Editor’s note: Most of this article is taken from Edna Sweet’s 1947 book “Carbondale Pioneers, 1879-1890.” She based the book on interviews and her own memory.
When Frank Sweet arrived in the Carbondale area from Connecticut in 1882, the dry ground was covered with nothing but sagebrush as far as his eye could see. He’d loved the green valleys of his home state, but upon first glance became imbued with the idea of making what he would later describe as a desert “bloom like a rose.”
Within 25 years, Sweet organized companies that would build the 12-mile east mesa ditch and the 19-mile Sweet Jessup ditch west of town. Sweet traveled to the Carbondale area to join his uncle, William Walden, on his ranch west of what would become the town. Locals called Walden “Yank” because he was known for his shrewd business dealings. Yank Creek, which feeds Thompson Creek, is named after Walden.
Sweet homesteaded west of town on a portion of what’s now Crystal River Ranch. He married Edna Denmark, who herself was a pioneer schoolteacher. They had five children: Irene, Walden, Julian, Dorothy and Harold.
Besides working his homestead, Sweet soon started working as a clerk and bookkeeper for William Dinkel in his two-story brick building at Fourth and Main, because Dinkel wanted to spend more time running his bank. Lafayette Gardner, from Missouri, also worked for Dinkel, driving wagonloads of goods to Marion and Spring Gulch. Sweet and Gardner later partnered with Dinkel to form Dinkel Mercantile, selling a variety of provisions to local residents and travelers. The three also partnered to buy ranches near Sweet’s original homestead. Sweet had an interest in a ranch east of town and was put in charge of building a ditch on the east mesa.
Sweet was suffering from health problems when he first moved from Connecticut to Carbondale. He remained in ill health and was forced to sell his local interests and moved to Denver, then two years after that to New York. “But his heart was still in Colorado,” Edna Sweet wrote. “He had a vision to build a much bigger ditch that would serve 2,000 acres on the west mesa. In 1904, Sweet returned to Carbondale and formed the Sweet Jessup Canal Company. Lon Sweet of Denver served as promoter for the young company and Clay Jessup as the third partner. Jessup and his wife had homesteaded in Kansas “until rattlesnakes ran them out.” Jessup took charge of physically building the canal. Many felt the canal would never deliver water. Jessup became discouraged and sold his share in the company for $10,000. When finished, the ditch ran for 19 miles from its headgate on the Crystal River to the top of what is now Sweet Hill. It took another three years for the land, which had been dry “through the ages,” to drink enough water to start producing crops.
Sweet built a ranch house at the foot of East Mesa and, in 1920, he built a residence in town. “He loved the land … and worked ceaselessly through the years for the betterment of the town and valley,” Sweet wrote.
In the early days, Sweet served as a city councilman. He fought for the town to set out trees. “It was a bitter fight but they won, and they lived to see the fruit of their labor … in the town’s shaded streets.” Sweet continued, “When I climb the East Mesa and view our little village, lying so peacefully at the foot of Mt. Sopris, with its beautiful homes, trees and flowers, then go back in my memory to my first glance of the treeless desert, I feel that we have rubbed Aladdin’s wonderful lamp and that the town and mountain is, indeed, one of the most scenic spots in the world, worth all the toil, the strife and tears that went into the building it.”
As for Jessup, after severing connections with the Sweet Jessup Canal Company, he was elected Garfield County Sheriff a number of times. He made his home in Glenwood Springs and also became involved in farming on Divide Creek. He and Sweet remained friends for life.
Frank Sweet died in the mid-1930s. Edna Sweet died in 1954. The entire family is buried at Hillcrest Cemetery, overlooking the town they labored to grow.