VGI Updates

Volga Germans settled in and around Sedgwick.

Volga German families settled in and around Rocky Ford. Many were enticed to move to Rocky Ford to work for the American Crystal Sugar Company and in the sugar beet industry that supported the plant. The American Sugar Beet Company built a factory in Rocky Ford in 1901.

Several Volga German families settled in and around Prospect Valley.

Volga German families settled in and around Ovid, Colorado.

Volga German families settled in and around Ordway, Colorado.

Montrose officially became a town in 1882. The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad Co. built its narrow gauge mainline railroad through Montrose (connecting Denver and Salt Lake City). Standard gauge was completed in 1906. The Gunnison Tunnel, constructed to provide irrigation water to the valley, opened in 1909.

Volga German families have been living in the Uncompahgre Valley for more than 100 years.

Milliken has its beginnings as the community of Hillsboro which was organized in 1905. In 1908, a town called Milliken (named in honor of Judge John David Milliken, the President of the Northwestern Land and Iron Company) was established right next to Hillsboro, and on 1 October 1910, Hillsboro was annexed by Milliken. Volga German families came to the area to work in the sugar beet industry. They settled in and around Milliken.

Loveland is one of the oldest Colorado settlements of Volga Germans. Many of them came to Loveland directly from the colonies of Frank, Ober-Monjou, and Rosenberg while another large group came from McCook, Nebraska, where they had settled earlier.

Volga Germans arrived in Larimer County in large numbers shortly after Loveland's sugar factory opened in 1901. In the Spring of 1902, "chartered" trains sponsored by the sugar companies brought hundreds of Volga German families from Nebraska and Kansas to northern Colorado to work in the sugar beet industry.

Longmont's Volga German community has historical ties to the development of the sugarbeet industry of Northern Colorado. One of the state's first sugar beet factories was built there in 1903.

By the early 1900s Volga Germans from the Russian colonies Galka, Kukkus, Marienfeld, and Rothammel settled in La Junta.