GREELEY, a city of Colorado, U.S.A., 52m. N. by E. of Denver, on the South Platte river, at an elevation of 4,567ft.; the county seat of Weld county. It is on Federal highways 38 and 85 ; is served by the Colorado and Southern and the Union Pacific railways; and has an aeroplane landing field. The popula tion was I0,958 in 1920 (90% native white), and was 12,203 in 1930 by Federal census. The city is the trading centre of a rich irrigated agricultural and coal-mining region, and has flour, lumber and beet-sugar mills. It is the seat of the Colorado College of Education (established 1889), which has an enrolment of I,Soo in the winter and nearly 3,000 in the summer quarter.
Greeley was founded in 1870 by Nathan Cook Meeker (1817 79), agricultural editor of the New York Tribune, with the sup port of Horace Greeley, after whom it was named. The Union Colony of Colorado, organized and chartered for the purpose, bought II,000ac. of land and sold it to its members, colonists mainly from New England and New York, using the proceeds for public improvements. The town was organized in 1871 and in corporated as a city in 1886.