Camp Collins: The Flood That Built Fort Collins

In the summer of eighteen sixty-two, the U.S. Army planted a small garrison near present-day Laporte, Colorado, to guard the Overland Trail.

They named it Camp Collins, after Lieutenant Colonel William O. Collins of the Eleventh Ohio Cavalry, then commanding Fort Laramie. Two years later, on the night of June ninth, eighteen sixty-four, a wall of water roared down Cache la Poudre Canyon.

The flood swept away tents, ammunition, and cabins, and the Army was forced to relocate the camp several miles downstream. That second location, on a wide bench above the Poudre River, turned out to be the right spot. When the Army abandoned Camp Collins in eighteen sixty-six, civilian settlers had already clustered around the supply merchants and buildings left behind.

That cluster became Fort Collins, named for the same Ohio officer who directed operations from Fort Laramie rather than from the camp itself.