When the first gold-hunters penetrated the Pikes Peak country in 1858, farming communities had already been established by Spanish-speaking people in the southern part of the State. Nor were they the first farmers in what is now Colorado. Six centuries before, the Cliff Dwellers had grown maize and other crops on the high tablelands and in the moist valleys of the Mesa Verde country in the southwestern corner of the State. The less civilized nomadic Indians who supplanted the Cliff Dwellers lived by hunting and fishing and did not till the soil. Although small agricultural experiments had been conducted at several of the pioneer trading posts, notably at Bent's Fort on the Arkansas, permanent farming communities were not established until 1852 when the erection of Fort Massachusetts in the San Luis Valley brought Spanish-Americans from New Mexico to settle along the Culebra, Costilla, and Trinchera Rivers, tributaries of the Rio Grande. Later, during gold rush days, farms were laid out in the river bottoms along the eastern base of the foothills.

The Spanish-Americans in the San Luis Valley early developed small irrigation projects, but irrigation on a large scale began in 1870 with the founding of the Union Colony at Greeley. Sponsored by Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, and organized by Nathan Meeker, the newspaper's agricultural editor, this co-operative colony dug the first large irrigation canal in Colorado. The venture was successful, and big ditches were soon dug in other parts of the State. As demand for water increased, reservoirs were built to catch and hold the early spring flow of rivers. By 1930 there were 6,509 irrigation projects in the State, representing an investment of $87,603,240; 5,926 were individual and partnership enterprises, 531 were co-operative, and the balance were corporate and Federal Government projects. The 531 co-operative projects represented a capital investment of $45,651,717, or more than half the value of all such projects in the State. Colorado has two great irrigation projects constructed by the U. S. Reclamation Service: the Uncompahgre, built at a cost of $6,715,000, which irrigates approximately 63,000 acres of land in the Uncompahgre Valley near Montrose; and the Grand Valley Project, built at a cost of more than $5,000,000, which brings water to 30,400 acres in the vicinity of Grand Junction.

In 1936 the Twin Lakes Reservoir and Canal Company, a private enterprise, initiated the first project in the State to divert water from one slope of the Continental Divide to the other; designed to bring water from the Roaring Fork on the Western Slope to the farmers of Crowley County on the eastern plains, it diverted 35,000 acre-feet of water in 1939. The U. S. Reclamation Service began construction in 1938 of the first unit of the Pine River Project in La Plata County, on the western slope of the San Juan Mountains; it will irrigate 56,000 acres. But by far the largest Federal enterprise of the kind in Colorado is the Colorado-Big Thompson, authorized in 1937 and now under construction. The reservoirs of this system will store water from a drainage area of 780 square miles above Hot Sulphur Springs on the Western Slope and by a 13-mile tunnel under the Continental Divide will carry it to already developed irrigation districts on the eastern plains. Federal Government engineers estimate that an annual flow of 320,000 acre-feet can be diverted from the headwaters of the Colorado River without impairing established water rights along the lower reaches of the river. The Colorado-Big Thompson project will cost approximately $44,000,000, about half of which will be spent for power development.

Colorado's great network of canals and ditches waters 3,393,000 acres, or 11.8 per cent of all cultivated land; 31,000 farms, more than half of those in the State, contain some irrigated sections. Melting snows in the high mountain country furnish small but steady streams in the fertile basins of the North and the South Platte, Arkansas, Rio Grande, Colorado, Gunnison, and scores of tributary rivers, along which are grown usually bountiful crops of hay, alfalfa, sugar beets, melons, fruits, vegetables, and grains.

The single largest enterprise based upon irrigation is the sugar beet industry, with its many ramifications, founded with the introduction of beet culture from Germany in 1899. After successful experiments along the Colorado River near Grand Junction, beet farming spread rapidly into the South Platte and Arkansas Valleys, in which are largely concentrated the State's eighteen beet sugar refineries. Colorado stands foremost among the States in the growing of sugar beets, and the average value of the crop for the 1929-39 decade is estimated at $25,820,000 a year; in addition to refined sugar, this total includes the value of beet tops, beet pulp, molasses, and other valuable byproducts. Approximately 12,000 farmers, 20,000 field workers, and 6,200 processing plant employees are directly engaged in the Colorado beet industry, which indirectly employs many additional workers in the livestock and packing industries. Beet pulp and other byproducts are fed with grain and hay to many thousand head of sheep and cattle through the winter months; such a ration, according to a report by the Animal Husbandry Department of the Colorado State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, produces "cheaper beef and mutton or lamb than any ration available in the United States."

Successful agriculture in the temperate zone requires the cultivation of at least one row crop in rotation with grains and legumes or grasses, and the sugar beet has proved itself rather more adaptable to the soil and climate of Colorado than other major row crops. Beets require a more than average amount of hard field labor but respond more directly and remuneratively to such intensive cultivation than other standard crops, yielding a high cash return. Although beets were grown on only 10 per cent of all irrigated land in the sixteen leading beet-growing counties during the 1929-39 decade, the average value of the crop totaled 40 per cent of the value of all principal crops grown on irrigated land in the State.

Farmers contract with the sugar refining companies to plant a specified acreage with seed furnished by the companies; payments are made at specified periods after delivery of beets at the refineries, and depend upon the sugar content of the beets and the final net return on sugar sold. The farmer not only signs a contract with the refining companies but also a labor contract with his field workers specifying the piece rates to be paid for each operation (see Tour 1a).

Straight tariff protection characterized sugar legislation until 1934 when the Jones-Costigan Act was passed. This was followed by the Sugar Act of 1937, which reduced tariffs and substituted a processing tax and quota controls as indirect means of regulating sugar prices, beet prices, grower-processor relationships, and wages of contract labor. Beet proceeds were redistributed in favor of farmers and field workers. To be eligible for crop-control payments, a farmer must pay minimum piece rates set by the U. S. Department of Agriculture and must employ no children under fourteen in the fields; the work day of those between fourteen and seventeen is limited to eight hours. In 1940 the minimum wage for beet labor was established at $21.60 an acre for the average crop of 12 tons an acre. The rapidity with which field work is being mechanized is indicated by a decrease from 66.5 hours an acre in 1915 to 53 hours in 1936, as revealed in a WPA research study, and more important developments in mechanization have subsequently occurred. From a fourth to a fifth of Colorado's beet acreage is now tended by farmers and their families without the assistance of contract workers.

Wide fluctuations have marked the family income of contract beet workers. Daily earnings are high, averaging $4 during the thinning season and $5 during the harvest, but the season of employment is short, averaging from fifty to sixty days over a six months' period. A WPA survey of relief clients in Weld County in 1937 revealed an average of $222 from beet work, $42 from other private employment, and $172 from WPA wages, direct relief, and other forms of public assistance. The average individual cash income was $47 a year for beet work and $31 a year from direct and work relief. A study published by the University of California in 1929 estimated average family earnings from beet work alone in the same area at $818.50. The Childrens' Bureau of the U. S. Department of Labor reported in 1935 that the average for the country as a whole was $340. "If the 1934 income is adjusted by the increase in wage rates since that time, the probable family income in 1940 will be about $400," according to estimates of the Sugar Division, U. S. Department of Agriculture. The first workers in the fields were German-Russians from the Volga who were familiar with beet culture. By dint of hard work, many became tenants, landowners, and large livestock feeders. Most of the field workers today are Spanish-Americans from the Southwest.

The beet workers of Colorado were first organized by the American Federation of Labor. In 1937 the Colorado unions affiliated with the C.I.O. as members of the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America. The Union has participated in a number of hearings on wage scales held by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In May 1940 it was estimated by the Labor Section of the Sugar Division of the Department that of the 90,000 contract beet workers in the country, the C. I. O. had a membership of 12,300 in Colorado and four other western states; of Colorado's 20,000 beet workers, 8,000 were organized, according to the same source. In addition to sugar beets, the irrigated sections of Colorado grow wheat, rye, and other cash grains. Corn, oats, barley, and grain sorghums are raised primarily as feed crops on both irrigated and dry farms. Hay, the State's leading crop, is not entirely grown in irrigated regions; a considerable part is cut from natural meadows in the mountains and on certain sections of the plains; alfalfa, clover, timothy, sweet sorghum, forage, and wild hay are the principal varieties. Potatoes, Colorado's chief vegetable crop, are grown in all but five counties, although production is largely limited to the San Luis and South Platte Valleys; sharp price fluctuations in recent years have made income from this crop uncertain. Pinto beans are an important cash crop on the plains, particularly in sections where water is scarce or unavailable. Some broomcorn is grown in the southeastern corner of the State.

Many of the irrigated sections are well suited to horticulture; the value of the fruit harvest in 1938 totaled almost $3,000,000. Refrigerated railroad cars and motor trucks have greatly widened the market for this produce, making it possible for a family in London to have Colorado fruit ten days after it has been picked. Apples are grown in Delta and adjoining counties on the Western Slope, in Fremont County, in some lower sections of the Arkansas Valley, and in Larimer, Jefferson, and Boulder Counties along the South Platte; the 1938 harvest was valued at $1,387,000. Peaches and pears are grown in the Arkansas Valley, and on the lower mesas, deltas, and flood plains of the Colorado and Gunnison Rivers, where water for irrigation is plentiful, the climate mild, and the growing season longer than in other sections of the State. Colorado cherries are largely of the sour variety, although some sweet cherries are grown on the Western Slope in the Delta and Grand Junction areas. Two-thirds of the State's cherries are harvested in Larimer County, with Fremont, Mesa, Jefferson, and Delta Counties ranking next in order. Small quantities of grapes, apricots, and plums are raised in the orchard country along the lower valleys of the Colorado and Gunnison Rivers; grapes and plums flourish along the Arkansas.

Jefferson County and other areas in the vicinity of Denver are the berry patch of Colorado and furnish the local market for a brief period each summer. Berries are also grown in most of the fruit areas of the State, especially along the Grand Mesa in Garfield County. Glenwood Springs on the upper Colorado River is widely known for its wild mountain strawberries.

Truck farming has become an important enterprise in the irrigated farm regions, but violent price fluctuations have made it a hazardous occupation. The total value of truck crops in 1938 was $5,345,000. The Rocky Ford cantaloupe is celebrated throughout the country, and in recent years honeydew melons and winter watermelons have become increasingly important in the Arkansas Valley; these melons are now vine-ripened and pre-cooled before shipment. Another important garden crop is crisp head lettuce, which grows in high mountain meadows and matures late in the season when supplies elsewhere are depleted. Green peas, cabbage, tomatoes, onions, snap beans, cauliflower, and mushrooms are also grown. Colorado giant and short-strain pascal celery is probably the State's most widely praised vegetable; a large part of the crop is grown immediately west and north of Denver, but small crops are grown along the Arkansas in the vicinity of Canon City and Pueblo. Most of this celery is wrapped with paper to bleach it in the field, and is then stored in trenches for further bleaching for the Thanksgiving and Christmas markets; shipments are usually made by truck or in small gift packages by express. The growing of carnations, orchids, Easter lilies, chrysanthemums, roses, gladioli, babybreath, bedding plants, potted plants, bulbs, and a miscellany of nursery products and seeds, is now a small but integral unit in Colorado's agricultural economy.

Although most of Colorado farm produce is grown on irrigated tracts, the vast bulk of the State's cultivated land is without water. Dry farming on a large scale began about 1880, by which time all land in well-watered river bottoms had been preempted and land-hungry homesteaders began to checker the arid plains with rectangles of barbed wire. But enthusiasm for this "rain belt," as it was in fact during the favorable 1880's, wilted during the bitter years of drought and depression in the early nineties. Many farmers were ruined; entire communities were abandoned, and the plight of eastern Colorado was so serious that it was ten years before recovery began, This trying period pointed the need of establishing experiment stations; in time these succeeded in placing dry farming upon a scientific basis by developing special drought-resisting seed and such drought-resisting crops as dwarf cane, higary, federita, grama, and Sudan grass. New methods of cultivation designed to preserve moisture were also introduced, and $2 wheat during the first World War brought farmers hurrying to plow up the plains with tractors and to plant wheat and other cash crops. Many adverse factors had to be contended with. The original homestead law provided only 160-acre tracts, which were sufficiently large in humid regions but far too small on the arid plains. Even when the unit was increased to 320 acres in 1909, and to 640 acres in 1916, it was still too small. In one-crop dry farming, half the land often has to be allowed to lie fallow each year to accumulate moisture and furrows must be plowed farther apart than ordinarily. As for stock raising, a profitable range in this area necessitates control of 8,000 to 15,000 acres. The accumulation of large tracts through purchase was difficult because of the activities of speculators, who inflated prices of land and caused a rapid increase in tenancy, share-cropping, and attendant evils.

The post-war collapse of farm prices seriously injured agriculture throughout the country and was nothing less than a catastrophe for the marginal, over-capitalized farms in the dry areas. In some sections of the plains more than 40 per cent of the farms passed through tax sales and foreclosures into the hands of absentee owners, who leased the land to tenants; many of the latter were "suitcase farmers," who, having no permanent interest in the farms, ruthlessly "mined" the soil. This created instability in the community and impoverished many county and local governments. Tax delinquencies ranged from 15 to 45 per cent. Such abuses, coupled with over-grazing and droughts in recent years, have been major factors in creating the "dust bowls" of the plains, and have resulted in the migration of entire communities to other sections of the country.

In recent years the Federal Government has assisted in alleviating the worst evils of the post-war era by stabilizing production and marketing. Today, hundreds of successful farmers in the plains counties grow a diversity of drought-resisting crops and seldom have a complete failure. In addition, they have introduced dairy farming and poultry raising as subsidiary sources of income to protect them against total loss during dry years. The plains towns of eastern Colorado are shipping points for wheat, corn, hogs, cattle, sheep, eggs, poultry, butterfat, and a wide variety of similar produce.

Price fluctuations have always been a serious problem for Colorado agriculture, especially for marginal producers in less-favored sections. Faced with unfavorable market conditions and other difficult problems, Colorado growers have united in many active farm organizations. The movement began as early as 1863 when the ephemeral Colorado Agricultural Society was founded in Denver. In 1870 the first Farmers Club was organized at Union Colony, now Greeley, and three years later it became the nucleus of an organization known as the Colorado Farmers Union. In 1874 the Colorado Grange was organized as a section of the national association known as the Patrons of Husbandry; at the height of its power in December 1916, the Colorado Grange had 9,029 members.

Of more recent origin is the Colorado Farm Bureau, which now rivals the Grange in strength and enterprise. The largest farm organization in the State today, however, is the Farmers Educational and Co-operative Union of Colorado, founded in 1906. The Farmers Union has more than 5,000 families as members and sells insurance to a much larger number. More specialized groups, such as the Mountain States Beet Growers Marketing Association, the Colorado Stock Growers and Feeders Association, and scores of local livestock and marketing co-operatives, play an increasingly vital role in Colorado farm life.

The importance of that life is reflected in the fact that farming today provides a fifth of the State's yearly income and in 1930 employed 106,000 people, a fourth of all gainfully employed Coloradoans. The inventory value of all crops grown on both irrigated and dry farms in 1938 was estimated at $68,530,000, which, with crop-control payments by the Federal Government, raised gross farm income for the year to $116,000,000.