FORT COLLINS

city, seat of Larimer county, northern Colorado, U.S. It lies along the Cache la Poudre River (the state's Trout Route), in the eastern foothills of the Rockies' Front Range at an elevation of 5,004 feet (1,525 m), 55 miles (89 km) north of Denver. The community developed after 1864 around a military outpost named for its commander, Lieutenant William O. Collins of Fort Laramie, Wyo. The outpost was abandoned in 1872, but the settlement remained and, promoted by a town development company, grew with the arrival of the railroad and a highly successful sugar beet industry based on local irrigation and stimulated by a land grant college (now Colorado State University) established there in 1870. The contemporary city has large lamb-feeding operations and agricultural and quarry-based industries supplemented by light manufactures and tourism. The city's Pioneer Museum preserves the first settler's cabin and mementos of the fort. Fort Collins is the headquarters of the Roosevelt National Forest, a few miles west; the Pawnee National Grassland is to the east. Inc. 1883. Pop. (1991 est.) city, 89,958; (1990) Fort CollinsLoveland MSA, 186,136.