A Brief History of Firestone
Firestone was established in 1908 to house coal miners and their families in southwestern Weld County. The community took its name from Ohio investor Jacob H. Firestone. Its development followed the Denslow Coal and Land Company’s 1907 purchase of 160 acres from the widow of Thomas McKissick, whose family had earlier mined coal in the area. Mining shaped employment, housing and transportation until the local mines closed in 1947. The Grant Mine alone produced more than two million tons of coal. A lasting trace of that industrial landscape remains in the Firestone Trail, which follows a former railroad bed used by the coal industry.