Town of Mead, Colorado

The Town of Mead was platted on February 16, 1906 and incorporated on March 17, 1908. The Town was named for L.C. "Deacon" Mead, who had emigrated from Chicago and built his homestead at what is now Highlandlake. Mead was well known locally for his work with the Highland Ditch Company while that Company was surveying and building Highland Lake on his property. The Highland Ditch and its reservoir system was one of the first farm irrigation systems in the country and was, at that time, a subject of wide agricultural study at many of the country's agricultural education institutions. The small unincorporated community of Highlandlake is still in existence and is located approximately 1 ½ miles west of Mead. In 1905 the Great Western Railroad built a feeder line from Longmont to Johnstown to gather and take the sugar beet harvest to their refinery in Longmont. The railway passed directly through Paul Mead's property. Paul was Deacon Mead's nephew. It was decided by the businesses at Highlandlake to relocate to this railway siding, which led Paul to plat a new town adjacent to the tracks. For the next two decades the Town prospered as farmers used this siding to get their crops to the market. At its peak, Mead had three general stores, a hotel, a combination grocery store and meat market, two saloons, a butcher shop, a filling station, two auto garages, an implement company, two livery stables, a lumberyard, a blacksmith shop, a drug store, a hoe and harness repair shop, a post office, two doctors' offices, a bank (Mead State Bank) and a newspaper (Mead Messenger). Two of the churches in existence then are still active today. There was also a pickle factory, a hay mill and a pea-hulling factory on the outskirts of the community. The land surrounding the community is prime agricultural land. It has gentle rolling hills and flat lands with numerous irrigation reservoirs scattered throughout the landscape. Wide-open spaces are the trademark of rural Weld County, and Mead has its share of them. The advent of the automobile, shopping malls, national chain stores and the Depression all played important roles in the changes the Town has seen since its incorporation. Presently, the Town is primarily a bedroom community and because of its ideal central location to metropolitan areas such as Denver, Fort Collins, Longmont and Boulder, residents commute to their place of employment. It has some commercial and industrial development on State Highway 66 next to Interstate 25. Modern transportation, the adjacency of I-25, and the new Denver International Airport have led to the most recent changes in the community. Mead is growing, steadily, but nevertheless growing. Mead is looking to the future with anticipation and looking forward to the opportunities and challenges that growth will present to the community.