PERMFILE56926

• Permit No: C1981038
• IBM Index Class Name: Permit File
• Doc Date: 12/11/2001
• Section_Exhibit Name: Volume 9B ARCHAEOLOGY APPENDIX PART 4
• Media Type: D
• Archive: No

be brought into production within two years, and a full crop could be
expected within three years. One individual near Paonia purportedly
harvested 945 bushels of potatoes from only one acre of land. Six of
these potatoes weighed a total of 60 lbs., and one became the world's
record potato at a weight of 11 lbs. This was placed on exhibit in the
Department of Agriculture in Washington (Rockwell 1975: 115-116, also
see Rockwell 1938j.
In the North Fork and Gunnison Valley the 1890's thus opened with an
expanding population, a substantial stock industry, and the promise
of large profits in fruit and vegetable production. The area was free
of agricultural pests compared to the east slope agricultural areas,
and the Paonia area received national recognition as a fruit growing
area at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, when six first place awards
were accorded North Fork fruit entries. Fruit production soon began
to rival the stock industry as the area's leading business, and by
the turn of the century orchards were being planted on every available
tract in the North Fork Valley. Hay fields were turned into orchards,
and the national fruit distribution system began to focus on the area.
Individual fruit ranchers could not manage more than about 10 acres
of orchard at this time, so the larger holdings which had been taken
up under the "Preemption Act" were broken up into small parcels
and sold to individual operators. The population of the Paonia area
thus swelled from only a very few hundred at the turn of the century to
an estimated 1,000 by about 1910 (Rockwell 1975: 116-119, and 1938;
Hammond 1977).
• The lure of high profits led more and more people into the fruit
industry, and more and more land was put into orchards. Stories of
spectacular wagon trains hauling fruit to the railhead in Delta,
some consisting of more than 60 wagons, are commonp]ace in the local
folklore today (Rockwell 1975:33-34). The fruit market had originally
been oriented towards the mining camps and towns in the Colorado
region. Although fruit was highly profitable prior to the arrival of
the railroad in Paonia in 1902 (Beebe 1962:374), it was the coming of
the railroad which was the beginning of the real fruit boom in the
North Fork Valley. The coming of the railroad opened a straight
channel to national markets, and the speculative market in fruit lands
expanded to become a proverbial "bubble." During this period it was
reported that one man sold 10 acres of peach orchard for $3,500 per
acre, and prices of $1,000 per acre were purportedly commonplace
(Rockwell 1475:119). As irrigation water became more available,
this boom spurred expansion to the dry mesas and benches of the south
slope of Grand Mesa and gave rise to towns such as Eckert and Cedaredge
which are almost exclusively orchard communities.
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