Show Old timers remember when ditch brought wealth the young enthusiastic and highly ambitious if people around nucla eucla and Na naturita turita culo often become irked with the e old timers because they dont get all excited ab ut uranium and the shousan tho thousands usan ano end millions of dollars involved Y you 0 u cant blame the oldsters though th ough the reason most of them arc re there concerns a project in 1890 when money was money involving th rd rather talk about the co colorado lo 10 a aco operative cooperative co ditch mill workers worker and carpenters from pueblo ranchers and a now extinct socialistic society banded together to build almost completely by band hand a wooden umed irrigation dac ditch they sweated end prid nearly itar tar ved ed for four years before the first water from the san miguel reached the fields of the appropriately lately named first park mesa mes a W workers 0 akers were paid b by y shares 1 in th the e water rights since the ditch Is still in operation and the plateau is blooming shares are almost impossible to purchase today toda but you eat shares share during those lean construction days they part partially Lally solved the problem by turning out water wherever building was taking place and raised vegetables yet before it was over some ot the people had to seek work in lumber mills to support those on the job the main reason for the flumes blumes was to avoid as much as possible expense of dynamiting solid rock it was the days before fags fancy machinery men scaled the can yon yon wall chipping holes with a hammer a and d drill steel an extra hard chisel cl As soon as the dynamite dust cleared teams of 0 horses cleaned up the debris with slip scrapers T taci carpenters rp enters moved in with wood hauled from the saix sawmill mill on horses Ifor ses mules and men take credit for or this engineering eat conceived of 0 long lon before uranium and atomic bombs the horses and mules have just about turned it over to machinery but the men who worked on and own he the ditch and their descendants are still here they arent ready to give uranium credit for a life worked hard to build |