Broomfield's rail stop was Zang's Spur, and the name is usually traced to broomcorn

Broomfield can feel like a place that appeared all at once, built of new neighborhoods and office parks. But the name and the map go back to farm country and a railroad.

In the late 1800s this was open prairie and cropland. Rail lines crossed it early, with the Colorado Central reaching the area in 1873, and later lines following. Around 1885 a Denver businessman named Adolph Zang bought land near today’s 120th Avenue and Olde Wadsworth Boulevard and ran a large operation he called Elmwood Stock Farm. The train stop that loaded local grain became known to the railroad as “Zang’s Spur.”

So where does “Broomfield” come from? The explanation most often repeated is broomcorn, a tall sorghum whose stiff stalks were used to make brooms, said to have been grown in the area’s early farm fields. The city’s own history page focuses on Zang and the railroad and does not settle the name question, so treat broomcorn as the traditional story rather than a documented fact.

Modern Broomfield, for its part, did arrive with a plan: the city’s history notes that Broomfield Heights was conceived as a master planned community in 1955. But the name on the map is older than that plan, rooted in crops and a rail stop. For the founding story in the city’s own words, including Zang and the early railroads, start with the City and County of Broomfield’s history page.