{"id":6449,"date":"2017-06-21T16:44:01","date_gmt":"2017-06-21T20:44:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/?p=6449"},"modified":"2017-06-21T16:44:01","modified_gmt":"2017-06-21T20:44:01","slug":"a-pioneer-story-pioneer-days-part-7-farming-in-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/a-pioneer-story-pioneer-days-part-7-farming-in-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"A Pioneer Story: Pioneer Days. Part 7, Farming in Colorado"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By J. S. Fillmore (Library of Congress \u2013 Maps Division) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The house J.W. was building in the mining community of Spanish Bar was ready for occupancy come the Spring of 1861 and the family moved in.\u00a0 It was time to start mining, but since there were prospectors working sites next to those of J.W. he decided to wait a bit and see how they fared.\u00a0 He was likely glad he had waited since it turned out that the mines on Spanish Bar were only going to be rewarding to large companies that could work to the depth needed to get to the gold.\u00a0 As Laura put it: \u201cmen wandered off to other parts, \u2013 Georgetown or Central City, where mining had been carried on with success for a year or two.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Booth family stayed where they were for the summer and early fall, and then moved to Golden where they acquired a piece of land in the valley of Clear Creek, adjoining the town.\u00a0 They built a house and made ready to garden in the spring.\u00a0 (It seems as if it was a very good thing that J.W. could build houses \u2013 he built a number of them for the family!\u00a0 He was also able to construct tables, a bookcase, a cupboard, etc. with the left-over lumber.\u00a0 A neighbor was manufacturing chairs.)<\/p>\n

So by the 17th of November they had moved in and were beginning to feel at home.\u00a0 And then, as Laura described it, on the morning of the 17th \u201cthere came a rushing, mighty wind sweeping down the canyon and carrying everything movable before it, threatening the destruction of our home and even of our lives.\u201d\u00a0 Even though breakfast was in the works (bread in the oven and coffee steaming on the stove), Laura and the two children fled outside and were searching for a reasonable place to settle when J.W. rescued them by finding a place up canyon that would be sheltered enough.\u00a0 By nightfall the wind had not ceased and they were taken in for the night by a neighbor who had a more protected location.\u00a0 (I have looked for weather history to see if I could find any reports of this event, but found only one place online that mentioned it:\u00a0 http:\/\/gardnerhistory.com\/sesquicentennialstories\/golden\/timeline.htm<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Golden was a big gardening center, producing food for the mining centers such as Center City,\u00a0 and the Booths set to farming the next spring.\u00a0 For a year that went well.\u00a0 The next summer, in July, suddenly they were besieged by grasshoppers, millions of grasshoppers in the sky.\u00a0 They lit on J.W.\u2019s carefully planted cabbages and other vegetables and decimated them.\u00a0 The Booths were determined that the grasshoppers should not devour the fine field of tomatoes that were just in bloom.\u00a0 Their solution involved \u201cgetting a long rope and placing one of our two children at either end, who by running back and forth, kept the hoppers hopping so they had not time to gratify their appetites by eating our tomato vines. Thus becoming disheartened by our treatment of them they soon took leave without ceremony, greatly to the delight of the gardeners in the vicinity.\u00a0 The proceeds of the tomato patch rescued from the grasshoppers when marketed netted the snug little sum of $700.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two years of that sort of hardship and meager results led J.W. to think he would join a group going on West to check out mines lately discovered in Idaho, called the Bannock mines.\u00a0 He and Laura consulted and it was decided that she and the children would go back to Ohio for a year or two to visit the family there.\u00a0 Apparently there were so many people giving up and leaving the area that the Booths had to dispose of their household goods at a sacrifice since there was little market for such goods.\u00a0 J.W. was to stay in Golden for some time after the family left, wrapping up some business affairs before starting out for the mines in Idaho.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  The house J.W. was building in the mining community of Spanish Bar was ready for occupancy come the Spring of 1861 and the family moved in.\u00a0 It was time to start mining, but since there were prospectors working sites …<\/p>\n

A Pioneer Story: Pioneer Days. Part 7, Farming in Colorado<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[362,369,289],"class_list":["post-6449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","tag-booth-family","tag-colorado","tag-laura-denman-booth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6449"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6456,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6449\/revisions\/6456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}