Long before the gold rush, Native American tribes tended small garden plots along Colorado’s riverbanks. The Upper Republican Tribes farmed along the South Platte River as early as 1100 through 1300, before disappearing from the area. Many Native American tribes planted sunflowers, tobacco, and corn, beans, and squash, crops known in some indigenous traditions as “the three sisters.” Each of the sisters helps the other grow. The squash leaves provide shade that helps retain moisture in the ground; the beans help fertilize the soil by storing nitrogen in their roots; and the corn helps the beans grow tall by lending its stalk for them to climb. In keeping with the seasons, indigenous people planted in the spring, hunted in the summer, and returned to harvest in the fall.

But in 1859, during the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush, tens of thousands of people, many of whom were farmers, came to Colorado. Although they sought their fortune in gold, few were successful. They abandoned their mining pursuits, settled on the land, and returned to farming. In the beginning, many of these farmers mimicked indigenous agricultural traditions and planted just a few acres of crops along streams. Then, in the 1860s, new irrigation methods were implemented, and farming on the Great Plains changed forever.

Irrigation ditches are man-made channels that drain water from the lowlands or divert water to other sources, like croplands. In the 1860s, Hollon Godfrey dug the first recorded irrigation ditch in what is now Logan County to water his garden on about a half acre of land. In April 1872, work began on the Fort Wicked Ditch, later named the South Platte Ditch, and by June of that year the ditch reached the Old Godfrey Ranch where small crops of potatoes, squash, corn, and other crops were planted. Settlers had to set aside work on the ditch in order to begin building shelters for winter, but in the years to come many more ditches were dug in the Colorado lowlands, and demand for modern methods of irrigation skyrocketed and the technology continued to evolve.

By 1909, construction had begun on the 80,000-acre-foot Point of Rocks reservoir, now known as the North Sterling Reservoir. This massive water storage project cost the county more than $2,000,000. A few years later, in 1912, the 32,000-acre-feet Prewitt Reservoir was completed, primarily for the cultivation of sugar beets. While croplands in northeastern Colorado began as small garden plots along the river, the landscape evolved as agricultural practices changed to accommodate larger-scale farming. And by 1927, Logan County had 60,115 acres of irrigated land--an unfathomable feat just one century prior.