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involved in the "fruit boon" was made possible by an ever-increasing • irrigation system w}rich made many of the dry mesas and benches on the south side of the Grand Mesa arable. The period of Primary Settlen~nt following the Ute removal and earlier phase of intermittent white contact (Table l) witnessed the first stages of the Homesteading Tradition in the North Fork area (Baker 1977). Good lands on the valley floors seem to have been pretty well "taken up" by the early 1890'x. By the turn of the century, the extensive form of land exploitation which characterized cattle ranching of the early stages of the Homesteading Tradition, was being replaced by the intensive agricultural efforts atterx3iny growth of the fruit industry. The intensive land use attending the fruit industry and attesrlant urbanization in fruit centers, such as Paonia, relate to a second basic historical phase in the fYiro-F~merican Occ~rpational Pattern of the area (Baker 1977). Although the Homesteading Tradition continued in conjunction with the basic tradition of fruit farming, urbanization, and other patterns of intensive land use, such as cool mining, its pattern did change and one rtust view the actual F]uv-American oaupation as involving at least two basic historical, phases, namely: 1) primary settlettent with extensive land exploitation, and 2) urbanization and intensive development of the area. Both of these involve haresteading, although its pattern did change. This crude taxonomic structure (Table 3) was first worked out by this writer in connection with earlier cultural resource studies in the Paonia • area (Baker 1977). The taxonacy is still rough but is offered as a first step in applying sore sort of taxonrny as generally enQloyed in discussion of aboriginal occupation patterns. Urbaiuzaticn and Intensive land Exploitation In the first twv decades of white occupation in the North Fork Valley, people exploited the regional environment on an extensive basis, rather than an intensive one. 7n this capacity they utilized the native range and grasses in order to feed cattle and sheep. The activity depended on large tracts of land in the mountains while the valley floor was used mainly for harvesting native grasses for hay and production of some grains and fruits. The ranch homesteads were focused in the valley, and there appears to have been little occupation of the high country around the North Fork except occasional cow cartes and saw mills. This extensive exploitation was superseded by an intensive form of exploitation involving fruit ranching and croal mining. The Fruit Industry The first fruit trees were purportedly brought into the North Fork in the spring or 1882 via the Wade Ranch at Paonia. The first trees yrew well, and in the early 1880's several thousand root grafts were shipped in for nurseries of Sam Wade, Fi~os Hotchkiss, and 47. S. Coburn. By the mid-1880'x, the Paoiiia and Hotchkiss azea were beginning to show signs of • a prunising fruit industry. Ir, that year, the first fruit and vegetable show was sponsored by the Delta County Branch of the Stag Horticultural ,~