Lafayette, Colorado
City in the United States in Boulder County
About Lafayette
The City of Lafayette ( LA(H)F-ee-ET) is a home rule municipality located in southeastern Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 30,411 at the 2020 United States census.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
How Lafayette is governed
Form of government not yet listed.
0 of 14 positions listed. Gray dashed boxes are placeholders waiting for a name.
Residents of Lafayette
Registered voters elect the officials below.
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Mayor
Executive
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The city's chief elected official. Presides over the executive branch, proposes the budget and represents the city.
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City Manager / Administrator
Executive
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The professional administrator who runs day-to-day operations (in some cities appointed by the council instead of the mayor).
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Police Chief
Administration & departments
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Leads the police department.
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Fire Chief
Administration & departments
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Leads the fire and emergency services department.
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Public Works Director
Administration & departments
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Streets, water, sewer, and city buildings.
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Finance Director
Administration & departments
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The budget, taxes, and city accounts.
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Planning & Zoning Director
Administration & departments
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Land use, zoning, building permits.
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Parks & Recreation Director
Administration & departments
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Parks, programs, and public facilities.
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City Council
Legislative
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The elected body that passes ordinances, sets the tax rate and approves the budget.
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City Clerk
Administration & departments
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Keeps the official records, runs meeting agendas and, often, local elections.
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City Attorney
Administration & departments
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The city's lawyer; advises officials and prosecutes ordinance violations.
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Boards & Commissions
Legislative
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Citizen advisory bodies, such as planning, zoning appeals and library boards.
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Municipal Court
Judicial
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Hears traffic, ordinance and other minor cases.
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Municipal Judge
Judicial
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Presides over the municipal court.
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- Website
- cityoflafayette.com
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Population over time
From 24,453 in 2010 to 30,411 in 2020 (+24.4%).
Show the numbers
| Year | Population |
|---|---|
| 2020 | 30,411 |
| 2010 | 24,453 |
History
Lafayette was founded in 1888 by Mary E. Miller (née Foote). She filed the original Town of Lafayette plat in January 1888 and sold the first residential lot – Lot 6, Block G, Town of Lafayette – in March 1888 to Hugh Hughes. In February 1889, the Town of Lafayette was incorporated.
Mary Miller and her husband, Lafayette Miller, had moved to the area to farm land they had purchased in March 1868 from Denver coal speculators Francis P. Heatly and Edward Chase. The farm also included land acquired by Mary's brother, James B. Foote, and father, John B. Foote, via the Homestead Act in 1871. In 1874 the Millers moved to Boulder. Lafayette Miller ran a butcher shop and was a town trustee. Lafayette Miller died in Boulder in 1878, after which Mary Miller moved back to the farm with their six small children. In 1884 coal was discovered on the Miller farm, and in 1887 John H. Simpson acquired a coal lease from James B. Foote and sank the first Simpson Mine shaft, thereby starting the coal mining era. In 1888 Mary Miller designated 37 acres (0.15 km2) of the farm for the town of Lafayette, which she named after her late husband. In July 1888 a second mine, the Cannon, went into operation and the first houses were built. Mary Miller submitted a revised 89 acres (0.36 km2) plat for the town in 1889. Also in early 1889, Mary Miller leased the rights to mine coal for 12.5 cents per ton to Charles Spencer and John H. Simpson. The two commenced sinking the Spencer coal mine 200 yards west of the Simpson coal mine. On April 2, 1889, the town of Lafayette was incorporated. As stipulated in the original property deeds for the platting, no alcohol could be sold or distributed east of what is now known as Public Road. In 1904, the Lafayette Town Board mandated that the "alcohol clause" be added to all platted additions to Lafayette.
Lafayette quickly became a part of the coal-mining boom that all of eastern Boulder and southwestern Weld counties were experiencing, with the combined Spencer/Simpson mine being the largest and most productive. The Cannon floundered and failed to produce profitable quantities of coal. It closed in 1898. By 1914 Lafayette was a booming town with two banks and four hotels. Lafayette was also the location of one of the nation's first distributed electrical grids powered by the Interurban Power Plant that served Louisville, Boulder, Longmont, and Fort Collins.
Mary Miller continued to be a leader in the community, especially in January 1900, when the town's business district burned. She founded the Farmers’ & Miners’ State Bank with S.T. Hooper, C.C. Brown and G.C. Beaman in June 1892, which closed in August 1894. Mary Miller then formed the Lafayette Bank in 1900. She was elected president of the bank, and according to a Denver Post article reprinted in the Lafayette News and dated December 13, 1902, was "the only woman in the United States known to be president of a bank." The bank closed in 1914 because of roughly $90,000 in bad loans to the striking United Mine Workers. Mary Miller remained devoted to the temperance movement and eventually ran on the 1913 Prohibition Party ticket for the U.S. Senate seat won by Gov. John F. Shafroth. She also ran for the state treasurer seat on the Prohibition Party ticket. Miller died in 1921 at her daughter-in-law's home at 501 E. Cleveland Street.
Lafayette continued to thrive as a coal-mining town. Northern Coal Field miners, members of United Mine Workers, walked off the job in the aforementioned strike starting in April 1910. The United Mine Workers expanded the strike to all of Colorado in 1913. The Long Strike is nationally noted for the Ludlow Massacre of miners' families by the National Guard in the Southern Coal Field near Trinidad, Colorado.
Until about 1915, residents of the city were largely caucasian Midwestern transplants and Western European coal miners who'd immigrated from England, Wales and Ireland. The 1900 and 1910 census show no families with Latino surnames residing in Lafayette. Coinciding with the start of the Long Strike of 1910–1914, the coal operators began recruiting strikebreaker workers who were immigrants from Eastern Europe and Mexico. United Mine Workers Lafayette Local 1388 meeting minutes show scant traces of Latino membership from 1903 until September 1913. Initially banned from membership, union locals realized during the Long Strike of 1910–1914 the necessity of forming labor alliances with native-born and immigrant Latinos. Entering their $10 annual Lafayette Local 1388 dues at the September 25, 1913, meeting were initiates Frank Gonzales, S. Gonzales, F.H. Gallegos, A. Dominguez, Guy Dominguez, Jesus Guzman, Gabriel Vigil, Teofila Tafoya, D. Romero, Ben Martinez, Juan Guerrero and Francisco Guerrero. After the strike, Rocky Mountain Fuel Company encouraged their employees in the Southern Coal Field, largely immigrants from Mexico and second- and third-generation residents of New Mexico and Colorado, to relocate to the Lafayette area. Those Latino families located in Serene initially then moved to Lafayette after the Columbine Mine closed. In the 1920s and 1930s sugar factories in surrounding counties also recruited Latino workers to harvest sugar beets. The 1920 census showed 1,800 Lafayette residents, with 25 individuals having Latino surnames.
In 1927, Lafayette's coal miners walked off the job again, a strike nationally recognized as a great Wobbly (Industrial Workers of the World, a radical labor group) strike. The mining massacre resulted in the deaths of five Lafayette resident miners just northeast of town in the Columbine Mine massacre on November 27, 1927, in what is now the ghost town of Serene near Erie.
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