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<br />same, Le., the land 1inally became unproductive. In some cases the trouble has <br />so far developed as to cause the land to be entirely abandoned. IS <br /> <br />Between 1917 and 1921, the Reclamation Service constructed drainage ditches for the Grand <br />Valley Project that also benefitted lands within the Grand Valley Irrigation Company.16 In <br />1923 irrigators in the valley voted to levy an assessment on their lands to pay for the <br />installation of additional drainage ditches, The work was essentially completed in 1930. <br />Particularly devastating to the apple orchards in the valley early in the century was the <br />coddling moth. Eggs laid by the. moth turned into worms which then infested the apples, <br />Despite spraying lead arsenate on trees as many as 10 to 12 times a year in the mid-1920s, <br />worm damage continued. I , A federal requirement established at that time under the 1906 <br />Pure Food and Drug Act required removal of lead from all agricultural products before <br />shipping, a process that itself damaged the fruit and added considerable expense until <br />automated means were devised. II In 1927 one state official estimated that the orchard areas <br />in the valley had decreased by 40 percent since 1915, while the cost of spraying had increased <br />by 365 percent.19 <br />Peach orchards in the 1930s and 1940s were devastated by the budmite-transmitted <br />Peach Mosaic Virus. The only effective means of control is to remove and bum infected <br />trees. Between 1935 and 1949 over 125,000 peach trees were removed from orchard lands in <br />the Grand Valley.20 Nevertheless the Grand Valley remains an important producer of <br />peaches, with most of that production centered in the Palisade area. <br /> <br />" Dalton G. Miller, .The Seepage and Alkali Problem in the Grand Valley, Colorado, U.S. Department of <br />Agriculture, March 1916 at ]5. <br /> <br />16 Rail, part 2 at 44-45. <br /> <br />17 Merton N. Bergner, The Development of Fruita and the Lower Valley of the Colorado River from 1884 to <br />]937 (1937) (unpublished MS thesis, Univenityof Colorado, Boulder) at 33. <br /> <br />II Rait, part I at 45. <br /> <br />19 ]d. at 46. <br /> <br />20 Joyce Sexton, History of the Fruit Industry in Mesa County, Western Colorado Horticultural Society <br />Proceedings (]987) at 96. <br /> <br />9 <br />