Windsor, Colorado

The first settlers arrived in the Windsor area in the 1870s, drawn by the agricultural possibilities. Then the railroad arrived in 1882 and built a large depot. That same year the townsite was surveyed and platted and business took off from there.

One of the larger early crops was sugar beets and production was such that a large sugar beet processing plant was built in Windsor in 1903. To pick the ever-larger crops of sugar beets, German immigrants from Russia poured into the area and became very prosperous within the first generation of their arrival. The Great Western Sugar Company took good care of the local farmers until the Windsor plant was closed in the mid-1960s. After the plant closed, Kodak came to town and built a new manufacturing facility. Then came Metal Container Corporation 20 years later and 20 years after that came Vestas (wind turbines) and Owens Illinois (glass bottles).

Along the Poudre River Trail in Windsor