William Herbert Adams (February 15, 1861 – February 4, 1954), better known as Billy Adams, was the 25th Governor of the State of Colorado, United States, from 1927 until 1933.
Adams was born in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin. In 1878, when he was 17, Adams moved to Alamosa, Colorado. He was later elected to City Treasurer, then Mayor of Alamosa, and later as Conejos County commissioner. In 1886, he was elected to the Colorado General Assembly as a member of the Colorado House of Representatives. In 1888, he was elected to the Colorado Senate where he served until 1926, when he was elected as Governor of Colorado.
In 1921, during his term as Colorado Senate Senator, Adams received approval on a bill that formed Alamosa State Normal School in Alamosa, Colorado. The college’s name was later changed to Adams State Teachers College in honor of its founder and finally to its present name Adams State University. Adams died on February 4, 1954, in Alamosa, Colorado, at the age of ninety-two where he is buried.
Billy’s older brother, Alva Adams, was also governor of Colorado from 1887 to 1889, from 1897 to 1899, and 1905. Billy's nephew, Alva Blanchard Adams, was a United States Senator from Colorado from 1923 until 1925 and from 1933 to 1941.
Famous quotes containing the words billy and/or adams:
““Although I’d lie lapped up in linen
A deal I’d sweat and little earn
If I should live as live the neighbours,”
Cried the beggar, Billy Byrne....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“It was the feeling of a passenger on an ocean steamer whose mind will not give him rest until he has been in the engine-room and talked with the engineer. She wanted to see with her own eyes the action of primary forces; to touch with her own eyes the action of primary forces; to touch with her own hand the massive machinery of society; to measure with her own mind the capacity of the motive power. She was bent upon getting to the heart of the great American mystery of democracy and government.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)