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Douglas County, Colorado, USA
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Douglas County is the seventh-most populous of the 64
counties of the U.S. state of Colorado. As of the 2010 census, the
population was 285,465. The county seat is Castle Rock.
Douglas
County is part of the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO Metropolitan
Statistical Area. It is located midway between Colorado's two largest
cities, Denver and Colorado Springs. Douglas County has the highest
median household income of any Colorado county or statistical
equivalent. It is ranked ninth nationally in that category, and has the
highest of any county or equivalent not in the northeastern US.
Douglas County is lightly wooded, mostly with ponderosa pine, with
broken terrain characterized by mesas, foothills and small streams.
Cherry Creek and Plum Creek rise in Douglas County and flow north toward
Denver and into the South Platte River. Both were subject to flash
flooding in the past, Plum Creek being partially responsible for the
Denver flood of 1965. Cherry Creek is now dammed.
Most residents
commute to workplaces elsewhere in the metropolitan area outside of the
county. Suburban development is displacing the ranching economy of the
county.
Douglas County was one of the original 17 counties
created in the Colorado Territory by the Colorado Territorial
Legislature on November 1, 1861. The county seat was originally
Franktown, but was moved to California Ranch in 1863, and then to Castle
Rock in 1874. Although the county's boundaries originally extended
eastward to the Kansas state border, in 1874 most of the eastern portion
of the county became part of Elbert County.
In Henry Gannett's
book (1905), The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States it
is claimed that the county was named in honour of U.S. Senator
Stephen A. Douglas of
Illinois, who died five months before the county was created.
However, there is also a claim that it is named after James Douglas, who
established a camp along the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific
Railroad to provide wood for the locomotives.
Research note:
•
Camp Douglas, in Wisconsin, was
named after James Douglas. Is it likely the claim above is true?
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Any contributions will be
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