Cache la Poudre Monument

The river running past Fort Collins carries one of the strangest names in the West. Cache la Poudre is French for hide the powder, and the story behind it goes back to the fur trade era. According to the often-told account, a party of French trappers was caught in a fierce snowstorm along this stream.

To lighten their wagons, they dug a pit and buried, or cached, their gunpowder near the river's bank, planning to return for it later. The name stuck. Long before the French arrived, the Sioux called this water Minni Luzahan, meaning swift current, and the Arapaho had their own name tied to a game bag.

Major Stephen Long's expedition of eighteen twenty labeled it differently still. The exact year and the trappers' identities are debated by historians to this day, but the powder-burying tale endured and gave the river, the valley, and a whole region their distinctive French name.