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90 <br /> Colorado and throughout the West (Athearn 1976: 107-119) . The Dowe <br /> Flats area participated in this agricultural boom of the late <br /> nineteenth century with the majority of the land within it <br /> passing from federal to private ownership between 1878 and 1900. <br /> More specifically, the earliest attempts to homestead land in the <br /> area came during the 1860s and 1870s. From the 1860s to the <br /> early 1880s a number of claims were entered on lands in the Study <br /> Area but all were either revoked or canceled by the General Land <br /> Office. Successful settlement did not happen to any large degree <br /> until the mid to late 1860s as dozens of cash entry, timber <br /> culture, homestead and railroad patents were issued between 1885 <br /> and the end of 1900(GLO records v.d. ) . <br /> The foregoing brief review of land patenting activity tends to <br /> reinforce previously accepted interpretations of settlement in <br /> the region. The first users of the lands in the Study Area were <br /> stock raisers who took advantage of the public domain for free <br /> grazing lands. They used laws such as the Timber Culture act to <br /> claim parcels of land and after a period of time, often once the <br /> available forage had been depleted, allowed the claim to revert <br /> back to the government. The boom days of open range ranching in <br /> northeastern Colorado lasted from the late 1860s until <br /> approximately 1888 when severe winters, overgrazing and increased <br /> pressures from farmers forced an end to the system and _ <br /> establishment of fenced, more closely managed ranches (Peake <br /> 1937: 8-27, 271) . The stockmen, once the range had been depleted, <br /> moved elsewhere and in their wake came the farmers. The large <br /> number of patents during the period 1985-1900 coincides with the <br /> first large dryland farming boom to hit eastern Colorado(GLO <br /> Records v.d. ) . Spurred by railroad, land company, and even <br /> government literature that told of the changes being wrought in <br /> the climate, the retreat of the Great American Desert under the <br /> plowshare, and easy 10-year credit terms from railroads, hundreds <br /> of Midwestern farmers moved to the high plains of Colorado, <br /> Nebraska and Kansas. Upon arrival in or near the Study Area <br /> would-be settlers found booming markets for their produce, open <br /> land to be had for minimal prices and enough moisture to grow <br /> crops of corn, wheat and other grains much as they had in Iowa or <br />