Loveland

History

The Loveland area was a hub for French fur trappers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was a trading post and stage station, and the site is now Namaqua Park. The nearby Big Thompson, Colorado Territory, post office opened on November 12, 1862. The Namaqua, Colorado Territory, post office operated from January 28, 1868, until January 3, 1879. Loveland was officially founded in 1877 along the newly constructed line of the Colorado Central Railroad, near its crossing of the Big Thompson River. It was named in honor of William A. H. Loveland, the president of the Colorado Central Railroad. The city was founded one mile (1.6 km) upstream from the existing small settlement of St. Louis, the buildings of which were moved to the site of Loveland. The Big Thompson post office moved to Loveland on January 10, 1878, and the Town of Loveland was incorporated on April 30, 1881.), and finally a killer freeze destroyed the industry. By the late 1960s, cherries were no longer farmed at scale, although orchards remained in southeast Loveland and nearby Masonville into the 1990s. In the late 20th century, the economy diversified with the arrival of manufacturing facilities by Hewlett-Packard, Teledyne, and Hach, a water quality analysis equipment manufacturer. A new medical center has added a substantial amount of employment in that sector. Loveland was known as a "sundown town", a racially segregated community which prohibited non-white travelers from remaining in their borders after the sun set. While such towns were most common in the Deep South, Loveland showed the practice existed elsewhere. Longtime Loveland residents reported anecdotes from this era such as a baseball team with African-American players not staying overnight in the city after their game, and…

Geography

The city is located in the Colorado Front Range region at the base of the foothills just east of the mouth of Big Thompson River Canyon at the intersection of U.S. Highway 34 and U.S. Highway 287. Longs Peak and other mountains of the Front Range are visible from much of the city. Loveland is in southeastern Larimer County. Located south of Fort Collins, its larger neighbor and the county seat of Larimer County, both cities have expanded steadily towards each other. They are considered a single metropolitan area by the U.S. government. The establishment of county-owned open space between the two communities in the 1990s was intended to create a permanent buffer. The northern city limits are now contiguous with those of Windsor, which has expanded westward from Weld County across Interstate 25. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land, and (3.68%) is water. Loveland Pass, also named after William A.H. Loveland, is not located near the town of Loveland. Loveland has a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification Dfa). Its climate is characterized by warm to hot summer and long and moderately cold winter (sometimes severely). Due to its low annual precipitation, Loveland's climate can sometimes be categorized as cold semi-arid. Loveland, Colorado has an annual snowfall of . The hottest temperature recorded in Loveland was on July 19, 2022, while the coldest temperature recorded was on December 22, 1990. |source 2 = National Weather Service }}

Race & ethnicity

Most-observed species

• House Finch

  Haemorhous mexicanus (P.L.Statius Müller, 1776) · Aves
  29,369
• Mallard

  Anas platyrhynchos Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  29,040
• Red-winged Blackbird

  Agelaius phoeniceus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  28,642
• Canada Goose (canadensis Group)

  Branta canadensis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  28,181
• American Robin

  Turdus migratorius Linnaeus, 1766 · Aves
  28,151
• Black-capped Chickadee

  Poecile atricapillus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  25,242
• Northern Flicker

  Colaptes auratus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  25,133
• Blue Jay

  Cyanocitta cristata (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  24,368

Most recent

• M 2.7 — 2025-06-13
  7 km SE of Erie, Colorado
• M 2.5 — 2020-10-24
  2 km ESE of Georgetown, Colorado
• M 2.9 — 2019-03-30
  7 km NE of Greeley, Colorado
• M 3 — 2016-11-06
  8 km ENE of Greeley, Colorado
• M 2.7 — 2016-11-06
  8 km ENE of Greeley, Colorado
• M 2.6 — 2016-08-23
  2 km SSE of Eaton, Colorado