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i~ <br /> <br />farmers claimed and appropriated for agriculture South Boulder <br />Creek, Boulder Creek and others, each individual or group building <br />' a ditch. These efforts proved only the beginning of irrigation <br />along creeks and rivers of Boulder County. Future generations <br />' built ever larger and more elaborate systems to bring water to the <br />fields, including the Highland Ditch, Palmerton Ditch, Rough and <br />Ready Ditch, and the St. Vrain Supply Canal (East Denver Municipal <br />' Irrigation District map 1920; Classon Map 1904; Burney 1989:3). <br />3.2.3 Early Agricultural and Ranching Development, 1860-1895 <br />The lands of the Front Range and South Platte Valley north of <br />' Denver by 1870 had become one of the leading agricultural areas of <br />Colorado. After 1870 that development intensified for a number of <br />reasons including the rapid population growth of Denver, Boulder, <br />and the eastern two thirds of Colorado between 1870 and 1893. The <br />' availability of rail transportation after 1870, and the high food <br />prices being paid by merchants in Colorado's booming mining camps <br />' were significant factors in front range population growth. Those <br />conditions led more and more farmers and ranchers to settle in the <br />' region. A final factor, liberal federal land disposal laws, <br />encouraged settlement in Colorado and throughout the West(Athearn <br />' 1976:107-119). The Dowe Flats area participated in this <br />agricultural boom of the late nineteenth century with the majority <br />of the land within it passing from federal to private ownership <br />' between 1878 and 1900. More specifically, the earliest-attempts to <br />homestead land in the area came during the 1860s and 1870s. From <br />' the 1660s to the early 1880s a number of claims were entered on <br />lands in the Study Area but all were either revoked or canceled by <br />' the General Land Office. Successful settlement did not happen to <br />any large degree until the mid to late 1880s as dozens of cash <br /> <br /> <br />34 <br /> <br />