THE NEW SOIL IRRIGATION. 61 



and use of rivers, and the practicability and advantage of the 

 small farm as the unit of the agricultural system in an irri- 

 gated region. With farms of an average size of thirty acres, 

 Utah has grown rich with an evenness of prosperity unequaled 

 in any other state of the Union, and the smallness of the farm 

 holdings has resulted in an intimacy of social relationship and 

 in a close peopling of communities that is found equally con- 

 ducive both of contentment and wellbeing. 



The Union Colony at Greeley marked the beginning of a new 

 industrial development based on irrigation in Colorado. Prior 

 to this enterprise it was mining, and the wandering and adven- 

 turous business of stock raising which had attracted settlement 

 to that state. The Greeley Colony was an effort of home- 

 makers who longed for the land-owner's sense of independ- 

 ence, but who wanted no less earnestly the social and intel- 

 lectual pleasures and privileges which had been theirs to en- 

 joy in the long-settled communities of the East which they 

 had left. Colony Hall was among their first public buildings, 

 and the Lyceum among their first organizations. The only 

 extravagance the Colony permitted itself was its school build- 

 ing, which would have been a credit to any New England 

 town. Co-operation was the principle in the construction, and 

 coroperation was the practice in the management of all public 

 utilities of which the irrigating canal was the earliest and 

 most important. Advanced methods both of irrigation and 

 cultivation were sought to be put in practice, and wisdom was 

 learned through failure and success until Greeley and its po- 

 tatoes became famous together. Not many years elapsed be- 

 fore the Colony became the pride of the state, and supplied 

 the inspiration which resulted in the settlement of northern 

 Colorado. Boulder, Longmont, Loveland and Ft. Collins all 



