Fort Collins Wedding

Fort Collins, situated on the Cache la Poudre River, is the largest city and county seat of Larimer County, Colorado. It is a large college town (home to Colorado State University) in the north central region of the state, along what is known as the Colorado Front Range. According to the 2005 Census estimates, the city proper had an estimated population of 128,026.[1]

Fort Collins was founded as a military outpost of the United States Army in 1864. There was a previous encampment, known as Camp Collins, on the Cache La Poudre River, near present-day Laporte. Camp Collins was erected during the Indian wars of the mid-1860s to protect the Overland mail route that had by this time detoured through the region. Travelers crossing the county on the Overland Trail would camp there, but a flood destroyed it in June 1864. Afterward, the commander of the fort wrote to the commandant of Fort Laramie in southeast Wyoming, Colonel William O. Collins, suggesting that a site several miles further down the Poudre would make a good location for the fort. The post was manned originally by two companies of the 11th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry and never had walls.