Murphy Farm near Trinidad honored as Colorado Centennial Farm

Murphy Farm near Trinidad stands out in Las Animas County because it is still a working farm after more than a century in the same family. History Colorado says the property began in 1886, when James B. Murphy started working a 160-acre parcel, and the farm was later honored in Colorado’s Centennial Farms & Ranches program in 2000.

The Murphy operation has changed with the times without losing its agricultural identity. James B. Murphy raised alfalfa, cattle and quarter and work horses on the place for 50 years. His son Tom Murphy kept the operation going for another 53 years, and Charles Dalvit, James Murphy’s son-in-law, took over in 1988. Charles Dalvit and Marion Murphy Dalvit still raise alfalfa and cattle there today. History Colorado notes that tractors eventually replaced the horse business, a simple marker of how the ranch adapted as farming technology changed.

That continuity is what the Centennial Farms & Ranches honor is built to recognize. The Colorado Department of Agriculture says the program was created in 1986 by Gov. Richard D. Lamm, the Colorado Historical Society and the department itself to recognize agriculture’s role in Colorado’s history and economic development. History Colorado says Centennial Farms or Ranches must have belonged to the same family for at least 100 years and still be operating farms or ranches. Current department materials say the land must be owned by the same family for more than 100 years.

The recognition is public and statewide rather than private and financial. History Colorado says honorees are celebrated each year at the Colorado State Fair in Pueblo. The program was expanded in 2022 to include Centennial Families, Centennial AgriBusiness and Centennial Farmers or Ranchers, broadening the categories while keeping the same emphasis on long family ownership and active use.

Murphy Farm also fits into the harder agricultural history of southeastern Las Animas County. A county genealogy and history resource notes that part of the region lay along the edge of the Dust Bowl and that many farm and ranch units were abandoned in the mid-1930s. Against that backdrop, a family operation that kept producing alfalfa and cattle for generations carries a different weight than a preserved homestead or a marker on a map.

More than 620 families had been recognized by the program by 2021, placing Murphy Farm in a relatively small statewide group of long-running agricultural operations. In a county better known to many outsiders for historic towns and coal country, the Murphy place shows another side of local history: land that stayed productive, stayed in family hands and kept feeding Colorado while the decades changed around it.