Taming the Great American Desert (Development on the Front Range, Part II)

Continued from: "Wedding Bells and Wagon Wheels"

The arid, sweeping prairie at the foot of the Rocky Mountains was a challenge to early settlers in Colorado. While most people were drawn to the rugged mountains, captivated by the promise of gold, they brought limited resources. The mountains, while rich in mineral, offered a poor variety of dietary selections. Being raised on home-baked breads, it was easy to grow tired of meals of buffalo steaks and berries. The Front Range needed agriculture.

William N. Byers, who founded the Rocky Mountain News, recognized the need for agriculture. He used his newspaper to encourage others:

He offered free seeds to anyone stopping by his office, and publicized agricultural experiments. In the first issue of the News, Byers warned in his editorial, "Farming vs. Gold Digging" that farmers "taken off with the Cherry Creek yellow fever" would do better "to raise stock and produce for the mines." All Colorado needed to make the Great American Desert bloom, Byers asserted, were a few good farmers and a little water. Of course, cynics scoffed, a few good people and a little water could turn hell into heaven. (Tom Noel in Mile High City)

Unfortunately, Byers had more success with running newspapers than taming the "Great American Desert." In 1964, his office was destroyed, and Byers himself nearly killed. A large storm hit, flooding the streets of Denver. The Rocky Mountain News press building had been built on stilts in the middle of Cherry Creek-it didn't last long.

Thankfully, others had already been looking at the problem. To the northwest of Denver, George and Sarah Church were facing the challenges of transforming their newly purchased land. While Sarah tackled the underappreciated tasks of motherhood and cleaning the stage stop bunkhouse, George assessed the land. The soils in the area bore little resemblance to the fertile lands back in Iowa; he had to begin by throwing convention out the window.

The processes that gave Church Ranch its beauty-the thick cottonwood groves, along meandering streams, the majestic Flatirons rising to the west-are the same that made traditional agricultural approaches impossible. The ranch is located near the convergence of Walnut and Big Dry Creeks. Snowmelt passes through Coal Creek canyon before branching out across a wide alluvial fan, called Rocky Flats. These branches include Coal Creek, Walnut Creek, Big Dry Creek, Woman Creek, and others.

The Rocky Flats alluvium, which covers the area, consists of sediment washed down the canyon during the early Pleistocene. From cobblestones to sand grains, bits of stone were worked loose from various rock formations in the canyon. Schist, gneiss, and quartzite-stone which held fast for billions of years-along with sandstone beds, once muddy flats where dinosaurs wandered, became reduced to pebbles and dust by erosion. Looking at the Flatirons, pictured below, large notches have been cut out of the Jurassic sandstone, by Coal Creek on the left, and Boulder Creek on the right. The hill in the foreground (part of the Rocky Flats alluvium) contains many clumps of rock, which were once a part of the Flatirons:

(For more information about the geologic history of this area, visit the visual geologic timeline provided by the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Ancient Denvers, or take a look at this geologic map.)

The amount of water leaving the Rocky Flats alluvial fan was fairly sparse, even during the peak runoff in the spring. Big Dry Creek, the largest stream fed by the fan, was aptly named. Farming was impossible on the sandy, rocky alluvium. To the east, as the fan thins, fertile soil lay exposed-but without water to feed it. Native plants like the yucca thrived in the arid climate, but introduced plants, such as wheat, needed assistance.

The first solution to the water problem was to dig a well. The original well which stood in front of Church's Crossing (see the upper right image in the diagram below) still stands today, near Walnut Creek and Old Wadsworth. However, one well was not enough to tame the arid landscape. George Henry Church knew he'd need more water. Joining the effort to extend the ditches originally dug for placer mining along Clear Creek, he began building the Church Canal. This canal wound around the base of North Table Mountain in Golden, around the skirt of the Rocky Flats alluvial fan, where it fed into Walnut Creek. He dug another canal directly from the mouth of Coal Creek Canyon, and used it to fill the first irrigation reservoir in the state, now known as Upper Church Lake.

The Church family took other pioneering measures to conserve water. George quickly realized the value in farming "winter wheat." This involved rotating the fields, allowing the land to lie fallow for a year, collecting spare moisture. Seeds would be planted in the fall, allowed to soak up snowmelt over the winter, and then encouraged to sprout in the spring, when runoff was high. The Church family was the first to successfully harvest a crop of winter wheat in Colorado in 1872, inspiring others to take up the practice.

Wheat wasn't the only thing around thirsting for water-cattle need to drink, as well. The Churches selected their breeds carefully, importing the first herd of Hereford cattle to the state. The Herefords, known for their resilience in cooler, arid climates, arrived in the West on a train to Cheyenne, Wyoming. From there, in 1869, George drove them south to his ranch. In order to conserve the fields near the ranch, he would drive the cattle to Middle Park (a fertile valley to the west of the Divide) where they would graze over the summer. In the fall, the cattle were led back over Rollins pass, and back down to the Front Range. There, the cattle grazed across the Rocky Flats alluvial fan, where native grasses grew, even where wheat could not.

Eventually, other people caught on to the idea of agriculture at the foot of the Rockies. Land and water rights across the area were acquired and exchanged. By 1890, the Church's prizes water supplies were no longer enough to meet their needs. George and his son John (who, by then was in his late 20s) decided to take on the greatest challenge yet-bringing in water from the moisture-rich Western Slope. They chose to divert the flow of two creeks on the far side of the slope, First Creek and Second Creek, into an aqueduct. This aqueduct carried the water to a tunnel under Berthoud Pass. The precious water spilled out the other side, having traversed the continental divide, into Clear Creek below. This boosted the flow of the creek, where more water could be diverted into the Church Canal. So, as Church Ranch passed into the 20th century, it flourished on water once destined for the other side of the continent.

Church Ranch in the late 1800s

Church Ranch today

Next, "Seasons Change."

Notes: Information and images of George Henry Church and historical Church Ranch via Charles Church McKay and Kandi McKay. Images of cattle grazing on the plains and Middle Park, both by Louis Charl McClure, 17th Street in Denver by Harry H. Buckwalter, and mountain aqueduct by Bob Zellers (embedded in diagram,) and the 1864 flood on Cherry Creek by George D. Wakely via the Western History Photos collection at the Denver Public Library. All other images are property of the author.