Laserfiche WebLink
-19- <br />_~ 160,00 acres of land along Fortification Creek, A reservior <br />was to be built and the land irrigated. Several miles of ditch <br />40 <br />were built but nothing came of the project. <br />The last major homestead effort was that of the Great <br />Divide Homestead Colony \umber One. It Boas promoted by Volney <br />T. Hoggatt, a friend of Denver Post publisher'Frederick G. <br />Bonfils. Hoggatt became the editor of a magazine called Great <br />Divide which touted the virtues of dry land farming. Eased on <br />this effort, Hoggatt secured, as public land officer for the <br />state, some 275,000 acres of land north of Craig. He than sold <br />homesteads to settlers. By 1916, a trainload of immigrants had <br />arrived at Craig and were settled around the town of Great Divide. <br />Craig profited from a mild. boom but the Great Divide experiment <br />was so marginal that many settlers came and just as rapidly <br />left. The Great Divide colony lasted into the 193G's iahen the <br />Depression wiped out what few farmers were left. Piuch of the <br />land was repurchased by the United States government under the <br />grovisions of the 1937 Bank:~ead-Jones Repurchase .act. Presently, <br />Great Divide is virtually abandoned while the land around it <br />has been consolidated into large acreages and massive (8,000 <br />41 <br />plus acres) dry land wheat farming attempts are being made. <br />During the 1960's, a boom of sorts took place. This way <br />the uranium mining boom. After the discovery of atomic power, <br />it was assumed that uranium would be a major mineral for <br />nuclear production. Hundreds of prospectors rushed into the <br />area and tried to mine the mineral on a large scale. By 1913, <br />the boom .was over and very few made much in it. Craig, once <br />