Founded two years before the Civil War and more than a decade before Colorado Springs, Fountain in its earliest chapter was more seasonal crossroads for trappers, traders and travelers than proper town for its handful of homesteaders and ranching families.

Modest beginnings were no obstacle for grand visions.

As the legend goes, Fountain’s founders proclaimed it would someday be Colorado’s state capital and booming-est metro. It quietly failed at the former, never making it into the running for the 1881 popular vote Denver won by a landslide. It did go on to achieve the latter, along with a reputation for exponential growth some looked to as a bellwether for things to come, and prepare for, in the Centennial State.

According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, between the 2000 and 2010 censuses, the “big little town” 10 miles south of Colorado Springs increased by more than 70%. Fountain’s population gained another 15.3% over the following decade, to flirt with the 30,000 mark and earn headlines as the fastest-growing city in the state.

“All I can say is the growth in this city since I first started coming here in 1998 has been off the charts … and still is,” said Fountain councilman-at-large and Army veteran Frederick Hinton. “All you have to do is drive around, and look around.”

City leaders say a new census report that indicates Fountain lost a greater percentage of its population in recent years than any other Colorado city over 20,000 — a loss of 4.7% between 2020 and 2023, and down 1.5% from the previous year’s estimate — didn’t look around, or deep enough.

While she confirmed the recent numbers, how census data-crunchers reached them led State Demographer Elizabeth Garner to agree.

“Big picture, I think it is sort of silly to focus on the decline in Fountain since it is just a figment of math,” Garner said, of a superlative that nevertheless was highlighted in a number of news stories after the new census report was released in mid-May.

We’ll get to why the data likely doesn’t accurately reflect what’s happening on the ground, in Fountain and other cities. First, a sketch of the bigger picture takeaway no one is disputing:

Colorado’s population is still growing, but at a fraction of the year-over-year rate it did before COVID-19.

The most recent annual update to the 2020 Census, based on data collected for the year through July 1, 2023, shows Colorado’s population increased by 0.6%, or about 36,000 people, over the previous year, to a total of 5,877,610.

Compared to the 75,000 average year-over-year bump in population seen during the pre-pandemic decade, “that’s relatively slow … but it’s starting to come back,” Garner said.

Annual updates between decennial census surveys are based on state and county public data about births, deaths and “net migration,” the movement of people into and out of the state, Garner said.

The trajectory of some of those data points is simply a reflection of national trends, and remains relatively steady — lower birth and rising death rates overall, as more Americans age into older demographic groups.

The biggest factor impacting Colorado’s population growth, Garner said, is a sharp slowdown in the number of people moving to the state. The average last decade for migration was 45,000 a year. Since 2020, it’s been about 15,000.

“That’s a third of the net migration that we typically see,” she said. “If Colorado’s net migration has slowed down … that slowing then gets shared at the county level, and to all of the municipalities.”

Drill down to the local level, however, and the census algorithm’s ability to accurately reflect what’s happening in a community between its rigorous 10-year counts gets more mushy.

For the annual updates to the decennial census, “population estimates at the (municipal) level are just an allocation procedure based on the county population growth … and the share of total housing units,” Garner said.

For example: According to the census, since 2020, El Paso County has grown by 11,831 people — a year-over-year increase of about 3,600 residents, and an  estimate based solely on the 25,500 housing units constructed in the county since 2020, Garner said.

“Fountain has built about 360 of those, and (Colorado Springs) about 18,000,” Garner said. “Since (Colorado Springs) built so many units relative to Fountain, they were allocated the growth.

“Truly, we really don’t know where the growth occurred.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Colorado Springs gained 1.73% in population between 2020 and 2023, for a total of 488,664 residents.

As per the report, Fountain lost 1,402 people between 2020 and 2023, and 435 between 2022 and 2023, falling to a population of 28,489, Garner said.

But “we cannot confirm (that population loss) actually happened,” Garner said.

Fountain’s deputy city manager Todd Evans is among those who say it did not.

“We don’t think you can count on the accuracy of the data when we are still showing growth in residential and commercial building,” he said. Plus, given Fountain’s average occupancy rate is slightly higher than the state’s, a loss in population of more than 1,300 since 2020 would equal more than 460 vacant houses that previously had been occupied, Evans said.

“With that, you would expect housing prices to drop and less interest in building and development. That clearly hasn’t happened,” said Evans. He also pointed out that the recent census numbers don’t jibe with those of the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, which tracks growth through its demography office.

The city will be submitting updated numbers to that department in June, and Evans said he expects the percentages — and narrative — will change.

Though a lack of water infrastructure has posed a major hurdle to Fountain’s expansion agenda in recent years, Hinton, the city’s councilman at large, said there’s enough water to support development already in the works, plans which could bring more than 3,000 new homes to subdivisions around the roughly 22-square-mile city.

Plans which could fundamentally alter the elements of that defining census algorithm into a picture more aligned with what he’s seeing in his hometown, which ranked No. 23 in Fortune Magazine’s 2022 list of best American cities for families.

“Everywhere I go there’s a waiting list, even for the new residential projects right now that aren’t built yet,” said Hinton Friday, standing in the gazebo at the city’s Metcalfe Park, where several hundred volunteers soon would gather for a family-style picnic lunch after a morning spent on clean-up and refresher projects around the city.

Upshot? Fountain isn’t drying up.

“This is an amazing, growing community,” Hinton said. “We’re in a good spot.”