Milestones: City of Lafayette

Perhaps the history of any city can be traced to the history of its land and what the land can offer the people.

In Colorado’s history, gold plays a major role in how the land was settled. And in the early days of Lafayette, coal was the town’s most valuable resource.

The first coal was mined on the farm land of Mary Miller, who came to Colorado with her husband Lafayette in 1863 and bought land acquired through the Homestead Act, a U.S. federal law established in 1861 that gave applicants freehold title of undeveloped federal land west of the Mississippi River.…