A timeline of potato history in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. Historic potato photos and information on how potatoes made there way into the region.

1. Timeline of the Colorado and San
Luis Valley Potato Industry
Courtesy of the Monte Vista Historical Society, Sargent
Stanley Consolidated “Community Culture”, and the
Colorado Potato Administrative Committee

2. The potato is thought to have
been first domesticated by
the Andeans of South
America as early as 500 B.C.
The Inca grew thousands of
varieties of potatoes and held
the potato in high esteem.
When or where the potato
was introduced into the
continental United States is
not known.
Photo courtesy of the Monte Vista Historical Society
Potatoes were introduced
from Ireland into
Londonderry, New Hampshire
in 1719 by a group of
Presbyterian Irish. This is the
first introduction into New
England and possibly into the
United States.
Photo courtesy of Monte Vista Historical Society

3. The European and North
American adoption of the
potato set the template for
modern agriculture.
By the 1800’s, there were
diverse varieties of potatoes
and they were being planted
to provide a widespread,
inexpensive food source.
Courtesy of Virginia Simmons-Valley Courier Newspaper
Acceptance of potatoes as
food was very slow in North
America. However, total
production had reached
1,603,730 cwt in 1840 when
potatoes were first
mentioned in the U.S. Census.
Photo courtesy of Monte Vista Historical Society

4. In 1875 farmers began growing
potatoes in the San Luis Valley.
The potato is a principle crop for
Colorado. The San Luis Valley is a
primary producer for Colorado
and the Nation.
The history of potato varieties,
compiled from various sources,
opens with the Travis Rocky
Mountain Seedling grown near
Saguache, CO in 1875 and
continued to 1976 when the
newest variety being grown was
named the “Centennial”.
Courtesy of Sargent Stanley Consolidated “Community Culture”.
Transportation of potatoes has
changed much since the late
1800s when the potatoes were
hauled by wagon to mining camps.
Photo courtesy of Monte Vista Historical Society

5. In the 1880’s, a number of
farmers in the Del Norte and
Saguache area produced
potatoes to be hauled to the
mining city of Leadville by
wagon.
Courtesy of Sargent Stanley Consolidated “Community Culture”.
Hauling potatoes by wagonloads
sufficed locally, but the Denver
Rio Grande and, soon, the San
Luis Southern Railroad made it
possible to transport larger
quantities of potatoes and other
produce from the Valley. In the
early 1880s, railroads serviced
the area, sending shipments of
potatoes to farther markets.
Photo cou
rtesy of CP
AC
Courtesy of Virginia Simmons-Valley Courier Newspaper
C
tesy of CPA
Photo cour

6. The first reported rail shipment of potatoes from the Valley was by R.C.
Nesbit of Del Norte in 1882. Nesbit was probably the first farmer to grow
and ship potatoes in quantity.
Courtesy of Sargent Stanley Consolidated “Community Culture”.
Publicity which stimulated interest in potato growing in the Valley came
in 1889 when R.A. Chisholm won a national contest by securing the
highest yield of potatoes on a measured acre-847 ½ bushel. Because of
this, neighbors called the potato the “Barkley’s Prolific”. This name came
from Pteter Barkley who gave Chisholm the seed, which originated from
Canada, used for the prize-winning acre. This acre was located on a farm
north of Del Norte, CO.
Courtesy of Sargent Stanley Consolidated “Community Culture”.

7. In 1906, Barkley’s Prolific was renamed “Brown Beauty” by
Edward Newton of Monte Vista,
CO because of its smoothness and
brown skin color. One of the last
to raise these in the Valley was
Falk Brothers of Del Norte, CO.
Courtesy of Sargent Stanley Consolidated “Community Culture”.
Growing of a potato known as the
“Red McClure” was reported in
newspapers for a period between
the mid-1910’s through mid1920’s. Varieties for which prizes
were awarded in the 1916 potato
show included the Red McClure,
along with the Pearl, Brown
Beauty and Russet. In 1929, H.
Entz of Bowen won third in the
potato yield contest with 526
bushels per acre of Red McClures.
Courtesy of Sargent Stanley Consolidated “Community Culture”.
Photo courtesy of Monte Vista Historical Society
Photo courtesy of CPAC

8. L.M. Winsor, first Valley county
agent, reports that in the spring
of 1913 various farmers were
cooperating in tests on tuber
unit selection and cut versus
whole seed.
Courtesy of Sargent Stanley Consolidated “Community Culture”.
Photo courtesy of Monte Vista Historical Society
Loading and unloading produce
offered many jobs, and by the
1920s trucking was getting a
foothold and later would
become a major player.
Courtesy of Virginia Simmons-Valley Courier Newspaper
Courtesy of CPAC

9. CPAC
rtesy of
oto cou
Ph
Although warehouses often
were located on growers’ own
property, the Colorado Potato
Warehousing Corporation
provided facilities that were
larger. They were organized in
the early 1920s and they owned
or leased warehouses in Del
Norte, Center, Monte Vista,
Hooper, La Jara and elsewhere in
the state.
Courtesy of Alvin T. Seinel’s “History of Agriculture in Colorado”.
Courtes
y
of CPAC
During this same time period,
Colorado saw the maturation of
the potato industry, which at this
time already had a place in the
nation’s commodities markets.
Courtesy of Virginia Simmons-Valley Courier Newspaper

10. In the mid-1920s, the Colorado Potato Growers’ Exchange was a statewide
cooperative that began in the San Luis Valley and had more than 2,000
members statewide. The purpose of this organization was to buy and
distribute potatoes under contract. Two prominent names in the
organization were officers J.P. McKelvey of La Jara and M. I. Chenoweth of
Del Norte.
Courtesy of Virginia Simmons-Valley Courier Newspaper
Seed selection was a factor in enabling Ike Schutte to obtain a world’s
record yield of potatoes on a measured acre—1,145.17 bushels. This record
was set in 1929 on an acre planted at Schutte’s farm east of Soldiers Home
Lake.
Courtesy of Sargent Stanley Consolidated “Community Culture”.

11. Ringrot had been brought to the
San Luis Valley on some Katahdin
seed that was sent by the USDA
for testing. In the mid-1930’s,
ringrot had become such a
problem that Valley potatoes
were no longer being quoted on
the exchanges.
Courtesy of Sargent Stanley Consolidated “Community Culture”.
In the 1940s and 1950s,
improved potato crops, highintensity fertilizers and chemical
pesticides created the Green
Revolution, the explosion of
agricultural productivity that
transformed farms from Illinois
to Indonesia.
Photo courtesy of Monte Vista Historical Society
Courtesy of CPAC

12. The Colorado Potato
Administrative Committee was
founded in 1941 with the key
goal of organizing the then
more than 175 Colorado Potato
Growers and Colorado Potato
Shippers throughout Colorado
under a common purpose and
industry.
In 1959, an Australian company
had modified a basic approach
to produce a center pivot
system called the Grasslands. A
California pump manufacturer
Layne and Bowler brought the
system to America, put rubber
tires on it and renamed it the
Raincat.
Photo courtesy of CPAC
Photo courtesy of CPAC

13. In the 1960s, refrigerated semitrailers began taking 97 percent
of the San Luis Valley potato
crop to its ever-expanding
markets.
Photo courtesy of CPAC
The San Luis Valley Research
Station and Valley farmers
cooperated in testing new
potato varieties. One of the new
varieties with which the
Research Station had been
working on for several years
“earned its name”– and since it
received its diploma in 1976, it
had been named the
“Centennial”. With the
Centennial, the potato industry
in the San Luis Valley starts its
second century.
Courtesy of Sargent Stanley Consolidated “Community Culture”.
Photo courtesy of CPAC

14. The Raincat company that
brought center pivot systems
to the U.S. went through
several ownership changes,
eventually landing in Greeley,
Colorado. Raincat went out of
business in the early 1980s.
In October 1995, the potato
became the first vegetable to
be grown in space. NASA and
the University of Wisconsin,
Madison, created the
technology with the goal of
feeding astronauts on long
space voyages, and
eventually, feeding future
space colonies.
Photo courtesy of CPAC
Today, crops are irrigated by
some surface flooding but
mainly by center pivot
sprinklers.
Photo courtesy of CPAC

15. The modern center pivot
sprinkler, used by almost all
growers in the San Luis Valley,
allows the growers to control
the irrigation.
Water conservation is a big
priority for Colorado potato
growers. Efforts are being
made to research and
develop more efficient means
of irrigation such as drip
irrigation.
Photo courtesy of CPAC
Colorado potato growers are
proud innovative stewards of
our environment and natural
resources.
Photo courtesy of CPAC