Websites can disappear and addresses can change. Please advise if you find a broken link on the Adams County, COGenWeb pages. Let me know at my above email address.

Adams County is a county located in the U.S. state of Colorado.  The county seat is Brighton. Brighton was founded in the 1870s as a stage/railroad depot and farming community. The town was originally named Hughes Station. The town was incorporated in 1887. The county is named for Alva Adams [pictured at the left], an early Governor of the State of Colorado in 1887–1889.

On May 30, 1854, the Kansas–Nebraska Act created the Territory of Nebraska and Territory of Kansas [see Denver County], divided by the Parallel 40° North (168th Avenue in present-day Adams County). The future Adams County, Colorado, occupied a strip of northern Arapahoe County, Kansas Territory [see Arapahoe County], immediately south of the Nebraska Territory.  [Adams county was named for Alva Adams.

In 1859, John D. "Colonel Jack" Henderson built a ranch, trading post, and hotel on Henderson Island in the South Platte River in Arapahoe County, Kansas Territory. Jack Henderson was the former editor and proprietor of the Leavenworth (Kansas Territory) Journal and an outspoken pro-slavery politician who had been accused of vote fraud in eastern Kansas. Henderson sold meat and provisions to gold seekers on their way up the South Platte River Trail to the gold fields during the Pike's Peak Gold Rush. Henderson Island was the first permanent settlement in the South Platte River Valley between Fort Saint Vrain in the Nebraska Territory and the Cherry Creek Diggings in the Kansas Territory. Jack Henderson eventually returned to eastern Kansas and fought for the Union in the American Civil War. Henderson Island is today the site of the Adams County Regional Park and Fairgrounds.

The eastern portion of the Kansas Territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Kansas on January 29, 1861, and on February 28, 1861, the remaining western portion of the territory was made part of the new Colorado Territory.The Colorado Territory [graphic on the right] created Arapahoe County, on November 1, 1861, and Colorado was admitted to the Union on August 1, 1876.

In 1901, the Colorado General Assembly voted to split Arapahoe County into three parts: a new Adams County, a new consolidated City and County of Denver, and the remainder of the Arapahoe County to be renamed South Arapahoe County. A ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court, subsequent legislation, and a referendum delayed the creation of Adams County until November 15, 1902. Governor James Bradley Orman [photo on the left] designated Brighton as the temporary Adams County Seat. Adams County originally stretched 160 miles (258 kilometers) from present-day Sheridan Boulevard to the Kansas state border. On May 12, 1903, the eastern 88 miles (142 kilometers) of Adams County was transferred to the new Washington County and the new Yuma County, reducing the length of Adams County to the present 72 miles (116 kilometers). On November 8, 1904, Adams County voters chose Brighton as the permanent county seat.

A 1989 vote transferred 53 square miles (137 square kilometers) of Adams County to the City and County of Denver for the proposed Denver International Airport, leaving the densely populated western portion of the county as two oddly-shaped peninsulas. Adams County lost the tip of its northwest corner when the consolidated City and County of Broomfield was created on November 15, 2001.

---Wikipedia

Surrounding counties:  Arapahoe  |  Broomfield  |  Denver  |  Jefferson  |  Morgan  |  Washington  |  Weld