Laserfiche WebLink
• consumer demands for certain chazacteristics in their beef. The stockmen replied by upgrading <br />their herds and, through their associations, enforcing range divisions to protect their new animals <br />(Goff and McCaffree 1967:101-10). <br />The tum of the century period also witnessed other changes in regional cattle Bowing. <br />Generally, ranches were consolidated into lazger holdings, some as a result of the Panic of 1893. <br />The ranchers survived, but did not prosper at the same rate as eazlier. The years from 1910 to <br />1920 witnessed a renewed prosperity for the cattle industry in westem Colorado. The rapidly <br />Bowing American urban population could not feed itself and demand for beef increased. The <br />economic dislocation in Europe of World Waz I (1914-1918) also agriculture expanded the <br />mazkets for meat of all varieties. Stockmen replied by increasing the sizes of their herds and <br />over-expanding that would prove detrimental after the wartime emergency had passed. By the <br />end of the waz it can be azgued that the cattleman's frontier had passed (Steinel 1926:165). <br />The decade of the 1920s witnessed something of a return 20 the static period before World War I. <br />Mazket pressures and anover-supply kept beef prices stable to slightly lower through the decade. <br />However, by the end of the 1920s, as the United States slipped into the Great Depression, the <br />Western Slope's stock raisers found themselves faced with severely depressed markets. Many <br />had borrowed heavily and their dept structure forced many of them out of business. For the <br />azea's ranchers, the 1930s initially held little hope of improvement. However, the election of <br />Franklin D. Roosevelt and the sweeping changes his ascendancy to the Presidency led to better <br />• times for ranchers and farmers all over Colorado. Among the changes, Congess established a <br />system of Federal credit for agriculturalists. Also, congess regularized grazing on the remaining <br />]ands of the Public Domain through the Taylor Grazing Act and U.S. Grazing Service, <br />predecessor to the Bureau of Land Management. <br />Since the 1930s, the Western Slope's ranchers have faced a more or less continuous cycle of <br />peaks and valleys in livestock prices and demand. This has resulted in the continued <br />consolidation of smaller ranches into larger units. Further pressures, such as Bowing demands <br />on local water, continue to mark the rancher's life in western Colorado. <br />PREVIOUS WORK IN THE AREA <br />File Search Methods <br />A literature search for the Project Area was conducted at the Colorado Historical Society's <br />(CHS) Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation {OAHP) on May 21, 2001 by Thomas J. <br />Lennon. Amore thorough records seazch regazding the Fire Mountain Canal {SGN3711.1) and <br />the D&RGW Railroad (SGN1661.2) was conducted by Joel Tyberg on June 18, 2001. No <br />cultural resources had been previously recorded within the Project Area. <br />Within a mile surrounding the azea, six cultural resource inventories have been previously <br />conducted. To the southwest, WCRM conducted a Class II survey of the Lone Pine Gulch Area <br />of the West Elk Mine (Lennon and Mehls 1994). One historic homestead and one historic <br />isolated find were recorded. Southeast of Somerset two projects have been conducted, one by <br />13 <br />