Colorado: A History of the Centennial State, Fifth Edition

16. The Great Depression

283 16 In 1930 most Coloradans—or at least most of the official spokespersons—would have denied that their state was suffering from the Great Depression. “Look at the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News,” they might have told a visitor, “as fat as ever with advertising. Does that show a state in trouble? Look at the employment rate, higher than that in the rest of the country. The Depression may be a problem for the industrialized East, but it isn’t for us. Our resources protect us. Our climate protects us. It won’t happen here.” Such bravura was short-lived. By late 1931 the entire state was in trouble, as farm commodity prices fell and trade slowed. By 1932 Denver’s bank clearings were less than half those in 1929. The economic disaster of the 1930s hit Coloradans especially hard because many of them had struggled during the 1920s. As in other parts of the Rocky Mountain West, agriculture and mining had been depressed since the end of World War I, leaving many people without surplus wealth to fall back on. The twenty years between 1920 and 1940, two decades of reduced income and limited opportunities, shaped a society that was like a hibernating bear: sluggish and resentful of change. Colorado’s leaders, asleep like that bear, were unprepared for the Great Depression. Unlike many industrialized states in the East or the Great Lakes region, where the reform impulse of the Progressive Era retained some Within the last three years—a bank failure—a motor accident—long severe illness of my son, and this thing called depression. Now we are really quite hungry.1 —Jenette Beresford to Charles BoettCher, May 12, 1932 the Great depression DOI: 10.5876/9781607322276:c16 chapter sixteen 284 vigor, Colorado took little direct responsibility for the economic welfare of its citizens. As late as January 1933 the legislature reaffirmed that public relief was the province of county and municipal authorities. Supported by the philosophy of self-help, legislators struggled toward a balanced budget aided by neither a state sales tax nor an income tax. new deal Programs President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” gave Coloradans hope not offeredbylocalpoliticians.Inthe100daysbetweenMarch9andJune16,1933,the US Congress created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to employ young men, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration to stabilize farm prices, the National Recovery Administration to revive business by fixing prices and wages, and the Public Works Administration (PWA) to prime the economy by spending billions on public projects. To provide immediate relief, Congress established the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), which gave states grants for work projects. Beginning in mid-1935 the Works Progress Administration During the Depression some homeless people found shelter in junk cars such as this one in Pueblo. (Pueblo Library District.) the great depression 285 (WPA), which eventually spent more than $100 million in Colorado, replaced FERA as the principal job-making arm of the federal government. Uncle Sam’s dollars accomplished much. The CCC and the WPA constructed Denver’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and the CCC built a smaller open-air theater on Flagstaff Mountain above Boulder. In Colorado National Monument, CCC workers helped carve out the spectacular Rim Rock Drive; south of Pueblo corpsmen dammed the St. Charles River to make Lake San Isabel. Near Montrose, they repaired irrigation ditches and poisoned “prairie dogs with strychnine-soaked oats.”2 By 1938 the corps had planted more than 9 million trees, constructed thousands of small check dams, and stocked more than 2 million fish in the state’s lakes and streams. One proud CCC man, Orlando Romero of Trinidad, visited Lake San Isabel decades after he had helped create it: “I took my wife and my son and his wife and our grandson to show them where I had been and what I had done. And I felt rather comfortable in showing them that. It is something that people are still using.”3 WPA workers could also boast. Under the local direction of Paul Shriver, the WPA became the largest single employer in the state by March 1936, when it paid more than 43,000 workers. Later it trimmed its rolls, but even as late as January 1942 it employed more than 10,000. By then the WPA had undertaken more than 5,000 projects . It had built 400 structures including 63 schools, more than 100 recreation buildings, 26 sewage disposal plants, and...