THE BUFFALO COMMONS SPECIAL REPORT
Part 7 of 8: The Last Harvest:
An investigation by High Country Advocate
The Last Harvest: How Aurora’s Water Grab Is Destroying 150 Years of Colorado Agricultural Heritage
In the summer heat of southeastern Colorado, when the sun bakes the Arkansas River valley and the temperature swings forty degrees between day and night, something remarkable happens. The same soil that looks like every other patch of prairie dirt transforms ordinary cantaloupe seeds into fruit that tastes like nothing else on earth. For more than 150 years, farmers in Rocky Ford have known this secret. Now, Aurora is buying their water, and with it, the end of one of Colorado’s most treasured agricultural traditions.
The Magic of Rocky Ford
In the 1870s, George W. Swink settled along the Arkansas River and brought cantaloupe seeds. What he discovered changed Colorado agriculture forever. The region experiences “the greatest temperature disparity in the country” – blazing hot days building sugar in the fruit, cool nights preserving flavor and texture. Mineral-rich soil provides nutrients that can’t be replicated elsewhere. Together, these conditions produce cantaloupes with fifteen percent sugar content, compared to ten percent in melons grown anywhere else.
By 1926, Rocky Ford produced ninety-five percent of all cantaloupe seed in the United States. The “Rocky Ford Cantaloupe” became a trademarked brand, shipped worldwide. This represents agricultural terroir – like Champagne from Champagne. You can grow cantaloupes anywhere. You can only grow Rocky Ford cantaloupes in Rocky Ford. This generates three to five times the revenue per acre compared to commodity crops, supporting specialized infrastructure and year-round employment.
Five Generations of Knowledge
Hirakata Farms spans over 1,200 acres in the Rocky Ford district. The fifth generation works alongside the fourth, learning techniques refined since 1915 when great-grandfather Tatsunosuke Hirakata emigrated from Japan. Today, cousins Michael and Glenn Hirakata run the operation, growing cantaloupes, watermelons, honeydews, and pumpkins using drip irrigation and modern food safety systems.
The real value lies in accumulated knowledge passed through generations – which fields hold moisture longer, where frost settles, how to assess harvest timing from decades of experience. All of it depends on reliable water.
The Science of Growing Perfection
Cantaloupes demand precision. Early growth needs minimal water – too much encourages disease. As vines spread, water needs increase. During fruit development – a critical two to three week period – plants need water almost daily. Miss this window, and fruit stays small or develops poor flavor. Just before harvest, growers must reduce irrigation to concentrate sugars.
This requires absolute reliability. Farmers can’t plant cantaloupes if water might not be available when fruit sets. Can’t maintain specialized equipment for unpredictable production. Can’t maintain market relationships without consistent supply. Break that reliability, and markets find other suppliers. Once lost, those relationships don’t come back.
The $80 Million Disguise
In 2024, Aurora purchased 4,806 acres in Otero County – the heart of Rocky Ford cantaloupe country – for eighty million dollars. The city bought water rights from the Catlin Canal, plus shares in Pisgah Reservoir and the Larkspur and Otero ditches. Under the agreement, Aurora can withdraw up to 7,500 acre-feet per year (2.4 billion gallons), no more than once annually, three times in any ten-year period – but only when the city’s storage reservoirs drop below 60 percent capacity.
Aurora’s position sounds reasonable: this is not buy-and-dry. The land will continue being farmed. C&A Companies will lease the property to grow alfalfa and small grains “when not using the water.”
The claim collapses under basic arithmetic. Alfalfa requires thirty to forty inches of water annually. Otero County receives thirteen inches of rainfall. The twenty-seven inch gap must come from irrigation. But Aurora takes water during droughts – precisely when that irrigation gap is largest and farmers need water most. In wet years, when Aurora doesn’t need the water, rainfall approaches what’s needed anyway. The “alfalfa plan” only works when it isn’t needed.
As one Arkansas Valley water engineer explained: “Dry up of this ground is inevitable…because when the growth reaches the point that it demands all that the city can provide to the taps, all of the water must be transferred and thus the dry up has to occur.”
The intermittent farming model is economically impossible. Equipment investment requires consistent production. Labor forces need year-round employment. Markets need reliable supply. A farm that produces in wet years and nothing in dry years is not a farm – it’s a water bank disguised as agriculture.
One local farmer put it plainly: “I haven’t found a farmer yet that believes that’s a viable farming situation.”
History proves it. Aurora has been buying Arkansas Valley water since the 1970s, acquiring most Rocky Ford Ditch shares in the 1980s. One resident described the result: “The Ordway land that sold their water to the cities went from being one of the largest producers of agricultural products to nothing but tumbleweeds.” Another from Crowley County: “Aurora snatching water rights…destroyed the rural lives of thousands.”
What Colorado Loses
When Rocky Ford cantaloupe farming ends, Colorado loses an economic engine and 150 years of cultural heritage. That knowledge, once gone, is gone forever. You cannot reconstruct generations of experiential knowledge or rebuild decades-old market relationships. You cannot restore terroir agriculture once continuous practice breaks.
If Rocky Ford can be sacrificed for urban water, no agricultural region is safe. Palisade peaches? Olathe sweet corn? Pueblo chilies? Every specialty area is now vulnerable.
The Buffalo Commons Blueprint
What happens after the water goes to Aurora and the farms fail? Organizations like Southern Plains Land Trust wait to acquire failed agricultural land and convert it to “restored” prairie. In their vision, fields that grew Rocky Ford cantaloupes for five generations become grassland for bison. All traces of 150 years of human heritage erased for an ideological vision of “natural” landscape.
This fits a broader pattern. Front Range cities buy water rights, agricultural communities fail, conservation organizations acquire the land. Aurora is targeting one of Colorado’s most unique farming areas. When these farms fail, the land becomes available at distressed prices for conservation acquisition.
Trading Heritage for Lawns
The water Aurora is buying will not supply hospitals or fire departments. It will water suburban lawns, fill swimming pools, sustain golf courses. Aurora has chosen suburban convenience over 150 years of agricultural heritage, residential consumption over specialty crop production, urban growth over rural survival.
Alternatives exist. Other water sources could be developed. Conservation could reduce consumption. Heritage regions could be protected. But these require effort and political will. It’s easier to buy water from farmers with limited power to resist.
The Choice We Face
Five generations of the Hirakata family built a sophisticated operation expecting to pass it to the sixth generation. They assumed water rights attached to farmland would remain available for farming. That assumption was wrong.
The farms of Rocky Ford will not survive Aurora’s water purchase. When the families leave, Southern Plains Land Trust will buy the land. Bison will graze where cantaloupes once grew.
Aurora needs water. But does the city need Rocky Ford water more than Colorado needs Rocky Ford cantaloupes?
In another generation, someone will write about Rocky Ford cantaloupes. They’ll note that it ended when Aurora bought the water rights. That nobody protested. That it seemed inevitable. And readers will wonder why we let something so special disappear.
We’re living in that moment now. The cantaloupes are still growing. The families are still farming. But Aurora has bought the water. The clock is running. The last harvest is coming.
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