Spanish Colony, Greeley, Colorado

Between the 1920s and 1940s, sugar companies established over 100 segregated agricultural communities across the United States in states like Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska. These “Spanish Colonies,” or colonias, were communities of primarily Spanish-speaking laborers and their families who came from the southwestern United States and Mexico. Work in the sugar beet fields (the primary crop) was arduous—long, sweltering days of backbreaking labor for little pay—but the men of the colonias found recreation and relief in baseball. In Colorado’s sugar beet colonias, laborers often used their skills on the farm to enhance their baseball playing.