Keota is a native word meaning either "gone to visit" or “fire has gone out,” and was the name of the homestead established in 1880 by two sisters, Mary and Eva Beardsley. In 1888, they sold Keota to the Lincoln Land Company who filed a plat for the town of Keota.

Located in the center of the present-day Pawnee National Grasslands, Keota became a station stop on what was affectionately called the “Old Prairie Dog Express" on the Colorado-Wyoming Division of the Burlington-Missouri Railroad. The town had a hotel, restaurant and other railroad crew services. The depression of the late 1800s caused Keota’s population to fall from 300 to 77, and the post office closed in 1890.

A second wave of homesteaders began coming from the Midwest in 1908 and the Keota Post Office reopened in 1909. The rains of 1911 increased land prices for both farming and raising cattle. Residents dug wells and established a hotel, newspaper - The Keota News, lumberyard, church and schools.

The remote location and lack of a continuous water source were two contributing factors in Keota’s decline. The school closed in 1951 and the Keota Post Office in 1974. The railroad was abandoned and the tracks removed in 1975.

“…--all town business had folded with the Depression, the drouth, and the dust-bowl days. But Wayside Press and the Stanleys continued on for almost another 35 years, to 1974.” 1997 – Dr. Walter H. & Elma M. Stewart, Northeast Colorado Newspaperdom.

In approximately 1886, a receiving station was built for cucumbers on the Union Pacific Railroad tracks between Omaha and Denver, named Kuner in honor of the owner of the Kuner Pickle Company in Brighton, Max Kuner.

In 1908, the Holland Farms Company bought 3,000 acres of Asa Sterling’s land for farmers originally from Utrecht, Holland. Named for the pickle station, Kuner plat was filed for a large townsite, expecting Kuner farmers would irrigate from many sources. Kuner Post Office was established in 1908 and a church was built in 1909.

Asa Sterling, a Greeley banker and rancher, gave land for Kuner’s townsite and built a reservoir there named for himself. In 1909, the Kuner Improvement Company, aggressively promoted Kuner in full-page newspaper advertisements alluding to future pickle, sugar and candy factories there. In 1909 the Kuner Beet Dump was built to transport Kuner’s sugar beets.

Acquiring enough water became a problem and when Asa Sterling Reservoir failed to hold water and the Laramie Poudre Irrigation District plans were abandoned, Kuner suffered. The factories never materialized and the Burlington Railroad discarded its plans for expected Greeley-to-Roggen interurban line, with Kuner as the hub.

Between 1912 and 1918, Kuner farmers were plagued with grasshoppers and hailstorms, and many left. The Kuner Post Office was discontinued in 1920 and Kuner was officially vacated June 4, 1936.

The Denver-Pacific Railroad completed tracks from Cheyenne to the future site of Lucerne in 1869. A few years later, a siding was established here for loading bales of “Lucerne”, or alfalfa, which was grown extensively in this area. This siding was also referred to by several other names: North Greeley, Alfalfa, or Lawn. In 1892, a plat for the town was filed, a Post Office opened, and the town was named Lucerne.

A two-story general store built in 1892 by George Duvall, also housed the Post Office. A beet dump serving Greeley’s Great Western Sugar factory was here from 1902 – 1985. Lucerne lies in the heart of a rich agricultural district where cabbage, potatoes, carrots, onions, sugar beets, and pinto beans remain important crops. The historic Union Colony Canal Number Two, a.k.a. “The Farmer’s Ditch”, transects the town, providing water for surrounding farms.

A popular destination beginning in the 1960s, was the Farm Fare Restaurant, west of Lucerne and across U.S. Highway 85. After receiving a liquor license in 1964, its' new owners added the Red Steer Lounge, and later a motel, the Red Coach Inn. With a reputation for good food, the restaurant’s clientele included local clubs, cattle buyers, farmers, and ranchers. Local dance bands - country-western, polka, and Cajan - entertained here over the years. The building is now a Cowboy Church.

A plan was initiated in 1908 to divert Laramie River water into the Cache La Poudre River. The plan, called Greeley-Poudre Irrigation Project, Greeley-Poudre Irrigation District, and eventually the Laramie-Poudre Irrigation Company, included an elaborate system of ditches and reservoirs for irrigating up to 125,000 acres northeast of Greeley.

Formerly known as Hungerford, the town of Purcell was settled by those who backed the irrigation plan. Lawrence Purcell was the land owner and filed his town’s plat in 1910 at the terminus of the Pleasant Valley branch line of the Union Pacific Railroad, where a wye allowed trains to turn around. In 1911, Hubert D. Waldo purchased most of the Purcell property and operated several businesses.

Wyoming residents aggressively fought the Greeley-Poudre Irrigation Project’s diversion and irrigation plan all the way to the Supreme Court, and it was ultimately abandoned. Purcell and neighboring communities could not survive without irrigation. The railroad was finally removed in 1943 and the Purcell Post Office closed in 1951.

The Union Pacific Railroad built a spur line in 1908 for the Puritan Coal Mine. It is a shaft mine, with a vein 10 1/3 feet thick, which in the first year produced 30,262 tons of lignite coal. The coal bed was between a layer of soapstone and sand rock on the bottom. Daily output was about 400 tons.

The settlement was a “company town,” operated by the national fuel company, and all the stores and houses were owned and rented by the company to the coal miners and their families, who lived there between 1908 and 1939, when the Puritan mine closed. Puritan was named after the nearby Puritan Coal Mine, and the town plat for Puritan was filed in Weld County on July 1, 1947.

A railroad station named Blair was built in 1882 on the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad (later the Chicago Burlington and Quincy) between Fort Morgan and Hudson. The name was changed due to the potential confusion with Blair, Nebraska, a station on the same railroad line, to Roggen in honor of Edward P. Roggen, the Nebraska secretary of state (1882–1887).

Roggen Post Office was established in 1883 and a community slowly developed supporting both ranch and railroad business with a hotel, church and a grocery.

Following the Great Blizzard of 1885, the spring round up revealed that Roggen ranchers only located two-percent of their herds alive. However, nearly all of Roggen’s Painter Ranch cold-country bred stock survived.

Roggen’s town plat was filed by the Last Springs Ranch Company on June 17, 1908, and within two years, surveys revealed that the area had potential for oil deposits.

Roggen was the site of a sugar beet dump between 1917 and 1975 and the town’s landmark is the Roggen Grain elevator.

In 1887, Stoneham Railroad Station was built on the Colorado-Wyoming branch of the Burlington Missouri River Railroad line near the present-day Weld-Logan County line. The Lincoln Land Company purchased the townsite by the railroad station from Elenora B. Stone in 1888, for whom the town and station were named. Stoneham Post Office opened in 1888, and the town was platted in 1889, with all the streets named for rocks (Granite, Marble, Flint, Agate, Boulder and Slate).

The depression of the 1890s depleted Stoneham’s population and Stoneham Post Office closed in 1892. A Vacation Deed was filed for Stoneham in 1893 and much of the town sold for back taxes in 1894.

A second influx of homesteaders began arriving, and in 1907, the Stoneham Post Office was reopened. In 1910 the Lincoln Land Company re-platted the town (mostly where it had been originally) and renamed it New Stoneham. The town built up quickly between 1910 and 1925 with several stores, lumber yard, hotel, service station, blacksmith shop, feed store, two grain elevators, two livery stables, a stockyard, blacksmith shop, barber shop, a creamery, three churches, a school and a small hospital.

The town’s post office continues as Stoneham but the official town documentation is registered in Weld County as New Stoneham. As of the 2000 census New Stoneham/Stoneham’s population was 147.

Vollmar Railroad Station was built on the Denver Laramie and Northwestern Railway (DLNWRR) in 1908 on the west bank of the South Platte River northwest of Fort Lupton. It was named for the land owner, George Vollmar, a farmer from Bavaria who came to Colorado and claimed land in Weld County in 1863. The name of the station was sometimes spelled Follmar in error because Mr. Vollmar pronounced the “V” in the soft Germanic fashion, making people think Vollmar was Follmar.

A community developed there, and when the Vollmar Post Office opened in 1909, mail service was supplied by the DLNWRR. A plat and map for the town of Vollmar was filed in 1910 and the Denver-Laramie Realty Company sold Vollmar town lots for businesses and homes. The DLNWRR ran out of money and Vollmar, like many communities along its route, dwindled until 1912, when the Vollmar Post Office closed.

In 1917 the Great Western Railway took over DLNWRR and Vollmar’s buildings and townsite were used for housing migrant sugar beet workers. A sugar beet dump was constructed there that same year and was in use until 1947.

On the Denver-Laramie and Northwestern Railroad (DLNWRR) line southwest of Fort Lupton, Watterburg Station was constructed in 1908. The station and subsequent town were named by landowners, Caroline and Christian Wattenburg, for his father, Frederick Wattenburg.

A plat and map were filed in Weld County for the new townsite of Wattenburg in 1909. Wattenburg became a Mexican beet worker’s settlement center. A post office was not established there, likely because of the town’s proximity to Brighton and Fort Lupton.

In 1917 the DLNWRR was taken over by the sugar beet industry’s Great Western Railway line and a sugar beet dump was constructed in Wattenburg. The line was abandoned in 1947.