Throughout his life, Nels Wroe’s dwellings have been limited to the western side of the United States, including areas in Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. This preference is the result of the strong sense of community he has always felt while living in these areas, he said — a feeling which he attributes to the states’ “western vibe.”
“It seems like I have always been surrounded by extended family, but by that I mean friends, neighbors and community members who help one another,” Wroe said. “A big framing component of my life has been being part of a community that is engaging and supportive.”
While attending graduate school at the University of Wyoming in 1993, Wroe decided to open Coal Creek Coffee Company, a coffee shop that was both created for and sustained by the Laramie community.
“I found that running a coffee shop in a college town was a great way for me to connect with my community and give back to it by creating a helpful, fun and rewarding space for people to meet and relax,” Wroe said.
In hindsight, opening the coffee shop was “a ridiculous wild card,” Wroe said with a laugh, due to the fact that he had no idea what he was doing at the time. He accredits the Laramie community for supporting the coffee shop and turning it into a success. For Wroe, the experience was a pivotal step in his overall career, he said, as he learned the personal importance for him to actively participate in whichever community he finds himself in.
Despite this epiphany, Wroe left graduate school and sold the coffee shop to begin working for a start-up technology consulting firm in Wyoming. In the years that followed, the small company grew extensively as it was acquired by big corporations in a series of mergers.
In 1999, Wroe was relocated from Wyoming to work in the company’s new offices in Boulder, Colorado. Upon arriving in the area, Wroe and his wife looked around for “a place that felt comfortable; a place that we felt was authentic and real that we could call home,” he said. They decided to settle in Longmont.
“It was a great time to move to Longmont because that was the point when Longmont was rough around the edges,” kind of like my wife and I, Wroe said with a laugh. “At the same time, it had so much potential and there were so many genuine people here.”
With his new office space located at , Wroe soon found himself networking with the people in the area including employees of Longmont Downtown Development Authority and city council.
From this, Wroe started to think about all the things he would like to see happen in Downtown Longmont, he said. “I felt like (my family) needed to be part of creating that Longmont and not just observing.”
While still working for the technology consulting firm, Wroe was presented with an opportunity to participate in a freelance project with a startup magazine, Microshiner Magazine, alongside friend and photographer Luc Nadeau. The duo’s job was to travel around and produce profile pieces on startup distillers in Colorado and the surrounding areas — Wroe was tasked with asking the questions while Nadeau worked from behind the lens.
At the time, craft distilling was in its infancy stage and there were about six distilleries in the state of Colorado. Nonetheless, “we could see that a seed was being planted for distillers, similar to the seed planted for craft brewers 25 or 30 years ago,” Wroe said. “Creators and folks who wanted to focus on the craft were starting to realize that they could make craft distilling work.”
Inspired by the recent adventure and confronted with another imminent merger at his company, Wroe felt it was his chance to leave his previous career behind and — drawing on his passion for being part of a community — entertain the idea of starting a craft distillery in Longmont.
He reached out to friend in Longmont, Aaron Main, who Wroe remembered had previously expressed interest in starting a brewery and suggested the two start a distillery instead.
From there, Wroe and Main traveled to Colorado Springs where they found a used still for sale. After buying and transporting the still to Main’s garage in Longmont, the two men were surprised at how big it was. They figured, “there’s no going back now,” Wroe said, “we have to figure out what to do with this thing.”
Wroe, who had recently split with his company, decided to dedicate nine months to exploring the new business venture. Right out of the gate, Wroe said, it was important to them that the distillery would be located in Downtown Longmont.
“I felt like a small craft distillery would be a great fit in Downtown Longmont,” he said, “I didn’t want to have it in an industrial area where it would be disconnected a little bit.”
Working with the city of Longmont, the Wroe and Main families embarked on a plan to create a small, pilot-like distillery in the back of an old building on Fifth Avenue and Main Street.
During the first several meetings, however, Wroe felt like there was a lot of skepticism on the part of city officials. He recalls, at one point, the Assistant Fire Marshal looking at him in a way that said “this guy must be crazy,” Wroe said.
The concerns were partly the result of Longmont’s zoning laws at the time which wouldn’t permit a distillery being built downtown. From a safety perspective, the fire department opposed the idea of great amounts of flammable alcohol being distilled in an old building in the central business district of Longmont.
After a while, city officials recognized Wroe and Main’s commitment to creating solutions for every problem presented to them and got behind them to make it happen.
“Once the city folks got involved with this crazy idea, they realized it was possible and that it would be good for downtown,” Wroe said, “and suddenly they were on board and genuinely excited and helpful. I think that it was a huge credit to how Longmont is managed and the community of Longmont.”
After a year of planning, Dry Land Distillery officially launched its first location in June of 2018. From there, the business took off, and soon Wroe and Main realized they would have to grow to meet demand.
“We looked for what our next step would be and found another building right on the pedestrian breezeway on Main Street,” Wroe said. After an approximately nine-month battle of trying to convince the owner of the space to sell it to them, the owner finally conceded and the families began another nine-month process of reworking the building from the ground up.
“We did a lot of the work (on the new building) ourselves and we worked with as many local artisans and craftsmen as we could, including local contractors and engineers,” Wroe said, a testament to his lifelong commitment to supporting whichever community he’s in.
“Now, we’re in growth mode,” Wroe said. “I’m proud that we’re becoming a key part of Downtown Longmont and doing things that the city of Longmont wouldn’t have envisioned 10 years ago.”
