Irrigating the Desert

Starting in 1872, the land around Fort Morgan began a dramatic change. Canals were constructed to bring the water from the South Platte River and the creeks feeding the river to the land. By 1889, about 150 miles of irrigating canals were complete and many of the canals are still in use today. A history of irrigation in Morgan County can be found in Lyman Baker's book Morgan County Colorado: What Ten Years of Irrigation has Done for a Part of the Colorado Desert and a later book by J. M. Dille Irrigation in Morgan County.

The town of Fort Morgan grew from this watered land and became known as the "Fort Morgan Oasis." An article in an 1889 issue of the Michigan Farmer described the budding town:

A showing of what irrigation can do is build up a town is seen at Fort Morgan, less than six years ago a plain sparsely covered with buffalo and other grasses and cactus plants. Now it is a “city” of 600 people, with a fine public school building, several churches, brick blocks for business purposes, and tasteful and commodious cottages, with shade trees and well kept lawns. It has also become the capital of Morgan County, has a newspaper five years old, the Fort Morgan Times, and is altogether a growing and prosperous place. 

The secret of this magical uprising is irrigation. Its immediate vicinity is watered mainly by the ditch of the Fort Morgan Land and Canal Company, organized by A. S. Baker and others, finished in 1884 having a capacity of 378 cubic feet per second and covering 23,000 acres of very fertile land. The Platte and Beaver Canal supplies 415 feet per second, and waters 45,000 acres of land. These and smaller enterprises are only a beginning of development. Last year the Bijou Reservoir and Canal Company organized, with a capital of $150,000 and is twelve months two-thirds of the work was done, and all will be completed before the end of the year, when it will be owned and controlled by the farmers themselves and will be run by them on economic principles. Its capacity is 450 feet per second its length fifty miles, and it will water 45,000 acres of land, a strip of the formerly barren p—? one hundred miles long, which can be transformed into a garden in a single year. Already there are about two hundred miles of these canals and an investment of about $750,000 within this county. 

The farms in this neighborhood present an appearance of thrift and beauty that is only expected in long settled regions, so far as the crops and the oil are concerned, while the farm improvements are new and still progressive. A few years ago the cultivation of crops was deemed impracticable, if not impossible. Now, in addition to perhaps 50,000 sheep, 10,000 to 15,000 cattle, and 2,000 horses, there are all kinds of farm products, some of them already selling in distant markets. The assessment of last year may have been half to two-thirds the quantity produced, and this year there will be a large increase yet last year’s assessment covered 311,1100 bushels of potatoes, 27,080 bushels of corn, 12,760 bushels of oats, 4,505 bushels of wheat, 3,890 tons of alfalfa hay, and 2,822 tons of native hay. Of wool 190,500 pounds were reported, and it is claimed that the product of this year will be four times as much. The increase of alfalfa is almost fabulous. It is becoming a great winter resource for ranchmen, is worth $4 to $7 per ton in the stack in this region…. 

Its always cut two or three times, sometimes four, and is credited with four or five tons per annum, but it is safe to place it at three, and it is a very profitable [ranchers] raising fine horses, feed nothing else during the winter.… It will not be long before Colorado will surpass Maine in aggressive product, if she does not already… This is a sample oasis of the many which are dotting all parts of Colorado as the result of irrigation.

Engraving of man digging an irrigation ditch published in the Fort Morgan Times August 30, 1889.

Some of the early farmers in the Fort Morgan area included William H. Jones, Frank Thompson, Oscar Leves, Michael Kleckner, George Edwards, James T. Devin, Lyman C. Baker, Abner S. Baker, G. S. Redfield, Abe Beidler, Josie Camp, George W. Warner, A. J. Wiley, James A. Conyers, and the Glassy brothers.

    

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Sources:

1. “An Arid Land Town,” Michigan Farmer, 21 Dec., 1889, p. 6.
2. Lyman C. Baker, Morgan County Colorado: What Ten Years of Irrigation has Done for a Part of the Colorado Desert (Denver, CO: W. F. Robinson & Co., 1895). Fort Morgan Times, Sept 3, 1886 p. 1
3. Photo Source: Dille, J. M. (1960). Irrigation in Morgan County. Fort Morgan: Farmers State Bank.