For its first century, Jefferson County’s principal industry was agriculture. Small farms and orchards filled the creek beds and irrigated areas, and livestock grazed the higher ground.
83 Years Ago
The January 7, 1943 Colorado Transcript announced that January 12th would be “Farm Mobilization Day.” This was the federal government’s way of acknowledging the crucial role that food played in America’s war effort. They hoped to direct America’s six million farms in growing the crops most necessary for feeding America’s troops, allies, and civilian population.
The government was offering “credit, expert technical advice on getting the most from the soil, loans on crops which must be stored before they are needed, price supports for certain commodities, insurance against losses from unavoidable hazards, and assistance in obtaining labor, machinery, gas and tires, and other scarce essentials.”
The farm banner will be unfurled on Mobilization day, will be, in the President’s words, “a symbol of a free America; a symbol of the might and productivity of our nation; and a symbol of our unalterable determination to put into full use our agricultural resources, as well as our other resources, in the achievement of complete victory.”
