Loveland, Colorado

Before 1960, the sign greeting travelers into Loveland was cheerful and crowded with claims. Elevation five thousand. Nationally Famous Sweetheart Town. Won't you stay awhile. Industrial opportunities. Diversified agriculture. Next to it stood a smaller handmade sign. It read, we observe the Jim Crow laws here. Loveland was a sundown town. Non-white travelers were not permitted to remain inside the town limits after dark. The practice is usually associated with the Deep South, and Loveland is evidence it reached much further. Longtime residents remembered a visiting baseball team with African-American players who played their game and then left rather than stay the night. Residents of Mexican and Native American ancestry were paid low wages and treated poorly. In the early nineteen hundreds, neighborhood groups and homeowner associations kept people of color from buying houses. Today Loveland has the largest share of residents in Colorado who identify solely as white.