Strasburg (1870, 5,756 feet), on the Adams–Arapahoe county line, was originally called Comanche. It was renamed in 1875 for John Strasburg, section foreman of the Kansas Pacific Railroad (KP, later part of the Union Pacific), whose crew once raced to build 10.25 miles of track in a day. Strasburg's crew worked its way east from Denver, the other west from Kansas City. They met here for their reward, a keg of beer. Strasburg claims that it, not Promontory Point, Utah, was where the transcontinental rails first met, since the KP actually bridged the Missouri River, while the UP did not and relied on a ferry. This tiny prairie town, like many others, blossomed during the first two decades of the twentieth century, when a boxcar was parked along the tracks as the first depot (1911) and the grain elevator (1916) was erected.
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