RIVER TOWNS: ALAMOSA | Southern Colorado's Rio Grande River has fueled a historic way of life. Can it last?
In the fields beyond Alamosa, it was a rare morning. Cleave Simpson found his hay damp. "It's frustrating when you got hay on the ground and there's rain on it," he said. "But when you live around here, you learn to appreciate it." Once again this summer, rain has been hard to come by in this historic farming valley of southern Colorado. The average annual precipitation in the middle of the San Luis Valley hovers around seven inches — about as low as it gets in all of Colorado, according to the Colorado Climate Center. And yet farming prevails. It is the lifeblood of Alamosa, the town that ...