Mary Miller

Read more about the stories that enrich Lafayette's heritage.

• Women With Impact - Women played incredible roles in helping to build and shape the West, and in particular, Lafayette. From Mary Miller, the town founder, and Josephine Roche, the majority stake holder in the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company, to Dolores Kellett, a star pitcher, and Allie Flint, Lafayette's first poet laureate, here are the stories of these women.  Learn more about Lafayette's first telephone operators and Iva's Beauty Shop.
  
  
• Hispanic Settlement - In 1776, Spanish explorers led by padres Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante traveled 2,000 miles into new territory, most of which had never been seen by white men. Their journey included nearly all of Utah, large sections of Arizona and New Mexico and the western area of Colorado.
  
  
• Front Range Stagecoach Stations - Before the arrival of the railroads, travel in the West was done on horseback or by wagon. A vital part of the development of the frontier was the network of stage stops that existed along the established trails, including two in the Lafayette area.
  
  
• Homesteaders - In 1862 Congress passed the Homestead Act, which provided for the sale of 160 acres of unoccupied public land to homesteaders for a nominal fee. This opened up the West, including Colorado, to anyone with the courage and determination to make the trip and survive the challenges.
  
  
• Coal Mining - Coal was first discovered in the Front Range near Marshall in the early 1860’s. In 1868 the first coal fields were developed in Erie, after it was noted that prairie dogs were digging black “dirt” from their holes.
  
  
• Chief Niwot - The Arapaho moved with the seasons – spending spring on the high plains hunting bison, moving north and west as the summer heat intensified, and returning each winter to the cottonwood groves along the banks of Boulder Creek, north of Lafayette, that protected them from the heavy snows that blasted the mountains and plains.