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Articles from the 'Story Behind The Place' series


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  • The Story Behind the Place(s) - Dodd Water Treatment Plant and Dodd Reservoir

    Bruce Warren|Mar 16, 2022

    The Dodd Water Treatment Plant of the Left Hand Water District and Dodd Reservoir are named in honor of the Dodd family, which has contributed much to the history and development of the Niwot area. Alva M. Dodd came to the Niwot area in the 1860s, and married Della Gould, a member of the pioneering Gould family. They had 10 children, nine of whom remained in the area after they became adults. One son, Hugh Dodd, lived in the small house on the northwest corner of the intersection of Niwot Road...

  • The Story Behind the Place – Howard L. Morton Water Reclamation Facility

    Bruce Warren|Mar 2, 2022

    Motorists traveling on 95th Street (also known as Hover Road) near the intersection with Niwot Road notice a sandstone sign on the west side of the road: "Howard L. Morton Water Reclamation Facility, Niwot Sanitation District." The district offices as well as the actual water treatment facility sit farther back from the sign, accessed by a narrow road which dead ends at the offices. Howard L. Morton farmed the land up the hill and east of the small community of Niwot, which had been platted in...

  • Story behind the place: Hagen Field

    Jack Carlough|Jul 29, 2020

    In last week's edition of the Left Hand Valley Courier, we covered the story behind Niwot's Ritz Field, named after Colorado Rockies pitcher Kevin Ritz. We now turn our attention towards its neighbor, Hagen Field, named after the late Greg Hagen. Hagen was a parent volunteer for Niwot Youth Sports. When NYS lost the use of borrowed fields in Niwot at 83rd and Neva Road, Hagen helped erect the backstops at three new fields on Left Hand Water District property off Nimbus Road. When Hagen died...

  • Story behind the place: Ritz Field

    Jack Carlough|Jul 22, 2020

    Niwot Youth Sports baseball was thriving in the 1990s and was in desperate need of additional fields for its over 500 ballplayers. NYS was limited to local school fields and borrowed land for much of its then 20-year history. The situation was not ideal for a growing program. Former NYS Softball director Jim Martinsen reached out to the Left hand Water District in hopes of securing land for future ballfields and his wish was granted. NYS quickly constructed three makeshift fields adjacent to...

  • The story behind the place: Cottonwood Trail

    Patricia Logan|Jun 3, 2020

    The fur is about to fly. One place to see the faux June snow is the Cottonwood Trail, just south of Jay Road and east of the Diagonal. The trail is only 1.2 miles long, but its name carries the legacy of the tree that has been a towering presence in the life of people and wildlife throughout the Boulder Valley and beyond. Cottonwoods touched every aspect of life for Native American people, providing shelter, materials, sustenance, gathering places and spiritual inspiration. In the 1800s a new...

  • The story behind the place: Lagerman, Nelson, and Ryssby-Swedish Legacies

    Amy Scanes-Wolfe|Apr 22, 2020

    The Homestead Act of 1862 turned the American West into a promised land for religiously and socially repressed Swedish Lutherans, who were coming off three years of crop failure. Around 1.3 million Swedes immigrated to the United States between 1862 and the early 1900s. But not all Swedish immigrants in Longmont acquired their land through the Homestead Act; at least one earned it by gratitude. In 1870, August Nelson accepted a job in the Blackhawk smelter. With help from his two brothers,...