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The Pueblo Chieftain Online Page 2 of 5 <br />services and construction of the ditch in 1888. But by July 1889 the chief engineer, <br />one Joseph Simons of New York, was castigated and then fired for buying shoddy <br />but overpriced materials, according to a history compiled by M.F. Hockemeyer in <br />the Pueblo Historical Society's Lore publication in June 1984. <br />The consulting engineer was J.S. Greene, who also was the state engineer at the <br />time, and he was credited with designing and building the redwood siphon under <br />the St. Charles River, which at 3,000 feet was said to be the longest siphon in the <br />United States. <br />In 1894, Colorado Coal & Iron went into receivership and a New York company <br />acquired all its water rights and irrigated land. Palmer's company was merged into <br />Colorado Fuel Co., giving rise to the Colorado Fuel & Iron Corp. <br />CF &I eventually built a different canal, the Minnequa Canal, to supply the steel <br />mills. The ditch company incorporated again, this time as the Bessemer Irrigating <br />Ditch Co., "stating as its purpose the acquisition of all rights, franchises, laterals <br />and other property lately owned by Bessemer Ditch Co., which had been <br />foreclosed by unnamed holders of the first mortgage bonds," according to <br />Hockemeyer's history. <br />Of the original board, only W. L. Graham and James B. Orman remained with the <br />company. Other new board members were O.M. Ladd, C.K. McHarg, Henry Page <br />and Robert Grant, who was vice president of a bank in Pueblo and owner of 2,700 <br />acres of land 14 miles east of Pueblo. <br />Colorado Coal & Iron's land holdings, said to extend 20 miles east of Pueblo, went <br />on the market and Irrigation Era magazine (quoted by Hockemeyer) said the <br />Bessemer Ditch was to become property of the farmers when all the water rights <br />were sold. <br />The ditch, when completed, stretched 43 miles on the south side of the Arkansas, <br />from its headgate west of Pueblo to the Huerfano River near Boone, where it <br />empties. <br />http://www.chieftain.com/print.php?article=/Metro/I 123480800/4 8/9/2005 <br />