This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.
Last year, I finished the content coursework for my Bachelor’s Degree in History at the University of Colorado, Denver by doing about 30-pages of research on a chosen topic in urban history. Urban history, of course, being the study of the development of cities across America.
Being a fourth generation Longmonter, I chose to study the development of the Chicago-Colorado Colony. Not just how the colony formed, but more specifically how collectivism and shared values shaped the early history of the City of Longmont.
What I found over the course of that research was interesting, and the longer this crisis has gone on, the more I’ve thought about how the spirit we adopted in our founding can inform how we respond to this remarkable moment in our history.
Our city was founded not by a single person, but by a group of people from all walks of life coming together to build a new community that could provide opportunity for their families far beyond what they had found in the east. Throughout our early ears, Longmont’s first residents, the members of the Chicago-Colorado Colony, faced tremendous hardship. Yet, time and again, they overcame those troubles as a collective unit.
That spirit echoes every single day during the COVID crisis as we tell ourselves that we will “get through this together.” The truth is that our history shows “getting through it together” is what Longmont does best.
Our city was founded as a membership colony for mostly working-class Chicagoans seeking to follow the now-cliched adage and “go west,” to build a membership colony based off the successful Union Colony founded by New Yorkers in present-day Greeley the year before. Our city was to be, as the Chicago Tribune described in November 1870, “A place for the poor, whose
life had been one of depressing failure, and who should seek new fields of enterprise.”
Right from the beginning, the odds were stacked against us.
Yet, somehow, we persevered. We came together, risking life and limb to build a planned community, and I mean that in the most literal sense.
On August 14, 1871, while helping construct necessary infrastructure in the newly built downtown area, Judge Seth Terry, then President of the Colony, badly injured himself when the crank of an old well along Main Street fell on him, dislocating his left shoulder and leaving a two inch gash on his head that exposed part of his skull. Terry’s son said he suffered with the
aftereffects of this injury for the rest of his life and even blamed it, in part, for Terry’s death in 1901.
Terry’s injury is a great reminder that, from our earliest days,
Longmonters have been willing to do what ever it takes to make sure our community survives. That should be no different as we face this pandemic.
It’s on each and every one of us to take collective action, just as we’ve done throughout our history, in order to keep one another healthy. Listening to public health experts, wearing masks when in public, and supporting local leaders and policies that focus on public health rather than economic expediency is what this moment calls for. The health of my neighbor depends on me doing the right thing here. Collectively, it’s on each and every one of us to keep each other safe.
Masks are inconvenient. Social distancing is inconvenient. The whole economic impact of this is heartbreaking, and I feel for so many of our small business owners who are suffering. However, the economic impact and the public health need can absolutely be balanced in a way that protects people, while still allowing businesses to return to some form of normalcy if we stick together in this fight. We all must take collective action to
keep each other safe, and our history shows that we can.
I encourage every Longmont resident to follow in the footsteps of our founders by looking out for your neighbor, and doing what we have to do in order to keep each other safe. We’ve been through hard times before, and we’ve overcome them by sticking together. We’ll get through this, Longmont. It’s in our DNA.
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Jake Marsing
Longmont, CO 80501
This is an opinion piece that was submitted to the Longmont Observer and does not necessarily represent the opinion of the Longmont Observer. If you have an opinion piece you'd like published, please visit our 'Submit an Opinion' page.
