Severance history: a post office meant to be Tailholt, a beet dump on the Great Western, a bar known for oysters and a town that went from 106 people to 7,683

Severance sits on the plains north of Windsor and northwest of Greeley, on land that was irrigated for sugar beets long before it was laid out in subdivisions. For most of the twentieth century it was a beet-loading stop of about a hundred people with a well-known bar; in the last twenty-five years it has become a town of several thousand households. This is the short version, from the Town’s own history and the sources listed at the foot. Where they disagree, both are given.

Before the town

The water came first. Benjamin H. Eaton, a Weld County farmer who had built a farm on the site of present-day Windsor in 1863, went into the business of building canals and reservoirs; Wikipedia credits him with the Larimer and Weld Canal, begun in 1878 and once known as the Eaton Ditch, and with the Windsor Reservoir, on whose shore the Town’s Severance Shores Park now sits. Eaton served as Colorado’s fourth governor, from January 1885 to January 1887, and the town of Eaton, east of Severance, is named for him and his son Aaron. Another son was Bruce Grant Eaton.

Tailholt, or Severance

In 1894, the Town’s history says, David E. Severance applied for a post office for a community of about 50 families that was to be called Tailholt. Because Mr. Severance was the one who applied, the office was named Severance by mistake, and the name stayed. Mail came by horse and buggy, first from Eaton and later from Windsor. Wikipedia tells the same story, calls David Severance a pioneer settler, and dates the post office to 1894. The name he asked for survives on the Town’s Parks & Trails map in Tailholt Park, at 11.9 acres one of the Town’s largest, and the small Tailholt Pocket Park.

Sugar beets and the Great Western

What made Severance a place was sugar. In the early 1900s, the Town’s history records, a promotion persuaded farmers to grow sugar beets so that a factory would be built in neighboring Windsor. The acreage was pledged, and the Windsor factory was built in 1903 and became part of the Great Western Sugar Company in 1905; Wikipedia’s list of the company’s plants gives the same dates, and Eaton had its own factory from 1902. Beet work drew German immigrants from Russia to Windsor and the beet country around it, Windsor’s article says.

The beets moved by rail. The Great Western Railway was founded in 1902 to serve the sugar company, and in 1905, the Great Western Trail Authority’s history says, it built 12.6 miles of new track between Eaton and Windsor to carry beets from the farms to the factories. Severance became a beet receiving station and dump on that line. Passenger trains ran on the line until 1972; freight went on after that.

A town of a hundred people

The Town’s history says Severance was founded in 1906 by Bruce Eaton, the son of Governor Benjamin Eaton, and that by 1920 it had enough residents to incorporate, by a vote of 40 to 0. Wikipedia, citing the State Archives, gives the incorporation date as November 20, 1920.

It stayed small. The State Demography Office’s census file lists no population for the town before 1940, when it had 138 people. The census found 108 in 1950, 70 in 1960, 59 in 1970, 102 in 1980 and 106 in 1990. The center of that town was along 1st Street, which the Town still calls Old Town: Brownell Park, a small shady park, is at the “Old Town Hall” at 336 1st Street, according to the Town’s page for it. Today’s Town Hall is on Timber Ridge Parkway.

Bruce’s Bar

Also on 1st Street is Bruce’s Bar, which Wikipedia calls widely known for its Rocky Mountain oysters. Its own history says it began in 1957, when Bruce Ruth bought the Severance Recreation Hall and named it Bruce’s Bar, and that in 1959 he began serving Rocky Mountain oysters, the dish that made it famous. In 1972 a freelance artist painted the murals on the outside, among them a golfer who looks like Bruce, a group of dancers and a herd of bulls protesting the oysters. The bar’s history credits Bruce Ruth with the sign in the center of town that reads “Town of Severance – Where the Geese fly and the Bulls cry,” which Wikipedia calls the town’s unofficial motto. The page also describes the annual Nut Run, when Harley-Davidsons fill the parking lot and the streets. Bruce Carron and his family reopened the bar in 2008, and its current owner, Paul Speck, writes that he has been coming since childhood.

The end of the beet line

The sugar business wound down around the town. The Windsor factory closed in 1968 and became a Kodak plant, by the sugar company’s list (Windsor’s own article puts the closing in the mid-1960s), and the Eaton factory closed in 1976. In 1977, the Trail Authority says, Great Western switched to hauling beets by truck, which effectively idled the line; the Town’s history has Severance’s beet station operating until 1985, the year Great Western Sugar filed for bankruptcy.

The rail bed found a second use. In 2004 its owner, OmniTRAX, railbanked the Eaton–Windsor line. The Great Western Trail Authority was formed in May 2006 to take the land and build a trail, and the first 2.5 miles opened on September 20, 2008. Work on the last seven miles, from Eaton to Severance, began in May 2020, and the whole trail opened in August 2023. It now runs 10.5 miles, about three miles north from Windsor’s trail system to the center of Severance and then 7.5 miles east to Eaton, with a spur to Severance Middle School.

The boom

Then the subdivisions came. The census counted 597 people in 2000, 3,165 in 2010 and 7,683 in 2020, and the Department of Local Affairs estimates 11,570 for 2024. The Town’s planning page speaks of “substantial growth over the past decade,” and its economic development page counts about 4,000 residential rooftops. Since 2016, the Town says, many new neighborhoods have been built with two water systems, treated water for the house and untreated water for the lawn. The Town’s list of active applications still runs to hundreds of lots, among them about 569 on a 168-acre site north of Highway 392 and 412 at The Family Farm on Weld County Road 19.

Karen Suman Park in the Timber Ridge subdivision is named for Karen Suman, mayor from 1998 to 2000, the Town’s page says.

One old rule went in the boom years. The ban on throwing missiles at people or property, which covered snowballs and was thought to date from the town’s founding, was repealed in December 2018, after a nine-year-old, Dane Best, made a three-minute case to the Town board, the BBC reported. The vote was unanimous, and the mayor handed him and his younger brother the first legal snowballs in the town’s history.

Severance today

The Town’s map now counts 18 parks over 105.1 acres. The largest, the 37.3-acre Community Park on Waterfowl Way, was still under construction in October 2026, with opening expected in late fall. The work cost the town its yearly festival: the Town canceled Severance Days for 2026 because of construction delays and held a Neighborhood Concert at Overlook Park on October 3 instead. A Comprehensive Plan update, which the Town says is due to the significant growth of the past five years, is collecting residents’ views through December 2026. The old beet line runs through the middle of it all as the Great Western Trail.