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Other significant commercial producers in the Valley were the Oliver and Bowie mines. Sometime prior to 1902 the Juanita Coal and Coke Company opened a mine a few miles below the Somerset. After the arrival of the railroad, one Alexander Bowie gained control of this company, and he built a company town and sub- stantially improved the mine. The name of the mine became Bowie, and it operated under the management of the Bowie family until recent decades (Rockwell 1975: 164-165). In addition to large commercial operations such as the Somerset, Oliver, and Bowie mines, many other small mines were opened in the North fork. In the Paonia area, names .such as the Black Diamond, Farmers' Cooperative, Converse, Cowan, and Conine are part of the local mining history, but historical detail is obscure for most of these. Most of these were small locally-owned operations called "wagon mines." Simply stated, they were what one informant describes as "gopher holes" of various sizes, usually worked by one family or a very small paid crew. In the main, the coal from the wagon mines was produced solely for the local domestic market with little emphasis on commercial production. Today one frequently encounters the evidence for such small workings among the cliffs and gulches on the north side of the North Fork (Baker 1977; Rockwell 1975;165 and Hammond 1977). As previously mentioned, primary settlement in the North Fork area • hinged on stock raising and focused in the fertile valley floor where homesteads, generally acquired under the Preemption Act of 1842 (Hammond 1977 and Dick 1971:68), served as the nuclei of ranching operations. The homesteads were usually 160 acres as allowed by that act. Rangelands for livestock were drawn from the extensive foothill and mountain pasturage then still in the public domain. About 1900 much of the mountain land of Colorado was absorbed into the National Forest system, and ranchers were thereafter required to seek permits to utilize these high vast rangelands. The ~oo~d public lands which were not placed in National Forests were eventually home- steaded. Lands which were not so taken up eventually fell under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management. Once the fertile North Fork Valley had been taken up by homesteads and these in turn sold into smaller units for orchards, the only remaining public lands suitable for homesteading were in the surrounding mountains. As in other areas of Colorado, there was a rush to homestead these lands which, due to their harsher climate and scarce arable ground, were less desirable than the lower valleys (see Crowley 1975). Around Paonia the small parks of tributaries, such as Stevens Gulch and Terror Creek, were subjected to a homesteading rush after WWI (U.S. Land Office-Patent Records, Morrell 1977 and Hammond 1977). As noted from other study areas in western Colorado, an impetus for accelerated homesteading in this period was rooted in the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 and the Stock-Raising Homestead Act of 1916 • (Baker 1976:275 and Morris 1970:465). Although there are indications 13