THE COLORADO POTATO INDUSTRY. 
A Preliminary Report Based on One Season’s Study, Partly 
Aided by State Appropriation of 1905 
E. R. BENNETT 
The: Potato Industry or Colorado has a number of pecul¬ 
iarities. The total yield of the state (8,000,000 bu.) as com¬ 
pared with some of the other great potato producing states is not 
large. In the East the great yield of potatoes comes not from any 
one area but for the most part from small acreages on each of the 
many small farms over the whole of a state. In Colorado the po¬ 
tatoes are grown only in certain restricted and well defined districts. 
On these areas potatoes are the most important product and the 
other crops are an adjunct to or an element in the system in the 
preparation of the land for this crop. It is not an uncommon 
thing in these districts to see fields of from forty to one hundred 
acres of potatoes on farms of a quarter section. 
The problems confronting the growers in this State, as to 
cultural methods, insect pests and fungous diseases, are also radi¬ 
cally different from those of the Eastern States. Many of the 
fertile irrigated tracts do not produce potatoes successfully, though 
they are near and similar in most respects to the so called potato 
districts. Why this is so has not so far been satisfactorily explain¬ 
ed. The writer has spent the past summer in studying the con¬ 
ditions and methods under which the potato is grown in some of 
the more successful districts and comparing the methods employed at 
different places. Of the potato producing sections of the State, the 
irrigated land surrounding Greeley known as the Greeley District, 
the water shed between the Arkansas and the Platte Rivers known 
as the Arkansas Divide, a small section of the San Luis Valley, the 
Valley of the Roaring Fork of which Carbondale is the center and 
the Uncompahgre Valley are the most important. A few other 
small mountain valleys produce a limited quantity for the local 
mining trade. 
The Greeley District exceeds all the others as to area and 
amount of potatoes produced. It is about twenty miles long from 
northwest to southeast and twelve or fifteen miles wide at its 
greatest width. It includes about 200,000 acres of land, though 
probably not more than one-eighth of this tract is ever put in pota¬ 
toes at any one time. The total yield per year of this tract is from 
9,000 to 14,000 cars or 4,000,000 to 6,000,000 bushels. 
Comparatively few varieties of potatoes are grown in Colo¬ 
rado. Nearly all the known varieties have been tried at one time ' 
