Lake Scott State Park
Lake Scott State Park is the site of a ruined Taos Pueblo. The Taos arrived in western Kansas in 1664. After having escaped the Spanish colonial rule in New Mexico. They formed an alliance with a group of Plains Apache. The Taos Indians built the protective pueblos and an irrigation system from a nearby spring to water their crops. The settlement, known as El Cuartelejo, was occupied for 20 years before the builders returned to their home territory. The pueblo was reoccupied in 1696 by a group of Picuri Indians. The Picuris were compelled to retreat to their homelands in colonial New Mexico ten years later.
Agriculture in Mexico
Land reform in Mexico was a major achievement of the Mexican Revolution, with the distribution of land to peasants concentrated in Mexico's center and south. The breakup of the haciendas solved a political problem in Mexico, since it was one of the demands of the peasants who fought and was enshrined. By the 1930s and 40s, agricultural production was dropping and the government sought technical solutions. In the 1940s during the presidency of Manuel Avila Camacho, the Mexican government partnered with the U.S. government, and the Rockefeller Foundation to launch the so-called Green Revolution (1950–70). Research facilities developed new strains of wheat, maize, and other crops, to engineer a variety of desirable traits, such as disease resistance, high protein content. Seeds and inputs of fertilizer and pesticides for irrigated agriculture were suited to Mexico's northwest. Sorghum, a new crop was introduced to Mexico during the era of the Green Revolution, which was used for animal fodder. Mexico expanded cattle production in this era, fed on sorghum.
The ejido system remained intact until the 1990s. However, during World War II, industry became the more important sector of the economy. Mexico’s rural population began to fall in the mid century, from 49.3% in 1960 to 25.4% in 2000. Federal policies outside ejidos still favored large agricultural producers over rural peasant production, including the offering of credit and protectionist policies. One of these was the construction of major irrigation systems, especially in the north. The first major irrigation project was the Laguna Project near Torreón, followed by the Las Delicias Project near Chihuahua, both with the aim of producing cotton along with wheat. These projects increased the amount of land available for agriculture from 3.7 million acres in 1950 to 8.64 million acres in 1965. In addition, the Mexican government encouraged only crops such as corn and beans, restricting imports of these two staples until 1990.