The history of Weld's farm workers

1883 -- Germans from Russia begin immigrating to Weld County to escape political injustices, famine and drought.

1901-1903 -- Sugar factories start operating across northern Colorado. Factories begin in Loveland in 1901, Greeley and Eaton in 1902 and Windsor in 1903. The factories need "stoop laborers" to work in sugar-beet fields, but most people who had settled in the Greeley area are already financially secure and won't do such work. So companies start recruiting Germans from Russia. A new neighborhood of German-Russian field workers starts on Greeley's east side.

1903 -- German-Russian beet workers organize a union and threaten to go on strike for better wages. Sugar companies hire Japanese laborers to work for the season.

1905 -- The Great Western Sugar Co. starts consolidating sugar-beet factories in Greeley, Eaton, Windsor, Fort Collins, Loveland, Longmont, Fort Lupton and Brighton.

1910-20 -- Mexicans flee the political and economic chaos of the Mexican Revolution in 1910 to seek better work and living conditions in the United States. Before 1900, immigration from Mexico averaged fewer than 700 people a year. Between 1900-1930, more than a million Mexicans arrived in the United States. About 45,000 came to Colorado.

1914-18 -- Sugar companies in northern Colorado begin recruiting more Hispanic laborers from New Mexico, Texas and Mexico because of a national anti-German sentiment during World War I.

1917 -- Congress passes a law requiring immigrants to pay a head tax and pass a literacy test. Southwestern employers who need Mexicans immigrants, who are largely poor and uneducated, protest the measure, and many Mexican laborers become exempt from the immigration act. By 1921, as the U.S. unemployment rate increases, Mexicans are no longer exempt from the law, and many must return to Mexico.

1924 -- Greeley's Spanish Colony, now at 25th Avenue and O Street, is established to provide homes for Mexican beet field workers. The colony has 24 adobe homes, where field workers live year-round. Congress passes another immigration act to limit the number of immigrants allowed each year from different countries. No restrictions are placed on immigration from Canada or Latin America.

1930-35 -- Relief agencies in Colorado engineer the return of 20,000 Mexicans and their U.S.-born children to Mexico. Similar repatriation efforts occur across the country. In all, a million Mexicans, who a decade earlier were desperately needed to work on U.S. farms and railroads, are sent back to Mexico.

1935 -- Colorado Gov. Edwin C. Johnson orders foreign beet workers out of the state and has southern Colorado sheriffs turn them back at the New Mexico border. A year later, Johnson calls out the Colorado National Guard and declares martial law on the New Mexico border to keep Mexicans out of Colorado. Johnson's actions are later declared unconstitutional.

1950 -- The Social Security Act of 1935 is extended to include many agricultural workers.

1951 -- A camp for migrant beet workers is built in Fort Lupton. Greeley had rejected plans to build the camp.

1963 -- The Farm Labor Contractor Registration Act requires all crew leaders to register with the federal government, keep wage records and keep promises about what they say they will pay.

1965 -- With the help of César Chávez, the National Farm Workers Association joins the Agricultural Worker's Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO to begin a successful five-year grape boycott. The groups combine the next year to become the United Farm Workers' Organizing Committee and later the United Farm Workers of America.

1966 -- The Fort Lupton Labor Camp, a colony for migrant workers, is the scene of several confrontations between police and Mexican-Americans, drawing statewide attention to poor housing and health conditions at the camp.

1967 -- The Great Western Sugar Co. closes its Windsor factory because of a sharp decline in sugar-beet acreage in the area. Farmers had stopped growing beets to produce other cash crops. By 1978, sugar factories in Eaton and Johnstown had also closed. Factories in Greeley and Loveland remain.

1968 -- Lupe Briseno leads Kitayama Brothers carnation farm workers on an eight-month strike with the backing of the National Floral Workers Organization, near Brighton. They want better wages, benefits and working conditions.

1978 -- The Fair Labor Standards Act, which was enacted in 1938, extends minimum-wage requirement to farm labor. Some farms are exempt from the requirement, and overtime pay is not required.

1983 -- The Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act goes into effect, requiring that farm labor contractors put promises to pay a certain wage in writing, keep payroll records, and give workers itemized, written statements of earnings for each pay period. The act also makes migrant housing and vehicles used for transporting workers subject to federal and state safety standards.

1987 -- Occupational Safety and Health Act regulations are extended to agricultural settings, requiring drinking water, toilets and hand-washing facilities when there are 11 or more workers performing "hand labor" field work. Catholic Charities Northern opens the Guadalupe Center, a homeless shelter, at 1516 N. 25th Ave. in Greeley.

1991 -- Several Weld County migrant camps close. Owners say they cannot afford to bring the living quarters up to Occupational Safety and Health Act regulations now being enforced.

1993 -- Farm labor activist César Chávez dies while in San Luis, Ariz. 40,000 people attend his funeral in Delano, Calif. Arturo Rodriguez succeeds him as United Farm Workers of America union president.

1994 -- At Catholic Charities Northern's Guadalupe Center in Greeley, an expansion nearly doubling the shelter's size is complete. The addition creates three rooms for families, storage and another bath.

1995 -- Martin Produce owner Dewey Zabka builds migrant housing for 60 workers at Peckham. Each two-bedroom unit has a kitchen and a bathroom, electric heat and five single beds. They're built of metal and have concrete floors. Tenants pay about $30 weekly. Rent has not increased since the apartments opened.

1999 -- Ten years after the idea emerged, Catholic Charities Northern opens Plaza del Milagro apartments for farm workers at the intersection of 1st Avenue and 25th Street. Preference is given to migrant workers when spaces are available during migrant season.