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' HISTORIC BACKGROUND Since the only cultural resource sites encountered during the Class II inventory were historic in nature it is fitting to provide a more detailed background context for the history and land ' ownership of the azea. The plateau lands of Delta and Gunnison Counties developed into stock raising azeas during the ' 1880s and 1890s. Even before the cattlemen occupied these lands the azea's potential for grazing was known. However, this meant little until the eazly 1880s when significant obstacles, especially the Ute Reservation, were removed. After the Meeker Massacre and removal of the ' Ute from most of the Western Slope, the lands around Delta, Paonia and other locales opened for settlement. The agricultural settlement pattern developed into a dichotomy with fazmers and orchardists occupying the river valleys and other lower elevation areas where water was available while ranchers utilized higher elevation areas that were more difficult to irrigate (O'Rourke 1980: 79, 86-8, 121-3). ' Water, or lack thereof, controlled cattle raising, as well as other activities in the Delta-Gunnison Counties region. Cattle, crops and orchards all needed water to survive and prosper. As more and more settlers arrived the pressures on the available water supply grew, leading to the ' appropriation and development of many springs. The presence of high country springs further defined the seasonal rotations of herds of livestock. By the 1890s the habit of range rotation from summer to winter ranges constituted a well developed cycle for all of Colorado's Western Slope and appropriation of the flow of springs continued into the twentieth century (Husband 1984: 10-20, and see Table 3 below specific to ' the study azea). The native grasses of the azea, and much of Colorado, provided high nutritional levels for cattle ' and other livestock. At first Anglo-americans, prejudiced by their heritage of lush green grasses of the East and Midwest, felt that the brown dry appearance of the western grasses, including ' blue gramma, meant that the grass would not be adequate for forage. Quite by accident settlers, some on their way to Oregon and others on Colorado's eastern plains, discovered that cattle could not only survive, but could gain weight and thrive, on a diet of the native forage (Steinel ' 1926: 109-110). From those pre-Civil Waz discoveries into the late 1860s and eazly 1870s both private and Federal explorers examined the Western Slope looking for travel routes and economic uses for the region. ' One of the most detailed inventories of west-central Colorado came after the Civil Waz as Americans re-focussed their attentions on the West. During the 1870s Ferdinand V. Hayden ' conducted a series of explorations of Colorado for the Federal government. Hayden's 1876 reports noted excellent pasturage on much of the Western Slope (Hayden 1878: 67-8 and 352-3). A handful of cattlemen, including Steamboat Springs founder James H. Crawford, already knew of the grazing potential of the region. They already encroached on the edges of the Ute Reservation, which covered approximately the western one-third of Colorado, for pasturage by r