Joseph Mason, known as the "Father of Fort Collins, Colorado

Fort Collins, Colorado

Fort Collins is a Home Rule Municipality situated on the Cache La Poudre River along the Colorado Front Range, and is the county seat and most populous city of Larimer County, Colorado, United States. Fort Collins is located north of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver. With a 2010 census...

", was an early white homesteader

Homesteading

Broadly defined, homesteading is a lifestyle of simple self-sufficiency.-Current practice:The term may apply to anyone who follows the back-to-the-land movement by adopting a sustainable, self-sufficient lifestyle. While land is no longer freely available in most areas of the world, homesteading...

 in Larimer County, Colorado

Larimer County, Colorado

Larimer County is the seventh most populous and the ninth most extensive of the 64 counties of the State of Colorado of the United States. The county is located at the northern end of the Front Range, at the edge of the Colorado Eastern Plains along the border with Wyoming...

 in the 1860s. Mason settled a large tract of land along the Cache la Poudre River

Cache La Poudre River

The Cache la Poudre River is in the state of Colorado in the United States.Its headwaters are in the Front Range in Larimer County, in the northern part of Rocky Mountain National Park. The river descends eastward in the mountains through the Roosevelt National Forest in Poudre Canyon...

 in present-day north Fort Collins, and he played in an instrumental role in persuading the United States Army

United States Army

The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...

 to found Camp Collins

Camp Collins

Camp Collins was a 19th century outpost of the United States Army in the Colorado Territory. The fort was commissioned in the summer of 1862 to protect the Overland Trail from attacks by Native Americans in a conflict that later became known as the Colorado War...

 along the river adjacent to his property in 1864. He became prominent in politics and business in Fort Collins after the founding of the town in 1867, and served in several official posts, including Sheriff

Sheriff

A sheriff is in principle a legal official with responsibility for a county. In practice, the specific combination of legal, political, and ceremonial duties of a sheriff varies greatly from country to country....

of Larimer County.