Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “American Agriculture History Minute”
Mark Oppold presents an American agriculture history minute focuses on Eugene Funk, grandson of Isaac Funk, who was one of McLean County, Illinois’ pioneering settlers and renowned livestock producers. Eugene’s family background in successful livestock operations influenced their interest in corn improvement. Mark details Eugene’s educational journey, including three years of scientific studies at Yale and a year in Europe. …
Mark Oppold presents an American Agriculture History Minute, focusing on the agricultural history of Colorado. Mark Oppold describes how early settlers discovered Native Americans practicing the Three Sisters farming method, growing corn, soybeans, and squash in the Colorado territory. Mark further explains that the Arkansas River served as a boundary between Mexican and U.S. territories, with Spanish-speaking settlers establishing irrigated …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. Brothers Charles and Newton Butler founded Butler Manufacturing Company in Kansas City, 1901. The two worked together on building an improved livestock watering tank. And during the early 1900s, the men designed and built several agricultural products, particularly grain storage bins. The company enjoyed success selling the merchandise, and by 1908, …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. In 1906, Elias Ammons was president of the Colorado Cattle and Horse Growers Association, later served as governor of Colorado. George Ballantyne was general manager of the Denver Union Stockyard Company, and Fred Johnson was publisher of the record Stockman. These three men in 1906 put together what would become the …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. The National Western Stock Show in Denver began in 1906. The horse show now among the largest in the world, more than 18,000 entries. National Western Rodeo, considered one of the largest indoor rodeos and has won honors from the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association and additionally Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. Agriculture in what is now Colorado began taking shape in the early 1850s. Then Rocky Mountain News founder William N. Byers passed out seeds to make his newspaper “the principal chronicle of early farming in Colorado”. By the 1870s Byers facilitated the colony of Greeley, Colorado’s first major agricultural settlement and …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. In the early 1820s, after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the U.S. government decided to conduct agricultural experiments in what is now Kansas. Native Indians had long planted corn in northeast Kansas, and the government saw potential in expanding trade west of Kansas City. Records show the government sent Daniel Morgan …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. 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 …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. At the close of the Civil War, the government offered homesteads in Kansas to Union Army veterans and more than 100,000 took advantage. Most were strong young veterans who had left their families to fight for the Union and became really the first real pioneer farmers in Kansas. The majority had …
I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute. In 1938, Charles E. Schmidt began a mail order tractor parts business. The company got its start in Minot, North Dakota in 1938 as a mail order supplier of tractor parts, the first retail store founded in 1939. We know it today as Tractor Supply Company. And, in January of 1959, …
