Colorado's Small Town Industrial Revolution: The Arkansas Valley and Western Slope

Lee Scamehorn is professor emeritus of history at the University of Colorado, Boulder. A veteran of World War II and the Korean conflict, he earned an undergraduate degree at Western Michigan University, and graduate degrees at the University of Illinois, Urbana, after which he taught at Boulder. He is the author of several books, including Pioneer Steelmaker in the West: The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1872-1903 (1976), Mill & Mine: The CF&I in the Twentieth Century (1992), Albert Eugene Reynolds: Colorado's Mining King (1995), High Altitude Energy: The History of Fossil Fuels in Colorado (2002), and Colorado's Small Town Industrial Revolution: Commercial Canning and Preserving in Northeastern Colorado (2011).



Colorado's Small Town Industrial Revolution is a study in three parts. Part one traced the origin, evolution, and demise of commercial food canning and preserving in northeastern Colorado. This volume, parts two and three, examines, respectively, the same topic in the lower Arkansas Valley, from Canon City to Holly, and the western slope, with emphasis on Delta and Mesa Counties. The industry had its origin as a means of utilizing fruit that was too ripe to ship to local and regional markets. Evaporators were adopted to dehydrate fruit for future consumption, and a hot-pack method preserving fruit for the same purpose. Dehydrators, in addition to canneries, were popular on the western slope, but were not employed in the Arkansas Valley.