The old catchphrase “Go west, young man!” has long been attributed to New York Tribune publisher Horace Greeley (1811-1872) although no one knows for sure that he said it. What I do know for sure is that Greeley Street honors the late newsman. It was named (as Greeley Avenue) in 1913 on the Los Terrenitos tract and was most likely coined by William Ellsworth Smythe (1861-1922), who established the Little Landers farm colony here that year. (Los terrenitos means “the little lands” in Spanish.) Greeley had championed America’s westward expansion as a way for its citizens to abandon corrupt city life for a pure agrarian existence – a philosophy embraced by Smythe, who name-checked Greeley in his 1897 article “Real Utopias in the Arid West” for The Atlantic Monthly. Smythe was also a fan of Colorado’s Greeley colony, established in 1869 by Nathan Cook Meeker and named after ol’ Horace. Greeley, CO now has a population of over 100,000.
Find it on the map:
