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<br /> <br />' By the early 1900s, cement, which was strong and reasonably <br />inexpensive, began to replace stone as a major building material. <br />Cement plants developed in the Study Area, notably the Ideal Cement <br />Company (later Ideal Basic) that purchased Dowe Flats in 1957. In <br />' 1969 Martin Marietta established a plant southeast of Lyons. <br />(Personal Communication, E. E. Drake, former Corporate Secretary, <br />Ideal Cement/Ideal Basic Industries). In 1984, this became the <br />' Southdown plant that will utilize the Dowe Flats quarries. <br />' 3.2.6 The Great Depression and World War II, 1929-1995 <br />The period 1929-1945 proved to be one of dramatic change for <br />' Boulder County and the entire state. After the euphoric period of <br />the 1910s and trauma of Ku Klux Klan control of Colorado politics <br />' during the early 1920s, residents hoped for a period of calm, and <br />as President Harding termed it, "a return to Normalcy." These <br />' hopes were shattered in 1929 when, after the New York stock market <br />crashed, Colorado and the rest of the nation began a slide into the <br />Great Depression. By 1933, when President Franklin Roosevelt took <br />office, promising the nation a "New Deal," many Boulder County <br />' residents found themselves on the verge of financial collapse <br />(Mehls, et al. 1985:68-69,72). To further exacerbate the already <br />' desperate situation, the Colorado plains entered another dry cycle <br />during the early 1930s. Rains did not fall, irrigation ditches and <br />reservoirs began to dry up, and crops wilted in the fields. As the <br />' dry cycle continued, wind erosion began to take its toll on the <br />heavily disturbed soil structures, and dust storms, not as severe <br />' as those farther south, became commonplace(Mehls 1984a: 155-157). <br />Franklin Roosevelt's first administration set out immediately <br />' to help the nation through federal economic intervention. For <br />Boulder County and the Dowe Flats area Roosevelt's farm programs <br />' had the greatest impact. Crop price stabilization through the <br />' 40 <br /> <br />