A Colorado River water use I can get behind: Palisade peaches

I assume this bluff above Palisade, Colorado, explains the name:

Palisade, Colorado, peach orchard

Palisade, Colorado, peach orchard

Those are peach trees in the foreground, irrigated by water from the Orchard Mesa Irrigation District, which first turned water in 1904 onto what a friend calls “as fertile a swath of God’s green earth as there is in the West.” The district’s water now comes from the Cameo diversion dam a few miles upstream, and this is one of those lovely plots of Colorado River Basin ag land that has the river itself flow right through the middle of it. Famous for peaches:

Peaches, Palisades Colorado

Peaches, Palisades Colorado

One of those boxes is now safely nestled in the back of our car for the drive back to Albuquerque.

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