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Early Agricultural And Ranching Development, 1860-1895 <br />• <br />The lands of the St. vrain valley north of Denver had, by <br />1870, already become one of the leading agricultural areas of early <br />Colorado. However, after 1870 that development intensified for a <br />number of reasons including the rapid 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 />Those conditions led more and more farmers and ranchers to settle <br />in the region. A final factor, liberal federal land disposal laws, <br />encouraged settlement in Colorado and throughout the West(Athearn <br />1976:107-119). The Study Area itself participated in this <br />agricultural boom of the late nineteenth century with the vast <br />majority of the land within it passing from federal to private <br />ownership between 1870 and 1900. More specifically, the earliest <br />attempts to homestead land is the general area came during the <br />1860s but most failed by the end of the decade. Successful <br />• settlement did not happen to any large degree until the mid to late <br />1870s as dozens of cash entry, timber culture and homestead patents <br />were issued between 1885 and the end of 1900(GLO records v.d.). <br />Much of this reflects spin-off settlement from the Longmont Colony <br />and other group efforts of patenting of quarry sites in the Lyons <br />area. <br />The foregoing brief review of land title activity tends to <br />reinforce previously accepted interpretations of settlement in the <br />region. The first users of the lands in the study Area were stock <br />raisers who took advantage of the public domain for free grazing i <br />lands. They used laws such as the Timber Culture act to claim <br />parcels of land and after a period of time, often once the <br />available forage had been depleted, allowed the claim to revert <br />back to the government. The boom days of open range ranching in <br />northeastern Colorado lasted from the late 186os until <br />approximately 1888 when severe winters, overgrazing and increased <br />pressures from farmers forced an end to the system and <br />• 20 <br />