Garden City, CO

In 2020, Garden City had 254 residents in Weld County, surrounded by Greeley and Evans and tied to the Greeley metropolitan area. Its origin story is unusually direct. After Greeley voters chose a local option that made the city dry in June 1935, a separate settlement began forming on Greeley’s southern edge. Mrs. A.F. Ray sold cabins and lots from her ten-acre Cottage Camp so the new town could meet the landowner-signature requirement, and Garden City incorporated on August 2, 1938, after two earlier challenges. For years, people came over the hill from Greeley to buy drinks and dance.

Today, Garden City remains a compact municipal pocket between Greeley and Evans. Eighth Avenue is the town’s main street, and its location beside the University of Northern Colorado puts a small local government in the middle of a much larger urban setting. The old liquor-town story still gives Garden City its strongest local hook; the present-day map is a town boundary woven into the Greeley-Evans street grid.