George E. Allen San Juan County, New Mexico

George E. Allen, living in Farmington, has been a resident of the southwest since 1880. He was born in Wyoming, Ohio, near Cincinnati, in 1860, and was about twenty-two years of age when he located permanently in New Mexico. Here he has devoted his time and energies to horticultural pursuits. He regards this as a fruit country, and peaches as the best paying crop. He has seven acres planted to twenty standard varieties of peaches and has experimented with many varieties. Peaches he believes to be a more profitable crop than alfalfa, and he thinks that money can best be made by cutting up the land into small tracts, which should then be thoroughly worked. The soil is also adapted for the production of grapes, pears, cherries, plums and berries, and in fact for all deciduous fruits, and through experiment Mr. Allen has learned that garden farming also pays well. He was one of the first to try garden farming, and has proved its success. He now has seventy-five acres of land under cultivation, of which seven acres is in fruit. The land is formed of the deposits of silt from the River and never can be exhausted. It is particularly rich in those properties which are demanded by fruit trees and all small fruits do as well here as anywhere in the southwest. He has shipped in small quantities as far as New York and San Francisco, and his name on a box of fruit is guarantee of its quality and perfection.

Many thousands of acres in the Territory are still available for irrigation and no land has been cultivated to the limit. Peaches may, if properly handled, average a profit of five hundred dollars per acre annually and apples four hundred dollars per acre. Mr. Allen carries on his fruit raising along the most scientific lines and is regarded as one of the foremost representatives of horticultural interests in his section of the Territory.

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Source: History of New Mexico, Its Resources and People, Volume II, Pacific States Publishing Co., 1907.