Larimer County was created in 1861, and was named after GeneralWilliam Larimer.
Unlike that of much of Colorado, which was founded on themining ofgold andsilver, the settlement of Larimer County was based almost entirely onagriculture, an industry that few thought possible in the region during the initial days of theColorado Gold Rush. The mining boom almost entirely passed the county by. It would take the introduction ofirrigation to the region in the 1860s to bring the first widespread settlement to the area.
At the time of the arrival of Europeans in the early 19th century, the present-day county was occupied byNative Americans, with theUtes occupying the mountainous areas and theCheyenne andArapaho living on thepiedmont areas along the base of the foothills.Frenchfur trappers infiltrated the area in the early decades of the 19th century, soon after the area became part of the United States with theLouisiana Purchase and was organized as part of theMissouri Territory. In 1828William H. Ashley ascended theCache la Poudre River on his way to theGreen River in present-dayUtah. The river itself received its name in the middle 1830s from an obscure incident in which French-speaking trappers hidgunpowder along its banks, somewhere near present-dayLaporte orBellvue. In 1848 a group ofCherokee crossed through the county following the North Fork of the Poudre to theLaramie Plains on their way toCalifornia along a route that became known as theCherokee Trail.
The area of county was officially opened to white settlement following negotiations with the Cheyenne and Arapaho in the 1858Treaty of Fort Laramie, by which time the area was part of theNebraska Territory. The first U.S. settlers arrived that same year in a party led byAntoine Janis fromFort Laramie. Janis, who had visited the area near Bellvue in 1844 and proclaimed it "the most beautiful place on earth", returned to file his official claim and helped found the first U.S. settlement in present-day Colorado, called Colona, just west of Laporte. Nearly simultaneously,Mariano Medina establishedFort Namaqua along theBig Thompson River just west of present-dayLoveland. The first irrigation canals were established along the Poudre in the 1860s.
In 1862, the settlement established by Janis became astagecoach stop along theOverland Stage Route which was established because of threats of attacks from Native Americans on the northern trails in Wyoming. In 1861, Laporte was designated as the first county seat after the organization of theColorado Territory. In 1862, theUnited States Army established an outpost near Laporte that was designated asCamp Collins. A devastating flood in June 1864 wiped out the outpost, forcing the Army to seek a better location. At the urging ofJoseph Mason, who had settled along the Poudre in 1860, the Army relocated its post downstream adjacent to Mason's land along the Overland stage route. The site of the new post became the nucleus of the town ofFort Collins, incorporated in 1873 after the withdrawal of the Army. By that time, Mason and others had convinced the Colorado Territorial Legislature to designate the new town as the county seat. In 1870, the legislature designated Fort Collins as the location of the state agricultural college (laterColorado State University), although the institution would exist only on paper for another 9 years while local residents sought money to construct the first campus buildings. In 1873,Robert A. Cameron and other members of theGreeley Colony established theFort Collins Agricultural Colony, which greatly expanded thegrid plan and population of Fort Collins.
One of the primary goals of the early citizens of the county was the courting ofrailroads. County residents were disappointed when theDenver Pacific Railroad bypassed the county in 1870 in favor ofGreeley. The first railroad finally arrived in the county in 1877 when theColorado Central Railroad extended a line north fromGolden viaLongmont toCheyenne. The town council of Fort Collins designatedright-of-way through the center of town (and through the campus of the unbuilt college) for the line, creating a contentious issue to this day.
Along the new railroad sprung up the newplatted towns ofLoveland andBerthoud, named respectively after thepresident andchief surveyor of the Colorado Central. Likewise,Wellington (founded in 1903) was named for a railroad employee. TheGreeley, Salt Lake, and Pacific Railroad arrived three years later as a subsidiary of theUnion Pacific Railroad, with the intention of creating a transcontinental line overCameron Pass. Although the line was never extended over the mountains, it opened up the quarrying of stone for the railroad atStout, furnishing another industry for the region. The brief attempt at the mining of gold in the region centered at the nowghost town ofManhattan in thePoudre Canyon.
The early growth of agriculture, which depended highly on direct river irrigation, experienced a second boom in 1902 with the introduction of the cultivation ofsugar beets, accompanied by the construction of the large processing plant of theGreat Western Sugar Co. in Loveland. In the following decade, the sugar beet industry brought large numbers ofGerman emigrants from the Russian Empire to the county. The neighborhoods of Fort Collins northeast of the Poudre were constructed largely to house these new families.
A significant increase in the agricultural productivity of the region came in the 1930s with the construction of theColorado Big Thompson Project following theGreat Depression, sort of a third boom for the agricultural industry around Fort Collins. This project collected and capturedWestern Slope water, and carried it over to theFront RangeColorado counties ofBoulder, Larimer, andWeld, along with extensive water storage and distribution system, which significantly extended the irrigable growing season and brought substantial additional land under irrigation for the first time.
According to theU.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 2,634 square miles (6,820 km2), of which 2,596 square miles (6,720 km2) is land and 38 square miles (98 km2) (1.4%) is water.[4]
As of the2020 census, the county had a population of 359,066. Of the residents, 19.4% were under the age of 18 and 17.0% were 65 years of age or older; the median age was 37.4 years. For every 100 females there were 98.1 males, and for every 100 females age 18 and over there were 96.5 males. 89.8% of residents lived in urban areas and 10.2% lived in rural areas.[10][11][12]
Larimer County, Colorado – Racial and ethnic composition Note: the US Census treats Hispanic/Latino as an ethnic category. This table excludes Latinos from the racial categories and assigns them to a separate category. Hispanics/Latinos may be of any race.
There were 144,360 households in the county, of which 26.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them and 24.6% had a female householder with no spouse or partner present. About 26.2% of all households were made up of individuals and 10.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.[11]
There were 158,769 housing units, of which 9.1% were vacant. Among occupied housing units, 63.8% were owner-occupied and 36.2% were renter-occupied. The homeowner vacancy rate was 1.2% and the rental vacancy rate was 6.8%.[11]
Larimer was long a Republican stronghold. Between 1920 and 2004, the only Democratic presidential candidate to win a majority of votes in the county was Lyndon Johnson in 1964. However, increasing urbanization, as well as the influence of Colorado State University, caused the Republican margins to decline steadily in the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2008,Barack Obama became the first Democrat to carry the county with the majority of the vote since 1964, and in so doing recorded the best performance by a Democrat since the days ofWoodrow Wilson andWilliam Jennings Bryan. In 2020, Joe Biden's margin of victory was even greater and in 2024, Larimer was one of the few counties nationwide to swing towards Kamala Harris.
The city of Fort Collins, which is heavily Democratic, dominates the county's population and thus solidifies its Democratic leaning, and other Democratic areas include Estes Park and some of the more rural, mountainous areas of the central part of the county. The city of Loveland leans Republican, as do the sparsely populated northern parts of the county.[17]
Larimer County is a state-levelbellwether county; as of the2020 election, it has voted for the statewide winner in every election since1948, whenHarry Truman carried Colorado without it.
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