Contributors to the Berthoud Community

Berthoud takes its name from Capt. Edward. L. Berthoud (1828-1898) who surveyed the route of the Colorado Central Railroad through the Little Thompson Valley and Northern Colorado. Berthoud Pass on the Continental Divide west of Denver also takes its name from the Swiss-born engineer who was on the first faculty of the Colorado School of Mines in 1872.

Eleven-year-old Floyd Clymer (1895-1970) was heralded as the “kid auto agent” when he began selling Reo automobiles in Berthoud in 1906. A daring driver, Clymer attempted to scale Longs Peak on a motorcycle as a young man. Clymer became one of the first historians of primitive American automobiles and built a publishing empire based on car magazines and manuals.

Peter Turner (1838-1912) founded Berthoud at its present-day site after coming to the Little Thompson Valley from the Sunshine mining camp in 1877. Affectionately known to local residents as “Uncle Peter,” Turner supervised the boring of a tunnel that brought water from the Big Thompson River to the Little Thompson Valley via the Handy Ditch in 1883.