first major agricultural settlement

American Agriculture History Minute: First Major Agricultural Settlement

Dan American Agriculture History Minute, This Land of Ours

first major agricultural settlement
Irrigating wheat on Ben Reinks ranch near Greeley, Colorado — F. E. Baker
Colorado State University Libraries, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute.

American Agriculture History Minute: First Major Agricultural Settlement

Greeley became Colorado’s first major agricultural settlement and they soon discovered there that irrigation was going to be the key to what was called the Great American Desert at that time. And by 1900, Colorado indeed led the nation in the acreage of irrigated farmland.

But ever larger federal reclamation projects transformed Colorado and records show there was little opposition to federal water projects. During the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, an estimated one-tenth of Colorado’s topsoil blew away.

That’s today’s American Agriculture History Minute. I’m Mark Oppold. Thanks for reading. I’ll see you next time.