Article No. 2: of the BCHA History Series “Galloping Toward 50!”
History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.
John F. Kennedy
History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.
John F. KennedyBy Clare Tone
Before there was Boulder County Horse Association (BCHA), before there was Boulder County and even before there was a state called Colorado or a place called Colorado Territory, there was this distinct place in the world. A place with geologic, natural and cultural heritage enough to make the mind spin. This heritage sets the stage for all that has and will happen since. To trace the arc of history here is to look through a lens at the interconnected history of horses and agriculture in order to better understand our place now and to create a future worthy of the inheritance of all that has come before.
Before white settlers, farmers, and gold miners arrived to create Colorado Territory there were centuries of habitation in this area by native peoples. By the middle of the 1500s the Rocky Mountains of today’s Colorado had already been occupied by Ute peoples for nearly a century. Several distinct Ute bands roamed the Front Range in what would become Boulder County. Following the pattern of the seasons, summer was spent at higher elevations while autumn and winter encouraged migration to lower altitudes, following game to those milder climates. After the 1640s when the Utes obtained Spanish horses, the river valleys became important wintering grounds. By the early 1800s the Arapaho peoples arrived, having been pushed from the upper Midwest by the Lakota. As explained in Colorado Encyclopedia:
Unlike the Ute, who rarely left their mountain homeland, the Arapaho ranged across all three ecological zones in present-day Boulder County. In the spring and early summer, they hunted buffalo on the plains; in late summer, they followed the herds into cooler, higher elevations, camping and hunting as far as the Continental Divide; in winter, they returned to the natural shelter of the trough along the foothills, where milder weather prevailed.
This ‘trough along the foothills’ also appealed to white settlers coming from the east. Settlers in the form of gold rushers, farmers and others pursuing their frontier dreams. In 1851 the Treaty of Fort Laramie was signed preserving Arapaho rights to the Boulder Creek area. But in the autumn of 1858 the Arapaho leader Niwot came upon gold prospectors camped near the mouth of Boulder Creek. Niwot, an accomplished English speaker, asked the prospectors to leave which they promised to do come spring. But by January 1859 the prospectors had found gold and news of the discovery spread. By February 1859 the city of Boulder was platted along a two mile stretch near the mouth of Boulder Creek. When Colorado Territory was established in 1861 Boulder County became one of its original seventeen counties. Later that same year, Arapaho leaders including Niwot were forced to negotiate the Fort Wise Treaty, surrendering the Front Range and carving out a small reservation in Southeast Colorado but Niwot never signed this treaty.
Although usually relegated to side notes and forlorn photographs, horses are an undeniably integral part of the founding and development of Boulder County and its various towns and outposts. In 1862, the year after Colorado Territory was organized, the Holladay Overland Stage Company established a key route from Laramie Wyoming to Denver, passing through settlements along the St. Vrain River and establishing mail delivery, a key milestone in the progression of an ‘outpost’ to a ‘town’. Historians note that it was the St. Vrain Valley’s agricultural potential that likely opened the door to the Chicago group that founded Longmont in 1871. In their constitution, the Chicago-Colorado Colony states:
“Agriculture is the basis of wealth, of power, of morality. It is the conservative element of all national and political and social growth; it steadies, preserves, purifies and elevates.”
In 1862 the very first county road—now Pearl Street—was developed to support transport of agricultural goods connecting Boulder to Valmont which was the area’s major agricultural center at the time. Getting goods and agricultural products up to the miners in the mountains was a whole different challenge. In the early 1860s the federal government financed a military road up Sunshine Canyon, but otherwise roads were few and far between.
In June of 1869 The Boulder County Agricultural Society was organized. With a loan from a benevolent land owner the society purchased 40 acres and hosted the very first Boulder County fair that same year.
It wasn’t until 1900 that early versions of the automobile came along, but it would be some time later that farmers replaced literal horsepower with the combustion engine. The first automobile advertisement appeared in the Denver Post on May 1st, 1900. It advertised the Locomobile for $750: “The famous steam wagon. Cheap to buy. Cheap to run. Any person can run it from one to 40 miles per hour.’
Today, Boulder County encompasses 749 square miles and straddles three unique geographic zones: Mountains, plains and riparian. Hay and other forage crops are noted to be Boulder County’s primary agricultural product. In 2012 hay and forage crops covered 23,397 acres, while the next-most plentiful crop, wheat, covered only 1,764.
In recent decades development pressure and soaring land prices throughout Boulder County have been unrelenting but trends in equine-related indicators have not always moved in lockstep. Every five years the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) conducts the Census of Agriculture. The information gathered relies heavily on voluntary feedback from county farmers and ranchers of a specific size and shouldn’t be interpreted as absolutes but can give a meaningful snapshot of trends. According to the NASS, in the almost 50 years between 1969-2017 Boulder County saw more than a 50% increase in the number of horses and ponies residing in the county and a 40% increase in the number of ‘horse operations’. In that span of years, according to the NASS, total acreage of hay harvested in Boulder County has remained relatively constant with an uptick in hay production noted between 2002-2012 which has all but been erased. So while we have more equine mouths to feed in the county, we don’t have more locally grown hay to feed them. But compared to our neighbors to the north and south our consistent hay production numbers stand out as unique. According to the NASS, both Larimer and Jefferson County have seen declining acres in hay production since 1969 with Jefferson County experiencing more than a 50% decline over the past 50 years.
What could be driving the different hay production trends among these three neighboring northern Colorado Counties? In 2006 Boulder County Land Use and Boulder County Parks and Open Space Department published a booklet titled ‘Boulder County’s Agricultural Heritage’ outlining three distinct historic periods of agricultural development in Boulder County between 1897-1967. The author points out that the last historic period of agriculture in Boulder County, ending in 1967, was marked by the introduction of several initiatives aimed at limiting growth in the county which then led to protection of open space. 1967 marks the year Boulder County Commissioners appointed the first Parks and Open Space Advisory Committee (POSAC) and the City of Boulder initiated their Open Space program. According to ‘Boulder County’s Agricultural Heritage’:
… 1967 may be viewed as a turning point in the opinions of Boulder County citizens. Through the programs established this year, several thousand acres of agricultural properties in the county would later be protected through the purchase and lease of farm and ranch lands. These purchases have also changed farm and ranching operations in Boulder County, though, as family-owned farms continue to decrease in numbers…Nonetheless, farmers and ranchers are no longer the only segment of the population worried about the future of agriculture in Boulder County; it remains a matter of concern for all citizens.
As readers of this column well know, formation of the Boulder County Horsemen’s Association followed soon after, in 1971, with a main focus on advocacy and preservation of equestrian access to open space in Boulder County. What came next for BCHA among other challenges and accomplishments is a long engagement with the budding POSAC and City of Boulder Open Space program. In next month’s article, we’ll explore the first decade of life for the fledgling BCHA which came into existence during the turbulent and idealistic times of 1970’s Boulder County.
REFERENCES
Encyclopedia Staff. “Boulder County.“ Colorado Encyclopedia.” Accessed 21 July 2020.
USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. Accessed 19 July 2020.
Deon Wolfenbarger. Boulder County Parks & Open Space Department and Boulder County Land Use Department. “Boulder County’s Agricultural Heritage.” March 10, 2006
The State Historical Society of Colorado. “The Coming Of The Automobile and Improved Roads To Colorado” The Colorado Magazine. Vol VIII No 1. Jan 1931
