Colorado Cooperative Company Beginnings

The Colorado Cooperative Company. was organized in 1893 in Denver, Colorado. The Company was incorporated February 16, 1894. One thousand shares of stock were issued. The par value was $100 per share.

Finding a suitable location was the next problem, since the site would have to contain enough land to support a good-sized community; land that could be irrigated. In the summer of 1894 B.L. Smith, one of the organizers, started out with a team and wagon in search of a desirable location. He scouted the state and ended up in Placerville where early settlers directed him to Tabeguache Park. Tabeguache is an Indian word meaning sunny-side of the hill.

Tabeguache Park was actually a mesa containing several thousand acres of sagebrush covered land sloping gently to the south. Lying several hundred feet above the San Miguel River, it overlooked the entire San Miguel Basin. When a preliminary survey showed that it could be irrigated with water taken from thirteen miles upstream, the members were unanimous in their decision to make this their project.

The Company was publicized through it own newspaper, The Altrurian. The paper was first published in Denver and the company immediately began soliciting members for the colony. Later the paper was published at Pinon.

In 1894 the Colorado Cooperative families packed their belongings and headed over the Rockies to build the ditch.

In the fall of 1894 the first camp was established in Naturita, a small settlement on the San Miguel River, at the foot of the Park. Naturita Camp was located near John Ream’s present residence.

Eighty acres was leased from Rockwell Blake. Crops were planted and a small ditch was built from Naturita Creek to irrigate the land. It was completed in July, just in time to save the crops.

That first year the colonists were so busy raising food and building a ditch from Naturita Creek that it was September before the course of the big ditch was surveyed.

Necessary roads had to be built, then a sawmill was brought in and set up in the timber near Ute. With all of this preliminary work to be done, it was February, 1896 before any ground was broken and the first dirt was removed from the ditch.