Sterling, city in northeastern Colorado on the South Platte River, located about 185 km (about 115 mi) northeast of Denver. Sterling is the seat of Logan County, a ranching and farming county, and it functions as an important trading and shipping center for the region. Sterling is the site of a junior college. The Overland Trail Museum is housed inside a stone reproduction of Fort Sedgwick, a fort originally established to protect travelers on the Overland Trail. The Pawnee National Grassland, which preserves a vast region of the prairie, begins about 40 km (about 25 mi) west of the city. The region that now includes the city was settled in the early 1870s, and Sterling was soon established and named after a city of the same name in Illinois. However, with the building of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1881, Sterling relocated a few kilometers to the southwest in order to be on the railroad. Sterling was incorporated in 1884. The city was a hub of the Denver-Julesburg Basin oil field in the years immediately after World War II (1939-1945). Population 11,385 (1980); 10,362 (1990); 11,360 (2000).
