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43 <br /> Sugar factories to process the crop opened in Grand Junction, <br /> Windsor, Ft. Lupton and Longmont (Great Western Sugar Co. ) . The <br /> boom brought thousands of acres of land under cultivation. <br /> Another factor that helped revolutionize rural life at the time <br /> was the introduction of the gasoline tractor which allowed one <br /> person to till more land than had been possible previously. <br /> Despite these improvements after 1920, local farmers faced <br /> difficulties as crop prices fell when European farms returned to <br /> production after World War I . A decade later in 1929, the nation <br /> began a slide into the Great Depression. By 1937 and 1938, with <br /> the Great Depression and another drought at the same time many <br /> Boulder County farmers were just able to survive with massive aid <br /> from the federal government. World War II led to a complete <br /> reversal of that situation and attempts by the federal government <br /> since the war to stabilize the farm economy led to a somewhat <br /> easier life for the area' s farmers until recently(Mehls <br /> 1984b: XVI: 1-2; Athearn 1976: 253-278) . <br /> 2 .4 .5 Quarrying and Urban Growth and Development, 1870-1900 <br /> Denver and northeastern Colorado experienced rapid growth between <br /> 1870 and the mid 1890s. During the later part of the period real <br /> estate promoters in the city began to turn their attentions to <br /> the open farm and ranch lands that surrounded Denver as locales <br /> for urban development. In downtown Denver speculators such as <br /> Donald Fletcher and Samuel M. Perry began to buy properties and <br /> replaced older wood and brick buildings with ones made of stone. <br /> Their activity was part of an overall real estate boom in Denver <br /> that made many paper millionaires. Near the Study Area, land <br /> changed hands from an agriculture use to quarrying for building <br /> stone . Stone from the Lyons area quarries found its way into <br /> many Denver buildings and was shipped throughout the United <br /> States as other cities grew and matured during the late 19th <br /> century. Stone quarrying was popular in other areas of the state <br /> as well . Ft . Collins was estimated to have over a dozen <br /> operational stone quarries in the 1880s to provide building <br /> supplies. <br />