Description:
A blue plastic marker 8”w x 2”h mounted on the top rail of a permanent bench placed on the grounds of the Meeker Museum in Greeley in celebration of the Bicentennial. Faces E.
How to get there:
The Meeker Museum is at 1324 9th Avenue in Greeley. From US85 (8th Avenue in Greeley), turn west at 14th Street one block to 9th Avenue. Turn north on 9th Avenue. The museum is on the right (east) side of the street.
Inscription:
DONATED BY
Centennial State Chapter
Daughters of the American Revolution
1976
History:
Nathan C. Meeker, who established the Union Colony which founded Greeley, was the agricultural editor of the New York Tribune who visited Colorado in 1869 and saw that there were attractive home sites and sources of water along the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains.
Horace Greeley, the newspaper’s editor, agreed and in 1869 the colony was organized in New York City with Meeker as president, General Robert A. Cameron as vice president, and Horace Greeley as treasurer. Initiation was five dollars. Dues were $150. Members were entitled to a piece of farmland from five to eighty acres, depending on distance from town, and the right to buy a town lot at $25 or $50. Unfortunately, membership did not include canal rights.
Early in 1870, Meeker, Cameron, W.C. Fisk and H.T. West went to Colorado and selected an area near Evans, then the terminus of the Denver Pacific Railway. They bought 11,917 acres of land, 9,324 acres from the railroad, the balance from private individuals. Individual members were persuaded to file on an additional 60,000 acres of public land. In May, 1870, the first 50 families of the 500 members of the colony arrived. The town grew very rapidly, and was incorporated in 1871. Nathan Meeker was killed by Indians at the White River Agency in 1879. His home is now a nationally listed Historical House.
