Sen. Daniel Webster didn’t buy Horace Greeley’s advice to “Go West, young man.” Webster saw the West as a wasteland.
“What do we want with this vast, worthless area,” Webster said in a Senate speech in the mid-1800s. “This region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts, of shifting sands and whirlwinds of dust, of cactus and prairie dogs? To what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts, or those endless mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their very base with eternal snow? What use have we for this country?”
Despite Webster’s warnings, Nathan Meeker led a new colony to the West, naming his new utopia after Horace. But the colony would not have survived and become Union Colony and then Greeley if it weren’t for agriculture.
Wheat and potatoes were big staples, but it was sugarbeets in the early days of the county, along with cattle, that really brought additional jobs and work. Even though the cattle industry didn’t thrive until the 1930s after Warren Monfort established his feedlots, the herds did make a difference long before then.
Beef and sugarbeets helped transform Webster’s “vast, worthless area” into a thriving colony and then, today, one of Colorado’s bigger civilized metropolises. Agriculture brought jobs, which brought people to the area, and that brought a need for housing, other businesses and more. That brought even more jobs. The circle continues. Last summer, Greeley hit the 100,000 mark, and many of the surrounding towns in Weld County have transformed themselves into small cities.
Source: www.greeleytribune.com