Place:Loveland, Larimer, Colorado, United States

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The City of Loveland is the home rule municipality that is the second most populous municipality in Larimer County, Colorado, United States. Loveland is situated north of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver and is the 14th most populous city in Colorado. As of the 2020 census the population of Loveland was 76,378.^[1] The city forms part of the Fort Collins-Loveland Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Front Range Urban Corridor. The city's public schools are part of the Thompson R2-J School District.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Mariano Medina built the first settlement in the area, Fort Namaqua, in 1858. It was a trading post and stage station, and the site is now Namaqua Park. Prior to that time it was a hub for French fur trappers dating back to the late 1700s.^[2]

The city was officially founded in 1877 along the newly constructed line of the Colorado Central Railroad, near its crossing of the Big Thompson River. It was named in honor of William A.H. Loveland, the president of the Colorado Central Railroad. The city was founded one mile (1.6 km) upstream from the existing small settlement of St. Louis, the buildings of which were moved to the site of Loveland. For the first half of the 20th century, the town was dependent on agriculture. The primary crops in the area were sugar beets and sour cherries. In 1901 the Great Western Sugar Company built a factory in Loveland, which remained as a source of employment until its closure in 1977. During the late 1920s, the Spring Glade Orchard was the largest cherry orchard west of the Mississippi River. At that time the cherry orchards produced more than $1 million worth of cherries per year. A series of droughts, attacks of blight, competition from growers in other states (particularly Michigan), and finally a killer freeze destroyed the industry. By the late 1960s, cherries were no longer farmed at scale, although orchards remained in southeast Loveland and nearby Masonville into the 1990s. In the late 20th century, the economy diversified with the arrival of manufacturing facilities by Hewlett-Packard, Teledyne, and Hach, a water quality analysis equipment manufacturer. A new medical center has added a substantial amount of employment in that sector.

2013 & 1976 floods

On September 12, 2013, a historic flood affected numerous areas in Colorado. It rained heavily for four consecutive days, causing most rivers and creeks to overfill their banks. Estes Park received of rain, causing Lake Estes to overfill its banks. This prompted a lot of water to be released out of the dam, causing the Big Thompson River to swell. The flooding river caused sections of U.S. Highway 34, the main highway from Loveland to Estes Park, to collapse. The Big Thompson caused major flooding in Loveland, and caused numerous road closures because of flood waters. The Loveland/Fort Collins area received about , which is relatively less significant compared to the amount of rain other places received. This flood is often compared to the Big Thompson Flood of 1976, both of which are considered to be about a 1 in 500 chance of occurring in a given year, also called a "500-year flood", by the USGS and Colorado Department of Natural Resources standards and data respectively. Two people died as a result of the 2013 flooding in Larimer county while 144 people were killed in the 1976 flood, with 5 bodies in the 1976 incident never found.

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