Introduction
51 miles E. of Greeley, 81 miles N.E. of Denver
A pleasant, laid-back city of just over 11,000 people, Fort Morgan may be best known as the childhood home of famed big-band leader Glenn Miller, who graduated from Fort Morgan High School in 1921 and formed his first band, the Mick-Miller Five, in the city. Established as a military outpost in 1864, the original Fort Morgan housed about 200 troops who protected stagecoaches and pioneers traveling the Overland Trail from marauding Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors. The threat had passed by 1870, and the fort was dismantled, but the name stuck when the city was founded in 1884. Nothing of the fort remains, but a monument on Riverview Avenue marks the fort's site.
The town grew in the 20th century with the establishment of the Great Western Sugar Company for sugar-beet processing, and with a pair of oil discoveries in the 1920s and 1950s. Cattle and sheep ranching remain important today, as well as dairy farming. In addition to sugar...
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Fort Morgan Museum
Among the most interesting small-town museums in Colorado, the Fort Morgan Museum has an impressive collection of northeastern Colorado American...
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- Museums
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Sherman Street National Historic District
The Fort Morgan Museum publishes a walking-tour brochure both for Sherman Street and for the 9-block downtown district, the latter noting 44 buildings...
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Rainbow Bridge
Also called the James Marsh Arch Bridge, this 11-arch concrete bridge was built over the South Platte River in 1923, at a construction cost of...
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- Landmarks
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