page_title: Nathan Meeker
section_title: Union Colony
hierarchical_section_title: Nathan Meeker / Union Colony
caption_attribution_description: English: The Meeker Home Museum (Meeker House), located at 1324 9th Avenue in Greeley, Colorado. The property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
context_page_description: Nathanial Cook "Nathan" Meeker was a 19th-century American journalist, homesteader, entrepreneur, and Indian agent for the federal government. He is noted for his founding in 1870 of the Union Colony, a cooperative agricultural colony in present-day Greeley, Colorado.
  In 1878, he was appointed U.S. Agent at the White River Indian Agency in western Colorado. The next year, he was killed by Ute warriors in what became known as the Meeker Massacre, during the White River War. His wife and adult daughter were taken captive for about three weeks. In 1880, the United States Congress passed punitive legislation to remove the Ute from Colorado to Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation in present-day Utah, and take away some land formerly guaranteed them.
  The town of Meeker, Colorado and Mount Meeker in Rocky Mountain National Park are named for him.
context_section_description: Meeker, who was interested in communal and cooperative farms, created his vision of a utopian community based upon Christianity and communal economic enterprise, which was a modification of Charles Fourier’s definition of a utopian society. With the backing of his editor Horace Greeley, Meeker organized the Union Colony (later the town of Greeley) to be settled in the Colorado Territory.  He advertised for applicants to move to the South Platte River basin, in what was intended as a cooperative venture for people of "high moral standards." Meeker received approximately 3,000 replies that winter, and accepted about 700 of them to purchase shares. With the capital from the shares, in 1870 Meeker purchased 2,000 acres (8 km²), primarily from Native Americans, at the confluence of the South Platte and the Cache La Poudre River (Powder Bag) rivers near present-day Greeley. The venture relied on funding from Horace Greeley. Meeker also founded the Greeley Tribune in 1870.
  The settlers brought irrigation techniques to northwestern Colorado, and helped attract additional agricultural settlement in the region. The community failed on a couple of counts. It was not financially successful and the community members had not adopted the Christian values that Meeker espoused.
caption: Meeker's former home, now The Meeker Memorial Museum in Greeley, Colorado.
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