The little town of Meeker marks the site of the Meeker massacre. Here is a little village of a thousand inhabitants, located on White River, among the most beautiful of the mountain ranges,—the location being very much like that of Florence, in Italy,—which is the centre of a very rich agricultural and grazing region. Meeker is now forty-five miles from a railroad, the nearest station being Rifle, on the Denver and Rio Grande, a few miles from Glenwood Springs; but the Moffet road brings to it railroad connection with Denver. There is an extensive stage line of over one hundred miles, starting from Rifle and going on through Meeker up into the mountains, where the hunting attracts a great number of travellers, and especially many Englishmen. It is in this region that President Roosevelt's happy hunting-grounds lie, and he is a familiar and favorite figure in Meeker.
There is a little gray-stone Episcopal church among other churches that adorn this town, which has laid out a handsome park and which has the perpetual adornment of the beautiful river that flows through it. The mountains about supply streams that make irrigation easy, and the great fields of wheat, potatoes, and alfalfa are fertile and prosperous. Irrigation makes it everywhere possible to control the climatic conditions.
Meeker is the county seat of Rio Blanco County, in which uranium has been discovered in two different places; and two oil wells, each at a cost of four thousand dollars, a creamery, costing nearly six thousand dollars, and water-works at a cost of sixty thousand dollars, have been established within the past two years. Fifteen reservoirs and eighty miles of irrigation ditches were constructed in 1905, and in that year was harvested, in this county, a quarter of a million bushels of wheat, oats, and rye.
The basis on which Greeley was founded is thus outlined in the official documents drawn up by Nathan Cook Meeker:
"I propose to unite with proper persons in the establishment of a Union colony in Colorado territory. A location which I have seen is well watered with streams and springs; there are beautiful pine groves, the soil is rich, the climate healthful, grass will keep stock the year round, coal and stone are plentiful, and a well-travelled road runs through the property."
Mr. Meeker proceeded to note the cost of the land,—eighteen dollars for every one hundred and sixty acres,—and he especially called attention—for he had the poet's eye—to the grandeur of the Rocky Mountain scenery, and he added:
"The persons with whom I would be willing to associate must be temperance men and ambitious to establish good society, and among as many as fifty, ten should have as much as ten thousand dollars each, or twenty should have five thousand dollars each, while others may have from two hundred dollars to one thousand dollars and upward. For many to go so far without means could only result in disaster."
The practical wisdom of this clause will be appreciated. The true idealist is the most practical and wisest of counsellors. It is only false idealism that leads to destruction. Mr. Meeker's idea was to make the settlement a village, with ample building lots, and then to apportion to each family from forty to one hundred and sixty acres outside for agriculture.
On such a basis as this the Union Colony of Greeley was founded. A constitution was adopted that is a model of the condensation of the duties of good citizenship. Industry, temperance, education, and religion were the pillars on which the superstructure was raised. It is little wonder that the social quality of Greeley to-day—thirty-six years after its inauguration as a community—is of the highest type and exceptional among all the cities of the United States.
Irrigation was the first necessity. A canal thirty miles long was dug, costing sixty thousand dollars. The Cache la Poudre was first examined and then tapped to furnish water. The elevation of the surrounding high bluffs secured the needed descent for the flow of water. The life began.