Background
Benjamin Harrison Eaton was born on December 15, 1833 on a farm near Zanesville, Ohio, United States. He was the son of Levi and Hannah (Smith) Eaton.
(The Life of Benjamin Harrison Eaton)
The Life of Benjamin Harrison Eaton
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agriculturalist entrepreneur politician
Benjamin Harrison Eaton was born on December 15, 1833 on a farm near Zanesville, Ohio, United States. He was the son of Levi and Hannah (Smith) Eaton.
Benjamin received an elementary education.
Eaton taught school and farmed in Ohio and Iowa, until the even current of his life was disturbed by the news of the gold discoveries at Pike’s Peak.
Eaton joined the crowd of adventurers who flocked to the Rockies in 1859, but was, like most of them, unsuccessful as a miner. Leaving Colorado, he went to New Mexico, started farming on the Maxwell Land Grant, and there built his first irrigation ditch.
He returned to Colorado in 1864, purchased a farm near the present town of Windsor, and remained in that vicinity for the rest of his life.
Northern Colorado was in 1864 an unpromising region for agriculture. Here and there along the river bottoms were small farms; beyond these there stretched the prairie with its cactus and prairie-dog towns. But the young farmer saw promise in the land. Building an irrigation ditch, the first of its kind in the district, he brought water to his land and began to cultivate it. Thereafter his life was spent in acquiring more land and in developing it.
He was always land-poor, but continued buying. At his death he held about fourteen thousand five hundred acres of cultivated land, and nearly seven thousand acres not under the plow.
After some years of farming, he leased the greater part of his estate and lived in Greeley, the home of the Union Colony. As his holdings increased he constructed more reservoirs and ditches. Six reservoirs held water for his land ; one of these, the Windsor Reservoir, was the largest at that time in the state. He built ditches everywhere.
As contractor he built the Larimer and Weld Canal which was over sixty miles in length, Canal No. 2 of the Union Colony, the important High Line Ditch near Denver, and others.
Though Eaton built the town of Eaton which was incorporated in 1888, owned a mill and a business house there, and raised some cattle, he was essentially a leader in agricultural development.
(The Life of Benjamin Harrison Eaton)
A stanch Republican, he served in the territorial house in 1872, in the council in 1876, and as governor of the state in 1885-86. As legislator and governor he showed a great interest in agricultural matters.
Quotes from others about the person
It was said of him in 1884 that he had “more to do with the construction of irrigating canals in Colorado than perhaps any other five men in the State".
He was twice married. His first wife, Delilah Wolf, whom he married in Ohio on May 1, 1856, died in 1857. In 1864 he married Rebecca J. Hill, daughter of Abraham Hill, in Louisa County, Iowa.