Lafayette, Colorado

The City of Lafayette ( ) is a home rule municipality located in southeastern Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 30,411 at the 2020 United States census.

History

thumb|upright|left|Mary E. Miller, Representative Women of Colorado, 1914

Lafayette was founded in 1888 by Mary E. Miller (née Foote). She filed the original Town of Lafayette plat in January 1888 and sold the first residential lot – Lot 6, Block G, Town of Lafayette – in March 1888 to Hugh Hughes. In February 1889, the Town of Lafayette was incorporated.

Mary Miller and her husband, Lafayette Miller, had moved to the area to farm land they had purchased in March 1868 from Denver coal speculators Francis P. Heatly and Edward Chase. The farm also included land acquired by Mary's brother, James B. Foote, and father, John B. Foote, via the Homestead Act in 1871. In 1874 the Millers moved to Boulder. Lafayette Miller ran a butcher shop and was a town trustee. Lafayette Miller died in Boulder in 1878, after which Mary Miller moved back to the farm with their six small children. In 1884 coal was discovered on the Miller farm, and in 1887 John H. Simpson acquired a coal lease from James B. Foote and sank the first Simpson Mine shaft, thereby starting the coal mining era. In 1888 Mary Miller designated of the farm for the town of Lafayette, which she named after her late husband. In July 1888 a second mine, the Cannon, went into operation and the first houses were built. Mary Miller submitted a revised plat for the town in 1889. In 1904, the Lafayette Town Board mandated that the "alcohol clause" be added to all platted additions to Lafayette.

Lafayette quickly became a part of the coal-mining boom that all of eastern Boulder and southwestern Weld counties were experiencing, with the combined Spencer/Simpson mine being the largest and most productive. The Cannon floundered and failed to produce profitable quantities of coal. It closed in 1898. The bank closed in 1914 because of roughly $90,000 in bad loans to the striking United Mine Workers. Mary Miller remained devoted to the temperance movement and eventually ran on the 1913 Prohibition Party ticket for the U.S. Senate seat won by Gov. John F. Shafroth. The United Mine Workers expanded the strike to all of Colorado in 1913. By 2016, 4,400 (18 percent) of Lafayette's 25,000 residents were Hispanic or Latino.

alt=Snow-covered Simpson Street in Lafayette, Colorado, with parked cars lining both sides of the narrow roadway, historic one- and two-story commercial buildings on the right, modern townhouses on the left, bare winter trees, and an overcast sky.|thumb|Simpson Street in Lafayette, Colorado, looking east on a snowy winter day, showing historic commercial buildings on the right and newer townhomes on the left.

Industry

Not only did coal mined in Lafayette, Louisville, Marshall and Erie heat Denver's growing number of households starting in the late 1880s, it also fueled Denver's smelters, cotton mills, breweries, paper mills, shoe factories and power plants.

The southeast corner of Waneka Lake Park features Lafayette's oldest structure, the Waneka Granary, built in the 1870s. The late Charles "Clancy" Waneka believed that Lafayette pioneer Adolf Waneka built it, while Clancy's cousin, Charles "Chuck" Waneka has always argued that the pioneer Harmon Family built it. The structure provides an excellent window into early construction methods including hand hewn logs and square iron nails. Adolf gave his interest in the lake to his son, Henry "Boye" Waneka, who then sold to William, Frank and Guy Harmon in 1897. Northern Colorado Power Company documents from 1906 and reservoir records at the Colorado Div. of Water Resources both show that the original name of Waneka Lake was "Henry Waneka No. 1 Reservoir."

alt=This stitched panorama looks west from the east shore path at Waneka Lake in Lafayette, Colorado, with riprap and grasses in the foreground, calm reservoir waters at center, a loop trail and signpost at right, and cottonwoods in fall color backed by the Front Range under a clear evening sky.|thumb|Panoramic view across Waneka Lake from the east shore trail in Lafayette, Colorado, showing autumn foliage and the distant Front Range.

Government

The Lafayette City Council serves as the community's legislative body, enacting ordinances, appropriating funds to conduct city business, and providing policy direction for city governance through the city administrator. The council consists of seven members who are elected on a non-partisan basis in odd-numbered years. Terms are staggered as four seats must be filled each election year. The three councilors with the most votes serve four-year terms and the fourth receives a two-year term. The mayor and mayor pro-tem are selected by the City Council for two-year terms. As of December 2021, the current mayor of Lafayette is JD Mangat and the mayor pro-tem is Brian Wong. In November 2025, Lafayette established its first sister city partnership with Iquitos in Peru's Loreto Region, following unanimous City Council approval on August 5 and Iquitos' approval in early November, with a formal signing ceremony held at City Hall on December 1 facilitated by the nonprofit One Voice 4 Change.

Notable political vacancies in Lafayette's history:

Died in office: Lafayette Miller, 1878, town of Boulder trustee; died while in office.
Removals: Richard W. Morgan, 1907, Colorado state senator; removed from office for accepting $700 bribe.
City council resignations: Walter Moon, 1891 (an alderman); Joe Mathias, 1935; Roy "Ham" Roberts, 1959; Tom Lopez, 1975; Carl Williams, 1980; John Drennen, 1986; Candy Fox, 1996; Bryan Olson, 1996; Mike Romero, 1999; Dennis Buck, 2000; Mark Hoskins, 2001; Tom Anderson, 2001; Andy Proctor, 2002; Dave Schneller, 2003; Tom Hogue, 2003; Alex Schatz, 2005; Kerry Bensman, 2010; Chris Cameron, 2010; Tom Dowling, 2016; Gustavo Reyna, 2018; Christine Berg, 2019; Merrily Mazza, 2019.

Sister cities

Lafayette has one sister city:

Iquitos, Loreto Region, Peru – first Sister City partnership for both municipalities (since 2025).

| footnote = U.S. Decennial Census

| align-fn = center

2020 census

As of the 2020 census, Lafayette had a population of 30,411. The median age was 38.9 years. 22.9% of residents were under the age of 18 and 14.3% of residents were 65 years of age or older. For every 100 females there were 96.3 males, and for every 100 females age 18 and over there were 92.2 males age 18 and over.

There were 12,070 households in Lafayette, of which 33.1% had children under the age of 18 living in them. Of all households, 48.5% were married-couple households, 16.8% were households with a male householder and no spouse or partner present, and 26.7% were households with a female householder and no spouse or partner present. About 25.2% of all households were made up of individuals and 9.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.

! Race !! Number !! Percent

| White || 22,789 || 74.9%

| Black or African American || 345 || 1.1%

| American Indian and Alaska Native || 278 || 0.9%

| Asian || 1,278 || 4.2%

| Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander || 18 || 0.1%

| Some other race || 2,041 || 6.7%

| Two or more races || 3,662 || 12.0%

| Hispanic or Latino (of any race) || 5,614 || 18.5%

2010 census

As of the census of 2010, there were 24,453 people, 9,632 households, and 6,354 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 9,997 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 85.6% White, 1.1% African American, 0.9% Native American, 3.8% Asian, 0.05% Pacific Islander, 5.4% some other race, and 3.2% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino people of any race were 18.2% of the population.

There were 9,632 households, of which 36.5% had children under the age of 18 living in them; 49.9% were headed by married couples living together; 11.6% had a female householder with no husband present; and 34.0% were non-families. Of all households, 25.5% were made up of individuals, and 5.9% were someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. Average household size was 2.54, and average family size was 3.08.

Religion

Lafayette's first established church was the Congregational Church, which was established in 1890 by John and Annie Jones, Mr. and Mrs. J. M. Van Deren and Laura Kimbark. Lafayette town founder Mary E. Miller paid for the construction of the church circa 1892 and funded the salary of the church's first pastor. In 1907, the Catholic Church of St. Ida was established. This was replaced in 1954 by the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. Flatirons Community Church was founded in Lafayette in 1997.

Notable people

Bob Beauprez (born 1948), Republican politician
Devon Beitzel (born 1988), former professional basketball point guard
John C. Buechner (1934–2018), educator, politician and City Councillor
Edward Doyle (Labor Activist) (1886-1954), coal miner and union activist
Lars Grimsrud, aerospace engineer and performance automobile enthusiast
Maria Handley (born 1977), member-at-large of the Democratic National Committee
Steven Lindsey (born 1960), retired U.S. Air Force officer and NASA astronaut
John Massaro (1959-2022), also known as John Vincent Hazlett, guitarist and wrote songs for Steve Miller Band
Lafayette vampire (1877-1918), also known as Teodor Glava
James Lord (unionist) (1878-1962), coal miner and union activist
Lenny Metz (1899–1953), shortstop for the Philadelphia Phillies 1923–25, lived in Lafayette
Mary E. Miller (1843–1921) founded the town of Lafayette, Colorado
Joe Neguse (born 1984), US Representative for Colorado's 2nd District
Alicia Sanchez (1926–1985), Latina activist who founded the Clinica Campesina
Marilyn Sitzman (1939–1993), receptionist and witness to the assassination of JFK
Jessica Watkins (born 1988), geologist, former international rugby player and 2017 NASA astronaut candidate

References

External links

City of Lafayette official website
Lafayette News, Lafayette's weekly newspaper