Colorado State...
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Colorado Counties
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Crowley County, Colorado
Crowley County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education
Crowley County is one of the 64 counties of the State of Colorado of the United States. The county population was 5,518 at US Census 2000. The county seat is Ordway.
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Named: The county was named for John H. Crowley, senator from Otero County to the state legislature at the time of the split. State & County QuickFacts:
History
Crowley County was created by the Colorado legislature on May 29, 1911 out of the northern portions of Otero County, previously both were parts of Bent County. The county was named for John H. Crowley, senator from Otero County to the state legislature at
the time of the split. Its original inhabitants decades earlier were native Americans, more Cheyenne than other tribes at the time the western expansion of the US arrived.
The first significant development and settlement occurred in 1887 when the Missouri Pacific Railroad came through from the east, on its way to Pueblo and Colorado's rich gold fields of the "Pikes Peak Or Bust" Colorado Gold Rush.
The county seat is in Ordway, a town established in 1890 that quickly became the economic hub of the area. Other towns still existing along the Missouri Pacific Railroad's route are Sugar City, Crowley, Olney Springs, and Pultney.
A few years later, developers brought a canal east from the Arkansas River, with ambitious plans to irrigate a million acres (4000 kmē) in Kansas; instead, the canal petered out in Crowley County but did irrigate 57,000 acres (230 kmē) along its length. This turned early Crowley County into a lush
agricultural mecca...at first.
By the 1970s almost all the water rights were sold from what is now called the Twin Lakes Canal to the fast-growing cities of Colorado's Front Range corridor. The area's economic activity has shifted toward ranching. Much of the land has returned to its original sparse prairie grassland conditions.
Crowley County also today hosts a state prison. The 2000 census showed 5,518 county residents, of which 1,955 were prisoners, giving Crowley County the highest percentage of incarcerated prisoners of any county in the US
Neighboring Counties:
- Northeast: Lincoln County
- East: Kiowa County
- South: Otero County
- Southwest: Pueblo County
- Northwest: El Paso County
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County Resource Guide
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The history of our nation can be seen as a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names we've given our counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic
features of our country!"
But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.
Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally,
act locally." |
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Penn Foster High School
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