When Edith Iwan asked me to cover an article for her about the carrots grown in the area, I told her I was the wrong generation. I had heard stories and seen the mural on the Milan government building. So, I figured I would ask my parents, Eddie and Pat Roberts, what they remembered about those days in the history of carrot fields. Salvador Milan was credited in 1946 with converting his sheep farm into a truck farm and the Carrot Capital was born. Grants shipped out over a thousand train cars full of carrots, peas, lettuce, etc. over the growing and harvesting season! The volcanic soil was rich for growing vegetables. The train that came to Grants helped with several industries in the area such as logging and the feldspar mines. But then those industries faded in the 1920 and 1930s. Bluewater dam was built and the agriculture industry became interested in the area. But the carrot fields used wells about 600 feet deep for a more reliable source of water than the water in the lake that relied on snowfall. My dad remembers coming in the mid-1940s to visit relatives, when the fields were being leveled and plowed causing some dust to blow into Grants. He talks about the migrant workers that came to the area and the many different and diverse ethnicities of the people that followed the farming needs and harvesting. The workers were only here for a few weeks and they camped along the foothills of the Zuni Mountains that flanked the fields. Their small fires for cooking and gathering could be seen during dusk and night. These workers also had a commissary to buy food and necessities that was on the land owned by the owners of the carrot industries. The workers bought on credit and their earnings were paid to the commissary first and the rest went home. So, the population of Grants would swell for a few weeks while the migrant workers were here until they moved to the next harvest in another town.
The carrots would be picked in the fields and placed on flatbed trucks with the carrot tops facing inside the bed. The carrots were then washed off before hauling them to the sheds next to the train station. There was a saw mill that helped to make the wooden crates that the carrots were packed into for shipping. Gallup had an ice plant that shipped ice to Grants to pack onto the crates that were lined to keep water off the train cars. There would be a hundred train cars full of carrot crates! My mom came to Grants in 1956 and recalls the flat bed trailers being pulled by tractors or trucks headed to the train station where the warehouses were to store the crates until being loaded. She said the carrots were so vibrant and clean that they glowed, almost like gold.
My dad was dating a girl that worked at the Western Union where the wire would send out word to buyers about the carrot crops and purchases of train cars that were full to the brim. Faith and hard work were needed to get the goods to the buyers and the money to be sent back to the owners of the companies. Another bank was built in Grants by several men with interest in financial stability in the area, and Grants State Bank was formed.
My dad talked about the only form of entertainment was the movie theater, Lux Theater, as there was no television and poor radio reception. There would be a packed house and people standing along the walls to view the movie!
My mom remembers that the carrot workers would go through and purge out the misfit carrot shapes and those were for sale for the local people. Her dad would buy a pickup bed full for $5 to give to the horse. It was a good treat for the livestock.
I found some pictures of the workers sitting in the field, probably sorting carrots and bundling them for transportation. There were a few pictures of the company logos for the carrot brands and the men that owned the companies. The Mormon Church Farm was one that was group owned. The 1950 census was 2,251 about midway through the agriculture boom.
Then the uranium boom started in the later 1950s and the industry required water. New Mexico was an agricultural state and water rights were for the growing of crops. Once that water was bought by the uranium company, it was only 75% of the water capacity.
A few of the uranium companies used to grow an agricultural crop to get the other 25 percent of the water for their use. The bottom dropped out of the expansive agricultural industry to the beginnings of the uranium industrial boom.