MILLIKEN – Could the founders of a trading post catering to a railroad and an agricultural economy have ever envisioned that in 2024 the community would be known for an award-winning skate park, a “marijuana church” and a key location on a burgeoning urban corridor?
Probably not. But that’s Milliken, the Weld County town just east of Johnstown.
The trading post, established by investors who dreamed of building a railroad line between Denver and Seattle, was founded in the 1860s, and the community that grew around it was recognized as Hillsboro in 1905. A neighboring settlement to the northeast that was named for Judge John David Milliken, president of the Northwestern Land and Iron Co. and general counsel of a legal department that oversaw three companies involved in the railroad line, annexed Hillsboro in 1910. Fires destroyed much of the settlement and the railroad venture failed, but Milliken became known for growing sugar beets, potatoes, corn and wheat as well as cattle feeding.
Milliken has gotten the attention of investors and developers of both residential subdivisions and industrial sites.”
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, a building boom swept through Milliken, and the town turned its dirt roads into paved streets in the 1980s. A community complex was built in 1996, and by the dawn of the 21st century the town began seeing steady growth. It completed a new public-works facility in 2004 and a new police station in 2009.
Development has kept pace, and the town’s prime location along the northern Front Range has gotten the attention of investors and developers of both residential subdivisions and industrial sites.
By 2015, the town of Milliken, in partnership with Upstate Colorado Economic Development, amended its Enterprise Zone boundary to include nearly all the town’s commercial- and industrial-zoned areas. It also decided to update its comprehensive plan and development code to reflect the community’s interest in attracting a balanced economic base.
In May, Pro-Vac, a Puyallup, Washington-based provider of subsurface infrastructure services, acquired Kinetic Industry, a Milliken-based company that provides hydro excavation services.
With the legalization of sales of medical and recreational marijuana in Colorado has come Nature’s Herbs and Wellness, whose cannabis compound includes a three-story, 10,000-square-foot building that locals have dubbed the “marijuana church” and its owners call “the Taj Mahal of dispensaries.”
Milliken’s Parks Division oversees and maintains 12 developed parks and open space areas totaling 220+ acres and more than 13 miles of mixed-use trails.
In 2018, Hillsboro Skate Park in Milliken, a 14,000-square-foot outdoor concrete park known for its quarter pipes, wedge ramps and half pipe, won a Starburst Award from the Colorado Lottery for “excellent use of lottery funds for the betterment of communities via public projects.” The skate park opened in 2014 with the help of a $314,399 grant Milliken received through Great Outdoors Colorado.
Milliken is served by the Weld Re-5J School District. Children in the town attend Milliken Elementary School, Milliken Middle School, and Knowledge Quest Academy, part of the Weld Re-5J School District. High school students attend Roosevelt High School in Johnstown.
