Commerce City
Colorado
Welcome to Commerce City, a town that was born to keep from being swallowed. For decades this was farm country northeast of Denver, full of wheat fields and dairies, until industry arrived in the late nineteen twenties. A refinery went up in nineteen thirty, grain elevators followed, and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal was built just east in nineteen forty-two.
As Denver grew hungry to annex the surrounding land, residents fought back. In July of nineteen fifty-two, they voted two hundred fifty-one to twenty-four to incorporate themselves as Commerce Town. Ten years later, after annexing part of the Derby area and gaining enough people to qualify as a city, they changed the name to Commerce City.
The old refineries and rail yards are still here, and so is that founding spirit of a community that refused to disappear into its giant neighbor.
