Resilience on the Colorado High Plains
New book tracks the rise and fall and rise of resilient plains folk
Colorado history can be tracked by lines in the dirt—the animal trails followed by native tribes hunting bison; the serpentine lines of rivers navigated by explorers; the wagon wheel ruts carved by fur traders, homesteaders, and cattle drivers; the veins of gold, silver, and oil tapped by miners and oilmen; the overland routes guarded by military forts; the rail lines traveled by immigrants; the plat maps of towns; the canals dug to supply water to arid land; and the asphalt arteries of road upon which commerce and connectedness still depend.
Other lines bisect this history. The Rocky Mountains divide the eastern plains from the western mountains and high plateau. Among its lofty peaks, the Continental Divide determines where water from winter snowmelt falls, west to the Gulf of Mexico or east to the Mississippi River.
From these headwaters two rivers flow east, the South Platte and the Arkansas. The South Platte River begins in Park County and flows northeast fed along the way by other mountain tributaries. It passes through Denver and Greeley and from there heads northeast to Nebraska where it joins the North Platte. The Arkansas River forms in Lake County and winds south through Pueblo and then east through Lamar and into Kansas. The vast grassland between these two river basins has only a few small rivers, more creeks than streams and some of them run dry in summer.
These two blue river lines on the map of eastern Colorado exert significant influence on the region and its history ever since human beings arrived more than 10,000 years ago. As explorers, trappers, traders, cattlemen, prospectors, military men, homesteaders, immigrants, and others came west they dug other lines in the soil.
Economist Wilson D. Kendall follows the crisscrossing lines of human history in this sometimes overlooked region of Colorado in his book Struggle on the High Plains: An Economic History of Eastern Colorado. His chronical details how immigration, government policy, weather phenomena, national economic conditions, industrial development, demand for agricultural products and supply of workers, advances in science and technology, water law, state infrastructure investments, energy development, and other factors influenced the history of eastern Colorado.
Although primarily an economic history, the book contains biographical detail of influential people and vignettes from the author’s childhood in Lamar, CO where his family settled in the 1880s. Kendall avoids romanticizing or sermonizing about the people who immigrated to eastern Colorado. While the author acknowledges the costs and benefits of economic decisions made by individuals, communities, and government agencies, he does so without turning history into a morality play with bad guys and good guys and lessons to be learned. Nevertheless, through the abundant data and straight forward analysis, a story does emerge, one of hope, grit, overextension, mistakes, loss, innovation, adaptation, and resilience on the dry and windy high plains of Colorado.
The book begins with the Kiowa, Comanche, Arapaho, and Cheyenne who had adapted well to life on the high grasslands hunting bison. They were followed by explorers, trappers and traders. These were the first people of European descent to make their way into what one explorer, Stephen H. Long, called the Great American Desert.
Near what is now La Junta on the Arkansas River, Charles Bent and Ceran St. Vrain built Bent’s Fort to trade with native tribes for animal pelts. William Bent, Charles’s brother, took over the fort and moved it to a site near what is now Las Animas where it would later become the military’s Fort Lyon. Overhunting by trappers and conflict with native tribes brought an end to the era of trap and trade-based westward migration.
Beginning in the 1850s, Texas ranchers began to drive their cattle northward along the Goodnight-Loving Trail and the Potter-Bacon Trail to fatten them up on Colorado grasslands. Colorado ranchers also grazed cattle on the open range. The success of the cattle enterprise prompted investment by east coast and British speculators. The market bubble burst after harsh winters in the mid-1880s. Meanwhile, homesteaders were buying up the land and hemming it in with barbwire. The open range cattle era had come to an end.
In the mid-19th century, Americans in wagons traveled along the Overland Trail which paralleled the South Platte River. The Overland Trail, which began in Atchison, KS, came through northern Colorado into Wyoming where it joined the Oregon Trail.
Subject to raids by Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Sioux, especially after the Sand Creek Massacre, the Overland Trail could be dangerous. The Military built Camp Wardwell, later renamed Fort Morgan, to protect travelers and supply trains headed for the mountain mining camps. After securing a treaty with the tribes, the military abandoned the fort in 1866.
Given its proximity to the river, the land held promise for productive farming of corn, wheat, and sugar beets, and the raising of livestock. Abner Baker and other investors built the Fort Morgan Canal to provide irrigation and founded the town of Fort Morgan just south of the fort ruins in 1884. Baker recruited family from the Union Colony, a Christian utopian community in Weld County.
By the late 1880s, private companies were building canals and reservoirs to draw water from the Arkansas and South Platte. Colorado’s “Prior Appropriation” water laws established transferable senior and junior water rights to the resource. Canal companies overextended, racked up significant debt, and went out of business. The canals became user ownership operations.
Like canals, railroads played a crucial role in the development of towns in eastern Colorado. Several railroads pushed west along the South Platte and Arkansas Rivers and through the vast interior between the rivers. They needed customers and lured Americans with promises of great farming opportunities. Meanwhile, the government offered incentives through the Homestead Act and other laws.
Railroads also recruited abroad especially among Germans who had immigrated to southern Russia in the 18th Century. Ethnic Germans wanted to leave Russia after the czar revoked their exemption from military conscription. They brought with them to America drought-tolerant wheat seeds and experience in farming steppe land. In the early 20th Century, sugar beet farms began recruiting Germans to work their fields. These new Americans contributed to the culture of eastern Colorado towns. In the town of Brush on the South Platte River, for example, they built three beautiful churches which are on the National Registry of Historic Places today.
In 1910, farms started recruiting Mexican laborers followed by meat packing facilities in the 1980s. Like the German-Americans, these Mexican-Americans have contributed to the success and culture of eastern Colorado communities.
Thanks to rail access along the Arkansas, Las Animas, La Junta, and Lamar became thriving farming communities. Like Fort Morgan, Las Animas was founded across from a military installation, Fort Lyon, in 1869. After a quarrel with the Kansas Pacific Railroad, the railroad founded West Las Animas a few miles away at its depot. In 1882, the town dropped the “West” and reincorporated as Las Animas.
With rail access, farmers who grew sugar beets, wheat, corn, alfalfa, vegetables, and fruits and ranchers who raised cattle, pigs, sheep, and other livestock had access to markets. In large rail towns, producers built flour mills, grain elevators, slaughterhouses, feed lots, canned milk processing facilities, meat packing operations, and sugar beet processing plants.
Sugar beets grow well in the irrigated river valleys. In the late 19th Century and early 20th, various beet processing companies competed in towns along the southern river while Great Western Sugar held a monopoly on production along the South Platte. A victim of trust busting in the 1920s and later financial mismanagement, Great Western went under. Today only one company, a co-op, remains in business in Fort Morgan.
Rail also extended into the lands between the two rivers bringing to life towns like Limon and Wray. In the vast interior, dryland farmers had to rely on meager rain and snow. In addition to low precipitation, the region endures scorching summer heat waves, bitterly cold winters, and constant wind. During the drought of 1880s and 90s, many homesteaders gave up and moved on. A second wave of dryland farmers came in the early 20th Century as the region was enjoying better than average rainfall.
By 1900, the development of crop and livestock breeds better suited to the plains’ conditions and new farming technology like tractors and combines had transformed the region into a major agricultural producer. This was eastern Colorado’s gold age. Wartime disruptions in international agricultural markets increased demand and the price of the farm commodities, especially wheat. Land values went up.
The good times did not last, however. Many farmers took on too much debt. When crop prices dropped after the war, they planted more crops to make up the revenue. The land was producing record amounts of wheat and corn and prices continued to drop. Just as the Great Depression took hold, a terrible drought seized most of the country. On the eastern plains of Colorado and parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, the lack of rain combined with strong winds created the worst manmade disaster the country had every experienced—the Dust Bowl. Soil and grit filled wind storms destroyed crops and killed trees and livestock. People died of dust pneumonia. Farmers abandoned their homes and farms. In towns, banks and businesses closed, some permanently. Several dryland counties lost half of their population.
The federal government responded with loans and aid and programs for soil conservation. Eventually, the rain returned. Farmers adopted more prudent farming methods. The high plains economy recovered in the 1940s with better weather and a strong demand for wheat during World War II. Demand weakened again the 1950s. Dust storms returned in some areas.
War also brought federal projects to the area. The West Coast Air Corps Training Center had a military school at the Fort Morgan State Armory. In La Junta, an air base was built to train members of the British Air Force. After President Roosevelt mandated the relocation and internment of Japanese Americans, the Amache camp was built near Granada. Several POW camps were built in the region as well.
In the 1950s, oil was discovered in northern Colorado plains region causing a short lived boom that ended in the early 1970s. In the late 1950s, the federal government began construction of I-76 which connects Denver to Julesburg and I-70 which runs from Denver to Limon to Burlington.
Larger towns have worked hard to diversify beyond agriculture and food processing by adding light manufacturing, prison facilities, community colleges, traveler accommodations, and tourist attractions. Farmers and ranchers have partnered with energy companies to produce energy from the region’s most plentiful resource—wind.
Because agriculture is more capital intensive and more technologically dependent than ever, large farms have become more prevalent. While the number of small and medium size farms has decreased the number of small hobby farms whose owners work in urban areas has increased.
Water continues to be a vexing challenge. Irrigation is depleting the region’s aquifers and increasing the salinity of the soil. The population in some towns is falling as young people move away and the remaining population ages.
Despite these challenges, towns, especially those along interstates and rivers, remain resilient. Fort Morgan, for example, has increased its population every decade since its founding. Today, more than 11,000 people live there. The town has a sugar beet factory, a cheese factory, a milk processing facility, a meat packing plant, and a seed processing plant. Fort Morgan also has a hospital, museum, library, public swimming pool, municipal golf course, parks, a theater, industrial park, municipal airport, train service, and a historic main street. This year, Fort Morgan has been the focus of popular cable television channel HGTV’s Home Town Takeover show. The town has done what eastern communities have done through Colorado history; faced with challenges, it has adapted.