|
Farmers
and Ranchers of Colorado |
| Overview |
| Farming and ranching in Colorado grew up alongside mining and
town building. The influx of gold seekers created a market for meat, flour, vegetables,
and other foodstuff. Several of the newcomers saw that farming and cattle raising would
produce a more certain income than prospecting for gold. They learned to grow crops in
Colorado’s semi-arid climate by irrigating the fields. They grew food crops as well
as grain. Some cut hay from the meadows along the South Platte River, which they sold as
food for horses and milk cows in Denver and in the mining camps. Others learned that the
grass that grew on the plains could support herds of cattle the year round. In the
process, farmers and ranchers developed a more permanent and predictable economy for
Colorado. |
| Food, Clothing, and Shelter |
| Farm and ranch families raised much of their own food. Most
rural families had gardens, usually tended by the women and children. The garden produced
fresh vegetables during the summer as well as food that could be preserved and kept
through the winter. A milk cow or two kept the family supplied with milk, cream, and
butter. Chickens provided eggs and meat. However, farm and ranch families were far from
self-sufficient. Many items had to be purchased or secured in trade for butter or eggs
from the general store at the nearest market town. These included a variety of staple
foods (flour, sugar, salt, spices) and specialty items (candy, canned fruit, and other
delicacies). Men and women in the rural areas of Colorado dressed according to the
fashions of the time. Men wore dark-colored work shirts and pants held up with a belt or
suspenders. Farm women typically wore long, print dresses, the skirt covered with an
apron. With washing and ironing clothes by hand a time-consuming task, aprons were an
important labor-saving device. Sunday dress-up clothes, for those who could afford them,
included suits for men and two-piece waist and skirt outfits for women. Children commonly
wore scaled-down versions of adult clothes, although boys often wore short pants until age
7 or so.
Farmers and ranchers used a variety of building materials to construct houses. The
first houses usually were one-story structures that took advantage of local building
materials. Log cabins were common, especially near the foothills of the Rockies where
timber was available. By the 1880s, settlers on the plains of eastern Colorado used strips
of sod to construct their first houses. In the Hispanic settlements of southern Colorado,
houses made of adobe, sun-dried bricks were common throughout the 19th century. The vast
majority of Anglo settlers in Colorado considered log or sod houses as only temporary
shelters. The only proper kinds of houses from their cultural perspective were those
constructed of frame, stone or fired-brick. Frame houses eventually dominated the rural
landscape in most rural areas of Colorado. |
| Families and Children and
Schools |
| The rural communities of Colorado were settled by families.
Married men and women outnumbered the single men who worked as hired farm hands and
cowboys. With children present from the outset, schools appeared early in the development
of rural communities. Erecting a rural school building usually was one of the first public
tasks that brought people together. The first schools typically were one-room buildings
made of logs or sod. In time these were replaced by wooden frame buildings. During the
first years of a new settlement, the school often served as a community center as well as
a place of learning. Rural people assembled there for public meetings, potluck dinners,
and community spelling bees. The rural school helped give fledgling rural communities a
sense of identity as well as a community center. |
| Farm Work and Tools |
| By the 1870s, farming throughout the United States had become
a mechanized occupation. Farming in Colorado was no exception. Farmers cut hay with
horse-drawn mowing machines, gathered it up with horse-drawn rakes, and baled it with
special hay presses. They used a variety of specialized steel plows to cut sod for houses,
break the sod for planting, and till the soil thereafter. They planted wheat with
horse-drawn seed drills, harvested the crop with horse-drawn binding machines, and
threshed out the grain with separating machines powered by steam engines. Their dependence
on machines had a variety of social and economic consequences for Colorado farmers. It
sometimes brought them together to share equipment; it also put many farmers in debt to
buy the implements they could not do without. |
| Ranch Work and Tools |
| Ranch work was focused on the raising and marketing of
cattle. From the beginning of Anglo settlement until the late 1880s, the cattle were left
alone most of the year to graze on the grassland of the plains. During the winter, a
cattleman’s herd might drift for miles on the open range, ending up mixed together
with neighboring herds. Ranchers went out each spring with their hired hands to round up
the cattle bearing their ranch’s distinctive brand and to drive their herd back to
its home range. New calves also were branded during the spring roundup. A second roundup
took place each fall to separate out the cattle that were ready for market. These animals
were then driven to the nearest railroad siding, where they were loaded into cattle cars
to be send to eastern slaughterhouses. The open-range phase of the cattle industry came
to an abrupt end in the late-1880s. By then the grasslands were dangerously overstocked
with cattle. Then two disastrous winters in 1886-1888 wiped out many of the underfed
herds. Thereafter, ranchers fenced the grasslands that they owned or could control and fed
their cattle hay during the winter.
The cattlemens’ tools were the relatively simple ones needed for raising and
marketing cattle. Cowboys needed saddles and horse tack. The tools of the roundup included
chuck wagons, lariats, branding irons, and the cowboys’ bedrolls. During the latter
phase of the industry, fence-post hole diggers, mowing machines, and hay rakes and wagons
became important, as well. |
| Market and Supply Towns |
| Although farmers and ranchers lived in rural areas, they were
dependent on nearby towns. The towns served as supply centers for the surrounding farms
and ranches. Rural dwellers came to town to buy food staples, hardware, and cloth. They
brought broken equipment in to be repaired by the local blacksmith. They stopped at
implement dealers to order new plows or harness shops to buy saddles or horse tack.
Farmers brought their surplus farm products to market towns. Towns located on railroads
also usually had cattle pens and loading chutes nearby to which ranchers brought their
cattle that were ready for market. |
| Community Life |
| People who settled on Colorado’s farms and ranches, no
less than those who came looking for gold, brought well-established institutions and
customs with them. Religious services, national holidays, local elections, and public
meetings provided many occasions for people to come together. In the early years, rural
people came together to build a school, to help new arrivals build a house or to meet in
someone’s home for Sunday religious services. They eventually built churches at rural
crossroads or in a nearby market town. Farm families also went to town for Fourth of July
parades, county fairs, and harvest celebrations. The harvest festivities tended to focus
on a particular crop for which the locality was well known. Grand Junction had its Peach
Day, Greeley its Potato Day, and Rocky Ford its Melon Day. By the turn of the century,
sporting events, especially high school ball games, also brought rural together. |
| Transportation |
| Horses, horse-drawn vehicles, and railroads provided most of
the transportation needed by Colorado’s farmers and ranchers. They drove to town in
farm wagons to pick up supplies, to sell hay or farm products or for social events.
Ranchers used chuck wagons to haul their cowboys’ food and bedding to roundups. Both
also were dependent on railroads to haul their products to faraway markets, especially
cattle raisers. Long trains of cattle cars heading east each spring and fall kept ranchers
in business and provided eastern cities with beef. |
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