Longmont's founders wanted what most of today's residents still crave: a little peace and quiet, strong families and a place to work. After Lewis and Clark's expedition, West-bound settlers came together from the East and Mid­west in search of a better life, healthy mountain air and the freedom of wide open places, said Abbey Daniels, executive director of the St. Vrain Historical Society in Longmont.In the summer of 1829, Major Stephen A. Long, the first to survey the Front Range and the namesake of Long's Peak, deemed the Longmont area "the great American desert," a barren plainunfit for cultivation, Daniels said.

However, a dedicated group of people from Chicago banded together in 1870 to form the Chicago-Colorado Colony and determined to make the desert bloom. They planned a community of parks, churches, government buildings and a school and acquired property near Denver and Boulder, both booming mining towns in the 19th century. Carrying a banner of industry, morality and temperance of alcohol, the colony organizers at­tracted the attention of Elizabeth Rowell Thompson, a famous philanthropist who especially valued temperance.

Born in a Vermont cabin in 1821, Thompson was a "poor girl who grew up to marry a rich man," said Margaret Lind­blom, an assistant at the historical society. Thompson, one of 12 children, worked as a domestic servant for 25 cents a day from age 12 until she married her husband, a wealthy Harvard graduate, at age 22, said Eric Mason, curator of research at the Longmont Museum. They kept a home in Boston and later New York City, which is where Thompson, then a widow, lived when she heard of the Chicago-Colorado Colony.

During their 26-year marriage, the Thompson's used most of their income to help others. Overseeing her husband's money following his death, Thompson supported the wives and children of Civil War soldiers, funded research to eradicate yellow fever and gave more than a million dollars to anti-slavery causes. When she died in 1869, her estate built a hospital, Mason said.

After the Civil War, Thompson wanted to offer hope to des­titute families in the East. So when she learned of the Chica­go-Colorado Colony project, she jumped at the opportunity to buy land plots for people unable to afford to relocate yet aching for a new start, Lindblom said. Thompson purchased 20 land plots at $150 apiece, each of which included room for a home and barn, as well as a plot for a business in town, she said.

Mason said Thompson may have learned of the Chicago explorers through her nephew, one of those who traveled West with the colony. "But there was a lot in the newspapers then about westward expansion," he added. "She may have heard about the colony from that."

The colony began to take shape in November 1871. Within a couple weeks, a caravan of about 500 people arrived in the area, which they chris­tened Longmont after the peak. From the start, a park was named in Thompson's honor. Farmers rented the park to graze their cows, and women planted trees around its edges. Some of the original trees stand today, and the park remains in the center of the city.

Along with Main Street, Second to Ninth Avenue was soon laid out. A pas­tor, teacher, blacksmith and carpenter were on hand almost immediately, and a banker set up shop in Longmont within the month. "He drove here with his safe in his wagon, then set it down on Main Street and started his bank," Lindblom said. "It was an exciting time. Construc­tion was going on everywhere."