When one thinks of LaSalle, Colorado, it’s not hard to imagine the town’s namesake being some intrepid French explorer or fur trapper of the old west. After all, the eastern half of Colorado was part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. However, this Northern Colorado community actually owes its name to a different kind of “tracker” whose trail leads all the way back to a most unexpected location—Chicago, Illinois.
You see, in 1869 the Denver Pacific Railroad (which would eventually become Union Pacific Railroad) began laying tracks north to connect Denver and Cheyenne, Wyoming. With the eventual addition of coal facilities, an engine round house, water supplies, and stock yards, LaSalle soon became a hub of operations for Union Pacific. According to town historians, an early settler named D. S. Ellis from LaSalle, Illinois named the town after his old stomping grounds—a bedroom community on the outskirts of Chicago which, in turn, had been named for the LaSalle Street Rail Road Station in Chicago.
Like its historic namesake, LaSalle is also a bedroom community brimming with small-town charm in close proximity to its larger neighbor to the north, the City of Greeley. With roughly 3,300 residents, LaSalle evokes images of a less hurried way of life, with picnics in the park, horseshoes being pitched, and neighbors making time to chat it up—whether over a shared fence or a cup of morning coffee. And, just as it was in years past, agriculture and transportation remain intrinsic parts of the local economy and culture.
Like many communities around our state, LaSalle is experiencing its share of the recent real estate boom. ProCode is proud to support the Town of LaSalle with outsourced permitting, inspection, and code enforcement services as it seeks to preserve its small-town heritage in the face of an unprecedented number of people making tracks for Northern Colorado.