Garfield County News | 1955-02-24 | Page 94 | Oldtimers Remember When Ditch Brought Wealth

Old! imers Remember When Ditch Brought Wealth The young, enthusiastic and highly ambitious people around Nucla and Naturlta, Colo, often become irked with the oldtlmers because they don't get all excited tbout uranium and the "thousands and millions" of dollars Involved. You can't blamo the oldsters, though. The reason most of them are there concerns a project in 1890, when money was money, involving $350,000. They'd rather talk about the Colorado Co-operative Ditch. Mill workers and carpenters from Pueblo, ranchers and a now-extinct socialistic society banded together to build almost completely by hand, a wooden flumed Irrigation ditch. They sweated and nearly starved for four years before the first water from the San Miguel reached the fields of the appropriately named First Park Mesa. Workers were paid by shares in the water rights. Since the ditch is still in operation and the plateau is blooming, shares are almost impossible to purchase today. But you couldn't eat shares during those lean construction days. They partially 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 was to avoid as much as possible expense of dynamiting solid rock. It was the days before fancy machinery. Men scaled the can- yon wall chipping holes with a hammer and drill steel, an extra hard chisel. As soon as the dynamite dust cleared teams of horses cleaned up the debris with slip-scrapers. Then carpenters moved In with wood hauled from the sawmill oa mulcback. "Horses, mules and men" take credit for this engineering feat conceived of long 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 the ditch, and their descendants are still here. They aren't ready to give uranium credit for a life they've worked hard to build.