According to NerdWallet, Firestone, CO is the best place to own a home in Colorado.
This article on the Firestone town website boasts that Firestone is 30 minutes from Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins. Curiously, they don’t mention that Firestone is also a short 30 min drive from everyone’s favorite Northern Colorado city: Greeley 🙂 However, Firestone clearly has closer ties to Longmont than to Greeley, even though Greeley is their county seat.
My wife and I considered a home in Firestone when we were looking for a place to live in Longmont. We could have bought a nicer house for less money in Firestone than in Longmont, but in the end, my wife doesn’t like rural areas and we were afraid that if we lived in Firestone we wouldn’t have many visitors because people wouldn’t be willing to make the drive out. For some people that might be part of the appeal! Whether it’s true or not, we may never know.
However, with Firestone being right in the middle of everything in Northern Colorado, it would go to figure that living there you spend a lot of time in the car no matter where you want to go.
Another factor in why we moved to Longmont rather than Firestone is because I wanted to be as close to the mountains as I could afford – so we specifically wanted to live in Northwest Longmont, near to MacIntosh Lake, Rabbit Mountain, Lyons and Estes Park.
What do you think? Any Firestone residents out there who want to chime in and let us know the joys and/or difficulties of living in “the best place to own a home in Colorado”?
Theology for the People 
I know one person who lives out there and I felt like we were driving forever to get there. I think you made the right choice choosing where y’all live now.
Perhaps. I’m waiting to hear from someone who lives in Firestone about what they think about living there.
From what you described it has a certain appeal to me, but living in Longmont feels like i am living in a big village. i love living in villages, but i would need a dependable automobile. i have wondered about Greeley because i actually saw the sign yesterday when i was able to venture out of this village. You did not mention what are the closer ties Firestone (i love the name) has to Longmont or maybe i missed it.
Greeley is a the agricultural hub of N. Colorado. It is out on the plains, and for many years had meat processing plants which made the city infamous for its smell. Greeley is the county seat of Weld County, which is where a lot of hydraulic fracking is done (you may have heard that the city of Longmont was the first city in the country to fight their state government and place a ban on fracking. All that tracking has brought a lot of money into Greeley and Weld County, and it has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the state. In some ways Greeley has more in common with parts of western Nebraska and Kansas than it does with Colorado – and this led to a push recently for the proposed new state of Northern Colorado (which would also include parts of Kansas and Nebraska), and would have had Greeley as its capital city.
Firestone is basically a suburb of Longmont. A lot of people who live in Firestone work in Longmont and they share the same highway exit off I-25; if you go East from I-25 you’re in Firestone, if you go west you’re in Longmont. Houses out there are more affordable, and they have low crime rates and good parks and schools – but the downside is (I assume) that you end up driving more.
Also – Firestone is connected to Longmont directly by Hwy 119 – whereas there is no direct road to get to Greeley from Firestone.
I definitely agree with the long drives in the car no matter where you go. To Longmont: 30 minutes. To Greeley: 30 minutes. To Denver: 30-45.
I agree that most of Firestone doesn’t have a great view of the mountains, but luckily in our neighborhood, it has an excellent view that you can’t really get anywhere else in town. 🙂
I can’t really complain about living in Firestone. It’s close to a lot of great small businesses, and there are also things like a library that’s right next to our neighborhood. Overall, while the drives are long, it’s a nice place to live.
Thanks Hayley! I appreciate that perspective from someone who lives in Firestone.
I actually think that in many ways Firestone and the Carbon Valley has excellent views of the mountains – you get a panorama of the whole Front Range that you can’t get if you’re closer to them.
Good point about the small businesses out there; I think that is a major plus.
Does it really take 30 min to get into Longmont? I assumed it was only 15 or so.
30 is on an average day with traffic or weather conditions (I think I’m still used to winter time!). 15 minutes is if you’re lucky, but it’s typically anywhere from 20-30 minutes, depending where you are in town and the traffic/weather.