It was simply called a walking plow pulled by oxen, mules, or a pair of draft horses.

The farmer had to walk behind and hold the handles to keep the plow from falling over sideways.

This old implement, with its steel mold board, was shaped to split, separate and turn the tough prairie sod here on the high plains.

Turning over just an acre of land meant that you would plow a furrow, some seven miles long.

For the early farmers, it was hard work keeping the plow and even depth, much less the horses, moving along at a steady pace that would assure a straight and even furrow.

And yet, after gold was discovered here in Colorado, it wasn't long before farmers and their implements could be seen silhouetted against the landscape, plowing up parts of these Western lands.

They simply no longer took seriously the earlier reputation of the High Plains, created first back in 1822 with Major Stephen Long's exploration into this area.

Ironically, Major Long, in his well-documented map of the West, had lettered in the words Great Desert, stretching from what is today the Texas Panhandle across western Kansas and eastern Colorado.

He added, I do not hesitate in giving the opinion that this extensive section of the country is almost wholly unfit for cultivation and, of course, uninhabitable by people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence.

By the late 1870s, however, farmers were no longer discouraged by any such lingering notions of desert wasteland, especially when they learned of the above normal rainfall occurring each year on the High Plains.

Quickly, railroad companies like the Burlington and the Missouri Railroad began an advertising campaign offering for sale new land for practically nothing along their tracks in eastern Colorado.

It was a scheme enticing farmers to come further west to settle and follow the so-called rain belt.

Surely the old slogan rain follows the plow would hold true even here in the Centennial State, and for a period of time it was true yearly moisture amounting to as much as 20in producing crops of corn, wheat, barley and oats on former grassland that had fed the buffalo and later large herds of cattle.

It gave farmers the illusion that they could count on at least 20in of rainfall each and every year.

It was the beginning of large scale dryland farming here in Colorado, which simply means growing crops without irrigation.

By 1885, the dry landers poured into eastern Colorado, staking out their homesteads, building their soddies, plowing up the buffalo grass, and planting the seeds of the hard red winter wheat.

Many of these new Coloradans refused to believe, or simply ignored, their repeated warnings that there were cycles of wet and dry years out here on the high Plains.

Those who reach Colorado with certain ideas of society, soil, climate and country based upon what they have left behind them are likely to be disappointed.

In the 1890s, the cycle of wet years was replaced by years of drought, five years in which the scorching winds swept the plains of eastern Colorado, wilting corn in the furrow, burning up, wheat drying up everything in the field, what crops that could be harvested brought about a dime a bushel.

To make matters worse, the economic panic of 1893 was sweeping the country.

Farmers needing money couldn't even get a loan from the local banks.

Many families packed up and left.

Those that stayed lived in poverty and loneliness.

Of all the difficulties that we had to endure, by far the worst was that of loneliness.

We were separated by miles from our closest neighbor.

Often we were hungry, sometimes sick, unable to leave the homestead.

We were alone with the dreadful monotony of our daily routine and the drought.

Seeing that nothing would ever change out here.

By the turn of the century, the cycle of rainfall did indeed change.

So too did the methods used by the farmer to make a living on Colorado's eastern plains.

Conserve what moisture there is in the soil.

That was the clue.

Storing it up in times of rainfall to use in times of drought.

The process involved discing, stubble mulching, stirring up the soil to collect and hold the moisture.

The early farmers also learn to let part of their land lie fallow each year to collect and store moisture when it's at rest.

We are still doing it today.

Notice the strips of young green wheat alternating with strips of fallow soil.

By the turn of the century, some farmers were even using steam powered equipment, especially for thrashing wheat, and when the use of the new motorized tractor came on the market, American agriculture began to depend heavily upon machines.

New settlements developed along railroad tracks.

Ray, Yuma, Akron, Cheyenne.

Wells, Kit Carson, Lyman.

Lamar, Los Angeles.

Lana.

Such towns grew not for their own sake, but to serve as suppliers for the farmers and ranchers nearby.

Most were settled at the same time a doctor treated the farmers.

The butcher sold the meat they raised the blacksmith, shooed their horses, and repaired farm implements.

The lumber yard supplied farmers with lumber and fuel.

Telegraph lines in the new, so-called hello girls provided needed communication.

Chain stores even developed.

The main street had its J.C.

Penney and Montgomery Ward stores.

There were also politics and politicians.

One of Colorados best was in southern Colorado, on his ranch near the town of Trinity.

His name?

Casimiro Barela.

So, Senator, you again returned to the state capitol in Denver?

Yes, Alfredo.

Next Tuesday, I begin my 30th year in the state legislature.

A long and productive period of service, Casimiro.

Soon they will be calling you the Perpetual Senator.

Well, my friend, that's better than being called something else.

Perhaps three decades of serving my people in southern Colorado should be enough.

Yet it seems like only yesterday that some of us were worried about how to get this territory called Colorado to become the 38th state of the Union.

Yes.

And I still remember well how excited you were in being asked to help write the new state constitution.

What was that issue at the end that frustrated you so?

The language barrier and the refusal, at first, on part of some of the delegates to print a constitution in Spanish as well as English.

I remember arguing.

How can you expect people who can't read English to vote on a state constitution they can't understand?

Ironically, the same delegates forgot about the large German population in the territory.

The committee finally published it in three languages and everybody was happy.

But now, at the turn of the century, you're facing much different kinds of problems Yes, Mi amigo.

I'm concerned about the plight of our farmers, particularly on the eastern plains and in the San Luis Valley.

They need our help badly.

After years of drought.

The drylanders & rancheros have suffered alike, Casimiro.

Only those that have access to irrigation seem to produce crops that pay the mortgage.

Perhaps we should all try and raise these sugar beets that seem so profitable to so many.

Its true t hey do well in certain parts of the state.

But beets are thirsty.

Crop me, amigo.

Will there be enough water to satisfy such increased acreage?

Only time will tell.

It takes over 40 gallons of irrigated water just to produce one of these sugar beets.

They are indeed a thirsty crop, but with a cycle of wet years in the early 1900s, and with a good cash return from the owners of newly built sugar factories, more and more of the early Coloradans switched from the raising of corn and wheat to the raising of these sugary vegetables, and thus the sugar beet industry was born.

By 1909, over 100,000 acres of irrigated land had been planted to beets.

New factories sprang up, first at Rocky Ford in Sugar City, followed quickly by a half a dozen refineries built along the South Platte Valley by this man, Charles Becker.

He was a shrewd German immigrant who had made a good deal of money with his chain of hardware stores along the Front Range of the Rockies.

Beet sugar, however, had sparked his financial interest, since the cultivation of the beats required many laborers in each field.

Thousands of families from Mexico moved to the South Platte and Arkansas River valleys, to be absorbed later by the Mexican American ethnic group.

Gradually, by the 1930s, as more and more land was plowed to plant more and more bee ts, the irrigation system along the eastern plains no longer could feed such demand.

It's called a head gate.

By simply turning this wheel clockwise.

You open a pathway for water backed up in this huge storage reservoir to flow down this ditch, past the measuring gate, the lateral canals, and eventually onto fields of crops.

By 1933, such ditches and canals were either empty or running half full, straining to irrigate the more than 3 million acres of land devoted to the raising of sugar beets.

Farmers were demanding more and more water for the irrigated land.

And yet there was only one place to get it on the other side of those mountains.

Henry, this is Charles Hansen in Greeley.

Have you read the proposal?

Yes, I know it's a big project, but it's the only feasible way to bring water from the Western Slope through the Rockies to help irrigate croplands in eastern Colorado.

What?

Well, they estimate that over a quarter of a million acre feet of water could be diverted each year.

Yes.

From the headwaters of the Colorado River.

Diverted through a tunnel dug through the Rockies.

Yes.

To pass down the Big Thompson River to our irrigation district on the eastern slope.

Oh, Henry, this will double the amount of water available to farms, and it won't cost the taxpayers a cent through revenues that will come from generated power on the project.

And water rates paid by the farmers who use it.

All right, Henry, I'd appreciate it.

Yes.

We need your help.

It would be called the Colorado Big Thompson Project, one of the largest engineering projects of its kind ever attempted by the Bureau of Reclamation, begun in 1937.

It would take over 20 years to complete.

It is still operating today, collecting water from melting snow on the west side of the Rockies.

First its shadow mountain to flow down into Granby Reservoir.

More water collected at Willow Creek Dam is pumped up into Granby.

Finally, all this stored water flows across nearby Grand Lake and through the 13 mile long Adams Tunnel to the east slope.

Then it drops downward, generating electricity as it goes down the big tubs.

Part of it to be held in Carter Lake.

The other part to flow along the Charles Hanson Feeder Canal into Horse Tooth Reservoir.

Over by Fort Collins.

Through this unique system of diverting water from the western slope, over a million and a half acres of farmland was supplied each year with the needed water to assure productive yields of sugar beets, corn, potatoes, vegetables and grains.

What a dramatic change in 130 years, beginning with Stephen Long's condemning the High Plains as a desert wasteland.

Early maps and words, however, wouldn't keep pioneer farmers out of eastern Colorado, especially in the wet years of the 1880s.

Dry land farmers were forced to adapt to the changing pattern of rainfall.

They also learned how to endure the winter blizzards, the blistering heat in the summer, the loneliness of their existence.

In the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s, Many dry landers couldn't survive the awful conditions.

They simply packed up and left.

Sugar beet growers were facing the same problem.

Not enough water, but it would take 20 years.

And the Big Thompson project, before their irrigated fields would be assured of productive crops.

What about today?

Is there enough water for agriculture and the needs of communities in this state?

But that's an important question for another program.