Its main asset, though, was Swink himself. He developed Rocky Ford's two main cash crops, melons and sugar beets; courted the town's largest corporation, the American Beet Sugar Company; and helped build the Rocky Ford Ditch, the spine of an extensive irrigation network. Swink's formula—land, transportation, industry, and water—represented prairie town-building at its best. He died in 1910, but his many gifts to this town still live on.ColoradoHistory.com
