WSP02973

• File Number: 8449
• Description: Platte River Projects
• State: CO
• Basin: South Platte
• Date: 11/1/1955
• Author: USDOI/BOR
• Title: Accomplishments of Irrigation, North Platte Project, Wyoming - Nebraska
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Publication

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Highly developed transportation facilities serve

the communities of the -valley-two railroads, two major air-

lines, and numerous trncking companies. The rural areas are

well served by rv.raJ. electric and telephone services. Natural

eas pipelines bring gas to the towns and to many of the farms.

A meat packing industry has developed from the

growth of livestock feeding on irrigated valley farms. In

a nvrmal year more than half a million head of livestock are

marketed off these farms, much of this prcduction being

processed in local plants. With the westvard movement of

the Nation's populat.ion, increasing proportions of the live-

stock production are going to western packing plants. Local

meat packing plants empley 200 persons and have a payroll of

o~r $800,000. The need for specialized farm equipment,

created by intensive cropping and by labor shortages, has

given rise to new local industries such as the Julius Siskc

and Company Steel Works and Foundry. Mr. Siskc, himself an

early farm settler in the valley, recognized the farmer's

acute need for special sugar beet machinery. Exercising his

natural bent for mechanics, he devised special tYJE s of

n:echanical harvesting equipment which were largely responsible

for converting the beet growing business fran the age of "stoop"

labor to modern mltural and harvesting methods. His company

now manufactures sugar beet harvesting equipment and other

specialized equipment used in the valley. Some of his

procr.lcts have had nation-wide distribution.

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