World-famous melons flourish in Rocky Ford

By Dick Foster

It's that time of year when the air in Rocky Ford is not only hot and humid but also filled with the sweet scent of ripening fruit.

As they have been for more than a century, the flat fields around this Arkansas River town are filled with the low-slung leaves of watermelon and cantaloupe ready for picking.

And as they have every August, people will await the new harvest of Rocky Ford cantaloupe that have given world renown to the little town of 4,400 in southeastern Colorado.

An overstatement? No.

``I've seen the signs for Rocky Ford melons in Israel,'' said author and Rocky Ford resident Frances Keck.

As early as 1897, England clamored for Rocky Ford melons, paying $4 a crate for 100 crates of the sweet, juicy fruit.

Even the tough customers of New York raved in 1897 that ``the delicious flavor made a sensational reputation for the Rockyford (sic) cantaloupe as being the very finest ever placed on the New York market.''

All of this is the legacy of one George W. Swink, now known in histories of the region as the ``father of the Rocky Ford cantaloupe.''

Swink was, in fact, the father of Rocky Ford itself, not just the melons. He was the first and major force in its agricultural development.

Raised on a farm in Illinois, Swink had no formal education. One contemporary biography said he ``never attended school 30 days in his life and has no education save that which all may obtain in the great school of experience.''

The father of 11, he farmed and operated a sawmill until, at 35, the lure of adventure brought him west with his family in 1871.

Swink partnered with Asa Russell in a trading post at a rocky ford of the Arkansas River, where the water was shallow enough for settlers' wagons to cross.

Not too many settlers lingered on the empty land, though. The popular notion was that it wasn't much good for farming or anything else.

An experienced farmer, Swink saw potential. He looked to the river for all the water he needed for farming and began building the big canals and irrigation ditches that carry water to the fields to this day.

``It really made the valley blossom,'' said Mike Bartolo, a horticulturist at Colorado State University's Arkansas Valley Research Center, which opened in Rocky Ford in 1888 to help develop the cantaloupe and other crops.

Swink had begun raising melons in 1874 and seemed a tireless source of energy and ideas for developing the valley's agriculture.

With nine partners, he co-founded the town of Rocky Ford and was its first mayor, served in the state Senate and opened the State Bank of Rocky Ford. He subdivided pieces of his own land into 5- and 10-acre parcels and offered them to anyone willing to settle and farm.

Swink campaigned in Nebraska and in the Colorado legislature to bring sugar beet farming to the valley. Laughed out of the Senate when he sought funds for a beet-growing test program, Swink used his own money to pursue the tests. His vision was eventually fulfilled, with sugar beet growers populating a 20-mile triangle from Rocky Ford east to Olney Springs and north to Sugar City.

Many now in Rocky Ford don't know where Swink got his first cantaloupe seeds, but author and historian Ralph Taylor says they were sent from Massachusetts by Henry J. Gardner, who later became that state's governor, to his son Herbert Gardner, who was living west of Walsenburg.

Swink tried them, and they thrived in Rocky Ford. He created an apiary, using the bees to hasten pollination of the cantaloupes. He experimented with selective breeding to enhance their sweetness and flavor. He added watermelons, which also seem sweeter, juicier and more delectable than their non-Rocky Ford rivals.

One August day in 1878, Swink hauled a wagonload of ripe melons to the railroad station and invited friends to partake. It grew to an unbelievable annual affair as melon-growing spread across the valley. In 1895, Taylor wrote, ``40 wagons hauled 60,000 cantaloupes and 20,000 watermelons to the feast. The railroad used 75 passenger cars to haul the visitors.''

This Aug. 21, Watermelon Day will be celebrated for the 121st year at the Otero County Fair in Rocky Ford.

No one, not even the growers and researchers, knows for sure what makes Rocky Fords the nonpareil of melons, but after more than a century of growing experience, they have some ideas.

``I think it's the hot days and cool nights, elevation and soil type,'' said Hal Holder, a member of one of the old-line family growers in the valley. "The deserts in California have the hot days and cool nights, but their melons don't make the sugars that ours do.

``I think our elevation gives us a little more sun intensity, and it may be that our soil is different than they have anyplace else,'' he said.

Whatever the magic elements, they have nourished a thriving agricultural industry for more than a century. Although the valley produces a tiny portion of the nation's cantaloupe, its name is legendary.

About 2,000 acres of cantaloupes and 1,000 acres of watermelons are produced annually. Another 1,000 acres of cantaloupes are grown solely for their seeds, which are sold worldwide.

Agriculture has diversified in the valley over the years, and the Swink family's presence has dwindled to one great-grandson, 80-year-old Jerre. Others have ``moved on or passed away,'' he says.

Jerre Swink's career at the CSU research center in Rocky Ford, like many others in the valley, stemmed from his great grandfather's vision.

Asked about the pioneer's legacy, Jerre Swink says simply, ``He's the one who got it all started.''

Seeking to honor the elder Swink in his own lifetime, valley residents discussed renaming Rocky Ford after him, but the town was so well- established that a new town six miles east was given his name.

Today across the side of that town's water tower along U.S. 50, the name Swink is painted in large black letters. It faces out over the farms, fields, towns and homes that blossom on the land but budded first in the dreams of George W. Swink.

July 20, 1999

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