Berthoud: The Town That Moved a Mile

Berthoud began in the early eighteen seventies as a homestead settlement called Little Thompson, on the route of the planned Colorado Central line. The Colorado Central Railroad laid tracks through here in eighteen seventy-seven and named the community for its chief engineer, Captain Edward Berthoud, a Swiss-born surveyor who had spent years mapping routes across the Rockies. The problem was topography.

The original townsite sat in the river bottom, and the grade out of the valley forced the railroad's steam locomotives to labor so hard it was costing real money. In the winter of eighteen eighty-three to eighteen eighty-four, the railroad persuaded the townspeople to move. Residents loaded several buildings onto wheels, hitched teams of draft animals, and hauled an entire community one mile uphill to the bluff north of the river.

Berthoud incorporated in eighteen eighty-eight in its new location, and grew into a prosperous farming center for wheat, alfalfa, and sugar beets.