History of the Arkansas Valley, Colorado, Part 7

Author: O.L. Baskin & Co
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago : O.L. Baskin & Co.
Number of Pages: 1080

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this may be a coincidence merely, the only proof substantiating the theory being the fact that the latest visitations followed the first in about that order, the beginning and ending having been marked by a curious correspondence of dates, as well as of characteristics.

The grasshopper problem has perplexed the wisest savans of two continents, and the Colorado ranchman only knows that they come in countless numbers and depart, leaving his fields as brown and bare as though they had never been planted. Nothing could well be more disheartening, or pro- vocative of profanity in the man of sin. Never- theless, the accounts of their ravages, and the description of their insatiate appetites, are often overdrawn. It is not true that they eat fences, wagons and agricultural implements, if the latter are left out of doors. They chew tobacco, appar- ently, judging from the exudations of their mas- ticatory organs, but proof is wanting that they either smoke or swear. Jesting aside, they are a dreaded scourge, but, under certain conditions, the Colorado farmers can and do successfully contend against them, and of late years, with their im- proved appliances of defense, the ranchmen laugh the young 'hoppers to scorn, no matter how numer- ously they are hatched out in and around their fields. It is only when swarms of hungry 'hop- pers alight in the midst of the growing crops for a hasty lunch that the heart of the ranchman sinks within his bosom, for then he knows that nothing he can do will save his fields from destruc- tion.

It is now four years, however, since the locusts last invaded Colorado, to the damage of the hus- bandmen, and strong hopes are entertained that their visitations have ceased. No particular rea- son can be assigned for this belief, but it is strong in the minds of those most deeply inter- ested and those most naturally inclined to appre- hend further danger from this source. Perhaps prudence would suggest that allowance should be made for grasshopper visitations at least once in ten years, but it is certain that the farmers of Colorado

Gleaming

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have lost much of their former fears that they would be driven into other pursuits, and are plowing and planting more vigorously than ever before.

Said one of the most experienced husbandmen of the State to the writer, recently :

"Nobody can tell anything about the grasshop- pers in Colorado or anywhere else. They have been here and may be here again, savans to the contrary notwithstanding. I may lose my crop by them next year, but while I am sure of water for irriga- tion, I can stand the grasshoppers and raise bushel for bushel with the Eastern farmers. They have to contend with drouth on the one hand and exces- sive rains on the other, each alike disastrous, while I can regulate my supply of moisture regardless of the rainfall, and with a positive certainty that the latter will never be excessive, even during harvest, when the most damage is usually done. Irrigation is an expense, but it is likewise a protection. It is a heavy insurance, but it saves my crops and insures a uniform yield of which Eastern farmers are entirely ignorant. They may have half a dozen poor crops in succession, and then almost a total fail- ure, while I have half a dozen good crops and then a grasshopper year, for which I ought to be pre- pared."

The best farming lands of the State are found to lie along the eastern base of the mountains from north to south, and the best of these, perhaps, as far as development has gone, lie between the Platte and the Cache la Poudre Rivers. Superi- ority of soil is not claimed for this belt, though its proximity to the mountains may have developed certain characteristics not possessed by localities more remote. Abundance of water has given it prominence and importance as a center of agricul- tural industry.

The valley of the Platte River is, of course, the largest single body of agricultural land in the State, extending from Platte Cañon, twenty miles southwest of Denver, to Julesburg, in the extreme northeastern corner of the State. Thousands of acres of fertile lands line both sides of the river for

this entire distance. Above Denver, and below that city for a distance of fifty or sixty miles, there are fine farms; below the junction of the Platte and the Poudre and the State line, there are occasional farms and frequent meadows, but no considerable agricultural settlements. Two causes operate to retard agricultural progress in the lower Platte Valley: first, the absence of railroad facili- ties, and, finally, the character of the river itself, which runs for its entire length, across the plains, over a bed of treacherous, shifting sand, in and through which the channel winds and turns and divides and changes so continually, that it is almost impossible to utilize the waters of the stream for irrigation at certain points, and extremely difficult anywhere. If the current sets into the "head" of an irrigating canal, it carries with it enough sand to soon choke up the canal, but oftener a more serious trouble results from the channel changing to the opposite side of the stream, leaving the mouth of the irrigating canal as dry as the plains themselves.

The smaller streams, particularly those which run over rocky or pebbly beds, are the best reli- ance of the farmers of Colorado, even though their volume of water may be restricted. Of this class, the Cache la Poudre is the principal, and its valley is perhaps the best illustration of what may be accomplished by irrigation in Colorado.

From La Porte, where it leaves the mountains, to its confluence with the Platte, four miles below Evans and Greeley, the "Poudre," as it is univer- sally called in Colorado, is lined with improved farms, many of which are models of successful enterprise.

At Fort Collins, near the head of this rich val- ley, is located the Agricultural College of the State, a fitting location for such an institution, surrounded, as it is, by some of the finest farms and best farming land in the State.

The early history of this part of the State, apart from its agricultural features, is full of inter- est. The overland route to California led this way, and La Porte, which is now one of the most

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peaceful hamlets in all Colorado, was then a min- iature Julesburg, full of life and activity. Fort Collins, near by, was then a military post, though no fort was ever built there, and few soldiers guarded the post. There were Indians in those days, and some of the pioneer ranchmen met with many startling adventures in guarding against or resisting their depredations. To-day, however, and for many years, the valley has been singularly peaceful, bearing, in many respects, the aspect of an Eastern community. It is entirely agricultural, and the handsome towns of Fort Collins and Gree- ley, which nestle at either extremity, are as orderly as any New England village.

Both of these towns, as well as Longmont, which lies a little south and west of them, the three constituting apexes of a triangle, are notable instances of the success of "colony " enterprises in Colorado. The Greeley colony was the best adver- tised, and has been most successful, but in less degree the others show the benefits of co-opera- tion.

The history of the Greeley colony, although it deserves a separate chapter, has been written so well and so often by the leading newspapers of the whole country, East and West, that a brief review will be sufficient for the purpose of this volume. Established in 1870, at the suggestion of the lamented Horace Greeley, whose honored name it bears, and whose principles it largely per- petuates, it started with a fund of $150,000, which it invested in lands, irrigating canals, a mill power and a "colony fence" inclosing the entire tract covered by the purchase, thus providing against the necessity of interior fences. A town was laid off at the point where the Denver Pacific Railroad crosses the "Poudre," and the land was appropriately subdivided, so that each colonist received a tract of land and a town lot, if desired, or an equivalent in either lands or lots, at his option.

All this property has advanced in value very largely, and farm property is particularly valuable under the Greeley canals. Some of the farmers

were seriously embarrassed at first by the consider- able expense of "making a start " in a new coun- try under new conditions, and even with all the advantages of co-operation, a few failures resulted. It is not the purpose of the writer to conceal the truth in regard to farming operations in Colorado, and it must be admitted that not every Eastern farmer can and will succeed in this State, espe- cially if he is hampered by lack of means to enable him to prosecute his work to the best advantage. But the failures at Greeley were generally ac- counted for by some radical defect in the system pursued, and experience, even when dearly bought, was turned to good advantage by all concerned.

Wheat, of course, has been the great staple, and its yield has often been enormous. Thirty, forty, or even fifty bushels per acre have been harvested from large fields, and sold at from 90 cents to $1.50 per bushel. Potatoes and all kinds of veg- etables came next in importance. Corn has not been a prolific crop, though profitable. The soil is well adapted to corn, but the nights are too cold for its rapid growth and full development.

Of late years, the Greeley colonists have turned their attention to raising small fruits, with very gratifying success. Their strawberries are simply magnificent, and the yield equal to that of any part of the country, California not excepted. The crop never fails, and, despite the large production, prices have been maintained at high figures throughout the entire season. Berries are shipped to Denver and Cheyenne by rail, and these mar- kets, within fifty miles of Greeley, take the entire crop, and almost quarrel over it.

The social features of Greeley life are still char- acterized by temperance and intellectual develop- ment. There is not now, and never has been, a saloon in the town of 2,000 inhabitants, and its schools are the best in the land. The schoolhouse is by far the best building in town, though the churches are numerous and not inconspicuous architecturally. More newspapers are taken and read at Greeley than at any place of its size in the country. The town itself supports two weekly

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papers, and a third, published at Evans, a few miles distant, is liberally patronized.

Magnificent as has been the development of the Poudre Valley since 1870, the next few years promises to eclipse the last decade. An immense irrigating canal, capable of watering 100,000 acres of land, is being built north of the already com- pleted canals on the north side, and thousands of acres of good farming land will soon be brought under cultivation thereby. This canal heads in the mountains, and the country it waters is tribu- tary to Fort Collins as well as Greeley-indeed, the former place, from its proximity to the moun- tains, where the water-supply is more abundant and stable, probably will reap a larger benefit from the new enterprise than its rival down the valley.

This important enterprise demands special men- tion as the first effort to water a vast body of land with a single canal, and because its promoters are, for the most part, non-residents instead of Colo- rado citizens. The Colorado Mortgage and Invest- ment Company,of London, of which Mr. James Duff, of Denver, is resident manager, owns most of the stock in this canal, and much of the land' to be watered thereby. The English Company, as it is commonly called, has done and is still doing much for the development of Colorado and Denver, first by loaning capital at lower rates of interest than formerly prevailed, and finally, by its own judicious investments, like the new hotel in Denver, which the Company is building at a cost of nearly half a million, and which will be by far the finest hotel in the West when completed. Another enterprise of great pith and moment to Denver is the pro- posed high-line canal, to water an immense area above the city, which the English Company is about to undertake as a sure and profitable invest- ment. Colorado has derived great benefit already from this influx of English capital, and Mr. Duff seems determined to show his faith in the Centen- nial State by further investments of like character.

Fort Collins has achieved its greatest develop- ment since 1877, when the Colorado Central

Railroad was extended past that place to a connection with the Union Pacific at Cheyenne. The follow- ing very truthful sketch of the place is copied from the prospectus of the Agricultural College located at that point, and opened September 1, 1879 :

" Fort Collins is located on the southern bank of the Cache la Poudre, about six miles east of the foot-hills of the snowy range and thirty-five miles south of the State line ; it is surrounded by a fer- tile and well watered region, including some of the best agricultural lands in the State.

" Its elevation of 5,100 feet above the sea level gives it a pure, dry atmosphere, while its proximity to the mountains brings it within the limit of occa- sional rains, thus rendering the climate pleasant and salubrious, and adapting the soil to the culti- vation of the cereals. This region, comprising the counties of Larimer, Weld, Boulder, and parts of Arapahoe and Jefferson, is rendered accessible from the north and south by the Colorado Central Rail- road, which passes directly through Fort Collins, and by the Denver, Pacific Railway, both of which roads connect with the Union Pacific at Cheyenne and with the Kansas Pacific at Denver. The streams draining this region, the Cache la Poudre, Big Thompson, and other tributaries of the South Platte, furnish an inexhaustible supply of water for purposes of irrigation. It is estimated that the great irrigating canal now in process of construc- tion and supplied from the Cache la Poudre, will bring at least 100,000 acres of unproductive land under cultivation. The College has been most judiciously located with reference to this large extent of farming land, in the midst of communi- ties refined and progressive and very fast surround- ing themselves with all the comforts of the most advanced localities in the West."

South of the Poudre, along the base of the mountains, are a number of valleys devoted to ag- riculture, among which the Big and Little Thomp- son, the St. Vrain, Left Hand Boulder and Ralston Creek are chief. Longmont, settled by a Chicago colony about 1870, is located on the St. Vrain, in the midst of a very rich farming country. The

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St. Vrain is one of the most beautiful of Colorado rivers. It rises at the base of Long's Peak, and, though boasting of no grandly romantic canon like Boulder, Clear Creek and the Platte or Arkansas, it flows through scenes of sylvan beauty strangely enchanting to the eye and the æsthetic tastes.

Boulder Creek waters a fertile valley on its way across the plains, dotted by handsome farms; but its greatest charm is in the mountains. Its cañon has been pronounced the finest in the State, and its falls are famous everywhere. At the point of its departure from the range is located the town of Boulder, an interesting city of considerable conse- quence as an agricultural and mining center. The farmers of Boulder Valley find a market for their crops in the mining camps of their own county, and their county capital reaps the benefit of the exchange. Boulder is also the seat of the State University.

The valley of Clear Creek, though limited in extent, is a veritable garden. Lying between Den- ver and Golden, and equally accessible to each (either by rail or private conveyance), it may be called the market garden of those cities. The Bear Creek Valley, a few miles farther south, is similarly situated, and a good farm in either of them may be counted a treasure to its fortunate owner.

South of the divide, between the waters of the Platte and the Arkansas, agriculture has not yet advanced to the position it occupies in Northern Colorado, though the conditions are all favorable. In time, no doubt, the arable lands of this district will be developed as well as those of the western slope, which in some respects are superior to those of the Atlantic side.

The agricultural future of Colorado is enshrouded in much present uncertainty, and opinions differ very widely concerning it. Some profess to believe that at no distant day the vast plains will become a grand garden ; that monster canals will distribute water for irrigation through a series of lakes or reservoirs from the mountains to the eastern limit of the State, and from Wyoming to New Mexico.

Congress has been continually memorialized to aid the State in this matter by grants of arid land under some act similar to the "swamp-land bill," by which so many States have profited throughout the West.

It is argued with great force that instead of ditches for drainage, the arid lands of Colorado only need ditches for irrigation to make them valuable, and it is claimed that the General Gov- ernment, now deriving little or no income or bene- fit from these lands, would be the gainer vastly by their reclamation, while the State, with a mining population constantly increasing, would be enabled to feed its own people without recourse on Kansas for supplies. No doubt there is force in this argu- ment, and the interest of the people in the ques- tion has been repeatedly evinced, not alone by memorials to Congress, but by conventions to con- sider extensive systems of irrigation.

In 1873, an irrigation convention was held in Denver which was attended by the Governors of several Western States and Territories, and by the leading agriculturists of the State as well as dele- gates from Utah, where the same system prevails.' Beyond an interchange of views and the inevitable memorial to Congress, nothing came of this con- vention, but the address of Hon. S. H. Elbert, then Territorial Governor of Colorado, and now one of the Justices of the Supreme Court, was a compact, logical and in every way admirable state- ment of the case under discussion, which should have had more weight in Washington than was accorded to it, or to the memorial of the conven- tion.

There are those, however, and the writer is among them, who have grave doubts whether the benefits to be derived from any system of irrigation under the auspices of the State or General Govern- ment would inure to the benefit of each or either. Though the arid lands of Colorado find no sale at Government prices, and, perhaps, would not bring more than 10 cents per acre at auction, they are all productive in one sense, and the State reaps a large benefit therefrom every year, in its

Olion. J. Beck with

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production of beef, mutton and wool. The stock interests would surely suffer if the plains were " reclaimed," but whether farming, with the added expense of costly irrigation, could successfully compete with Kansas cheap production, is not equally certain.

Kansas, which lies right at the door of Colo- rado, is undoubtedly the finest agricultural State in the Union, and is growing rapidly in our direc- tion. The corn and wheat of Kansas are already sold in our markets at prices which tend to dis- conrage our own farmers, though, happily, the latter still have a home market for their crops which affords them protection against Kansas

competition. The home demand is enlarged by the stock interest, which produces nothing but beef. Reduce the home demand by excluding the bulk of the stock men, and at the same time double the agricultural production, and we may have a state of affairs which neither the farmers nor the State will appreciate as a public blessing.

These objections, however, may be more than met by the rapid increase of our mining population in the next five years, creating a home market which the present agricultural resources of the State will be entirely unable to supply. In that case, more farms and more farmers will be among the actual necessities of the country.

CHAPTER XI. STOCK RAISING IN COLORADO.

E ENOUGH has already been said in this work to indicate that the pastoral resources of Colorado are second only to the industry of mining in point of profit if not of production. The net profit of stock-growing exceeds that of agriculture every year. . Probably during the decade preceding the eventful year when the mines of Leadville began to yield up their hidden treasures, the net profit of mining over and above the expense incurred in its prosecution, was not much greater than the net profit of the stock business.

This is a startling statement, and, unfortunately, or fortunately, as the case may be, the figures are not at hand whereby it can be supported. It is equally impossible to say how much money was swallowed up in unlucky mining enterprises, and how much was made by raising stock while the business was comparatively new and the range not overcrowded as it is now in many directions. When cattle could be brought to maturity and market at a cost of about $5 per head, and sold at $30, $40, or even $50, it requires no arithmetician or "light- ning calculator," or even Col. Sellers, to see that there were " millions in it."

On the plains of Colorado and Western Kansas, cattle succeeded the buffalo as naturally as white men succeeded the Indians. It could not have been any secret to the early settlers that stock would live and fatten on the nutritious grasses of the plains and mountains all the year round, for they saw buffalo, antelope, deer, elk and other gram- niverous animals depending entirely for their sus- tenance upon the same, but in spite of this " ocular proof," it appears to be a fact, as already stated elsewhere, that the father of the stock business in Colorado turned his cattle out in the fall expecting them to die during the winter, and was surprised to find them fat and flourishing in the spring. Even at this late day, with thousands of cattle roaming the plains on every hand, winter and sum- mer, some stranger is always found willing to swear that they must inevitably starve to death in the winter. These doubting Thomases, impressed with ancient heresies regarding the Great American Desert, are alike incapable of realizing that cattle can live on our grasses the year round and that the finest wheat and vegetables in the world can be produced from our soil.

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However lightly Coloradoans may esteem the intelligence of these people, they do not much care to combat their erroneous ideas by argument, and cattle-growers are especially indifferent on the sub- ject. On the contrary, they do not care how many people are deterred from entering the business by fears of losing their investments. Wide as the range is, the supply of water is limited in dry sea- sons, and they do not want to be crowded by new- comers out of their chosen localities. Though the " range " is free to all, the water front is usually taken up by the home ranches of cattle and sheep growers, who own the land adjacent thereto and thereby control the range back of their respective claims. Encroachments upon these vested rights are rare, but if the country should become more crowded by a decided increase in the number of cattle-growers, trouble might ensue or the interests of the parties might be endangered in other respects.

Prior to the advent of railroads in Colorado, the stock business was limited by the home demand and such Government contracts as could be secured for the supply of beef to interior and neigh- boring military posts. The railroads, however, gave a great impetus to each of these demands and also opened up a new trade, which has of late years exceeded the aggregate of both the others combined. More Colorado beef is shipped East every year than is used by the people of the State and by the Government, too, within the limits of Colorado.

The magnitude of this business under the new development is something astonishing. Next to Texas, Colorado probably produces more beef than any other State in the Union, and, probably, more sheep and wool than any other State except New Mexico. The business is not confined to any one section of the State, but extends everywhere, even into the Indian Reservation. Some years ago, the Indian Bureau, in a lucid interval seldom duplicated, drove a band of cattle to the White River Agency for the purpose of supplying beef to the Utes, using only the increase of the herd for that

purpose. The Indians have been supplied with fresh beef regularly since that time, and the herd has increased despite this constant drain upon it, till even the Government is likely to have "beef to sell," besides what the Indians use. These cattle are said to yield excellent beef the year round, though knowing no feed except the rich grass of the White River Valley. Denver's best beef, not excepting the corn-fed article, comes from the Snake River country in Northwestern Colorado, and this Snake River beef is often on the market when the Plains cattle are too poor to kill.

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History of the Arkansas Valley, Colorado, Part 7

Author: O.L. Baskin & Co Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Chicago : O.L. Baskin & Co. Number of Pages: 1080

Author: O.L. Baskin & Co
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Chicago : O.L. Baskin & Co.
Number of Pages: 1080