Fort Collins, Colorado: The Camp That Gave Itself a Promotion

Fort Collins, Colorado, started out as Camp Collins, an Army post named for an Ohio cavalry colonel. The “Fort” came later, and according to the county’s 1911 history, the townspeople picked it themselves because it sounded grander.

Colonel Collins and the Ohio cavalry

In 1864 the job of guarding the Overland stage line here fell to the 11th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry. Its commander, Lieutenant Colonel William O. Collins, was stationed up at Fort Laramie in Wyoming. That spring he sent two companies down to Laporte, on the Cache la Poudre River, and they arrived in May.

Ansel Watrous, who wrote the History of Larimer County in 1911, says the soldiers set up a post just west of Laporte and named it Camp Collins “in honor of Col. Collins, commander of the regiment.” Elsewhere he puts it even more plainly: the post, “which before this had no distinction, was christened Camp Collins.” The federal place-names record agrees: the city is named after Civil War Lt. Col. William O. Collins, “who led forces protecting travelers.”

A flood moves the camp

The first Camp Collins didn’t last long. In June 1864 the river flooded the camp, and Watrous says tents, ammunition, blankets and clothing worth several thousand dollars washed away. That August, Collins came down from Fort Laramie to inspect, and he decided to move the post. In October the soldiers relocated to the site of today’s Fort Collins, and the name went with them.

From “Camp” to “Fort”

Here’s the part you won’t guess from the name. The settlement that grew around the post went by Camp Collins at first. Then, starting with July 5, 1869, the county commissioners began dating their records “Fort Collins.” Watrous reads that as a sign that the people “had become ambitious and discarded the common every day term ‘Camp’ for the more aristocratic title ‘Fort.’”

He adds a dry aside of his own: until Fort Logan was built near Denver, “there was no fort nearer than Fort Laramie, 130 miles away.”

Two cities, father and son

There’s one more family connection worth knowing. The colonel’s son, Casper W. Collins, had just been promoted to first lieutenant. He was killed in 1865 in a fight at Platte Bridge, in what’s now Wyoming. Watrous writes that “the city of Casper was named in his honor, even as the city of Fort Collins was named in honor of his gallant father.” So if you’ve been to Casper, Wyoming, you’ve been to the son’s city. Fort Collins is the father’s.

The colonel died on October 26, 1880. His widow, Catherine, wrote from Hillsborough, Ohio, to friends in Fort Collins the next spring and said he would have been “extremely gratified” to learn how well the “little post” he set up in 1864 was doing. One small wrinkle: Henry Gannett’s 1905 list for the U.S. Geological Survey calls him “Col. W. T. Collins of the Eleventh Ohio Volunteer Infantry.” His widow’s letter gives his name as William Oliver Collins, and Watrous calls his regiment cavalry.

Sources & further reading

• Ansel Watrous, History of Larimer County, Colorado (1911). The 11th Ohio at Laporte, Camp Collins “in honor of Col. Collins,” and the June flood and October move (pp. 57–58); the switch to “Fort Collins” in the county records on July 5, 1869, and the nearest real fort (p. 61); Casper W. Collins, Casper, Wyoming, and Catherine Collins’s 1881 letter (pp. 120–121); Collins’s August 1864 inspection and the move (p. 167); the post “christened Camp Collins” (p. 213).
• GNIS feature 204673, Fort Collins (U.S. Geological Survey). Named after Civil War Lt. Col. William O. Collins, who led forces protecting travelers.
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 128. Gives the name as “Col. W. T. Collins of the Eleventh Ohio Volunteer Infantry.”