Mead, Colorado

Mead exists because a railroad chose to go around another town. In nineteen oh five, the Great Western Sugar Company announced it was laying track a full mile east of the growing community of Highlandlake, bypassing it entirely. Paul Martin Mead, whose farm sat right where the new beet dump would go, saw the opportunity.

He platted a town on his land and started selling lots. The first week alone he moved thirty-five of them. By nineteen oh eight, Mead was chartered and Highlandlake was fading.

It is a classic Great Plains story: the railroad giveth and the railroad taketh away, depending entirely on where you happened to own land.