Douglas County, Colorado

Douglas County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

Douglas County is the eighth most populous of the 64 counties of the State of Colorado of the United States. The county, sometimes nicknamed Dougco, is located midway between Colorado's two largest cities: Denver and Colorado Springs. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the county population was 263,621 in 2006, a 49.98% increase since US Census 2000, making Douglas County one of the fastest growing counties in the United States.[ Douglas County is part of the Denver-Aurora Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Denver-Aurora-Boulder Combined Statistical Area. The county seat is Castle Rock, named after a small butte just north of the town. Castle Rock is located in the Interstate 25 corridor just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.

County Seat:
Year Organized:
Square Miles:
MSA:

Court House:

Put address here

Named: The county was named in honor of US Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, who died five months before the county was created.

State & County QuickFacts:

History

Douglas County was one of the original 17 counties created in the Colorado Territory by the Colorado Territorial Legislature on 1861-11-01. The county was named in honor of US Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, who died five months before the county was created. The county seat was originally Franktown, but was moved to California Ranch in 1863, and then to Castle Rock in 1874. Although the county's boundaries originally extended eastward to the Kansas state border, in 1874 most of the eastern portion of the county became part of Elbert County.

Neighboring Counties:

Northeast: Arapahoe County
East: Elbert County
Southeast: El Paso County
Southwest: Teller County; Park County
Northwest: Jefferson County

Cities:

Insert City Here

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

Douglas County, Colorado

County Resource Guide

Counties: US Map

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."

Penn Foster High School

Custom Search