Akron: County Seat of the High Plains

Akron, the seat of Washington County in eastern Colorado, came into existence in eighteen eighty-two when the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad pushed across the high plains. The name was borrowed from Akron, Ohio, following a common railroad-era practice of transplanting familiar eastern place names onto treeless frontier ground. Washington County is among the driest in Colorado, averaging about fifteen inches of precipitation per year, and its economy has always turned on dryland wheat, sorghum, and cattle.

Akron became the county seat in eighteen eighty-seven, a status it has held through drought cycles, the Dust Bowl of the nineteen thirties, and the collapse of rural populations across the Great Plains. The town's courthouse and grain elevators remain the dominant landmarks on the skyline, testaments to the two institutions, government and agriculture, that have sustained the Colorado plains for more than a century.