In 1938, the farm in Eastern Colorado where Frances and Ernest Crane struggled to make a living was played out. So, when they learned of a federal program to allow them to purchase better land in Western Colorado, they jumped at the chance.

“When we heard about it, we applied immediately and we were one of the families sent over here from the Eastern Slope,” Frances said in a 1982 interview. By then, she had remarried and become Frances Idler.

Frances and her family were among more than 40 families who moved to the Fruita-Loma area in 1937 and 1938 from Colorado’s Eastern Plains through the Resettlement Administration, a part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Thomas Wayne Beede and his family also took the plunge, and achieved significant success with their resettlement farm n

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