Barnesville

Barnesville, Colorado was a small, unincorporated town in Weld County, established in 1910

History

Barnesville, Colorado was a small, unincorporated town in Weld County, established in 1910 by Charles E. Barnes, and located on the Crow Creek Branch of the Union Pacific Railroad. It operated as a post office from 1910 to 1935, serving a population of about 200 people. The town was also a beet dump site for the Greeley sugar factory between 1909 and 1965. The actual townsite was vacated in 1955, and the railroad station closed in 1965 when the line was abandoned. Barnesville’s brief life encapsulates a common pattern in Colorado’s High Plains: early-20th-century railroad-triggered settlement, followed by agricultural support stations (like beet dumps), and decline after mechanization and infrastructure consolidation. Located on the periphery of Weld County’s main population belt, Barnesville drew identity from the sugar beet industry. Once the rail line and dump site closed, there was little else to sustain it. Today the site is mostly unpopulated, but its name persists on 1950s and later USGS topo maps, and it remains a point of interest for historians or property researchers exploring Colorado’s rural community evolution

Geography

Barnesville was located at 40.48015, -104.47941. Other than a house or two that may have been built long after the original Barnesville went away, there is not much to see. Barnesville eas estimated to have peaked with about 200 people between 1920 and 1930

Comment

If you did not have this on a map, you would simply pass by a couple houses at the intersection of two county roads in Weld County and never know a hundred years ago there may have been 200 people in the neignborhood.