THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



341 



COLORADO'S AGRICULTURAL WEALTH. 



State has valuable asset in its farming capacity, and is truly one of the richest states in the Union 



in this respect Some results obtained by Colorado farmers The property 



of the Denver Suburban Homes & Water Company. 



A stranger coming to Colorado is often skeptical 

 as to the possibilities of the country as set forth in 

 railroad advertising pamphlets and the prospectus sent 

 him by a hustling real estate man. That it may be a 

 wonderful country he is ready and willing to admit in 

 his superior knowledge, but he feels that facts have been 

 overdrawn and enlarged upon, that imagination has run 

 riot in an effort to exploit and advertise. From his 

 viewpoint such achievements as are quoted to attract 

 settlers to the state are impossible. You can't tell him 



Castlewood Dam. 



that land which for centuries has raised nothing but 

 cactus and sage-brush can with the application of water 

 do twice as much as the fertile sections of Wisconsin, 

 Illinois, Iowa and Indiana. If the stories you tell are 

 true, why. he wants to know, was not all this territory 

 exploited before and why have not all the large mar- 

 kets turned to Colorado and similarly situated states 

 for their agricultural supplies ? Why are not the farm- 

 ers of the eastern and middle states rushing westward 

 as the gold seekers did to California in 1849? Surely 

 there is a great deal more in farming by irrigation, if 

 one has the faculty of comparison, than in agriculture 

 as we were taught the science of it, and unless he can 

 be shown actual results he is not going to believe that 

 a man can clear $300.00 in one year from an acre of cab- 

 bages ; that on a 320-acre farm, of which 210 acres were 

 under cultivation, an agriculturist in a single season 

 cleared $6,750.00. This stranger is the man that the 

 people of Colorado are anxious and willing to show that 

 in no way have they exaggerated unon the resources of 

 the state, for they appreciate that when he becomes con- 

 vinced he will either join the rapidly swelling ranks of 

 new citizens or become a "booster" who will help them 

 in bringing others to settle. 



When a man becomes a citizen of the commouwealth 

 of Colorado he is made, either consciously or uncon- 

 sciously, a member of its "booster" corporation, for en- 

 thusiasm seems to be as much of a requirement for citi- 

 zenship as does ability to read and write. Everybody 

 enthuses over the climate, the man interested in agricul- 

 ture, whether it be dry or irrigation farming, will tell 

 you there is no place like Colorado for the raising of 

 fruit, grains, alfalfa and vegetables; the interested mine 

 owner or stock seller never knew or heard of any state or 



region that has such unlimited mineral wealth ; the man- 

 ufacturer says that he has few labor troubles, good mar- 

 kets, fine power and is in every way perfectly satisfied ; 

 and so it is with all of them. And they are far from 

 reluctant to show you wherein their wealth and happi- 

 ness lie. There is no occasion to go into the history of 

 agriculture in Colorado ; suffice it to say that many men 

 attracted to the state by the "lure of gold" in 1859 and 

 1860 tired of mining before many months or found 

 themselves unable to successfully carry on their opera- 

 tions through lack of capital or supplies, and turned 

 to agriculture as a means of livelihood. The experi- 

 ence of the Mormons in Utah had shown that the soil 

 would grow almost anything were water applied to it, 

 and these early agriculturists experimented. The results 

 were startling in their enormity. The field of these 

 "experimental farms" was in the northern part of the 

 state, east of the Rocky Mountains. To these regions 

 the Colorado enthusiast will take the skeptical visitor 

 and show him that in agriculture alone the state has 

 an incalculable asset. 



Take the trip from Denver to Greeley, on the Colo- 

 rado & Southern line, as an example. This is rather a 

 roundabout way to get to the seat of Weld County, but 

 it is not a journey for business alone. The South Platte 

 river leaves the mountains some twenty miles southwest 

 of Denver and its course is northeasterly for a hundred 

 miles to where it is joined by the Cache-la-Poudre. Be- 

 fore this latter stream becomes part of the Platte, how- 

 ever, many smaller streams, such as Bear creek, Clear 

 creek, Boulder creek, the St. Vrain and the Big and 

 Little Thompson, add their flow to the Platte. After 

 leaving Denver the train goes northward across the val- 

 ley of Clear creek, where may be seen fields under irriga- 



One of the Lateral Ditches of Denver Suburban Homes and Water 

 Company, with Orchard in Background. 



tion growing varied crops ; thence into the valley of the 

 Boulder and the beautiful city of that name, where the 

 state university is situated. From Boulder the route 

 turns to the east for a distance and then north toward 

 Longmont, famed for its pumpkins, where each year a 

 day known as "Pumpkin Pie Day" is given over to 

 feasting and merriment. At Longmont has recently 

 been erected an immense factory to make into sugar the 

 thousands upon thousands of tons of beets raised in the 

 vicinity each year. Still farther north, about eighteen 



