This dissertation examines the relationship between this local community and the broader economy. Many historians have portrayed small towns as passive recipients of outside corporate influence, but this community recruited investors and government bureaucracies; always with an eye on protecting local autonomy. While the community did seek to control its destiny, topography and isolation kept the community aloof from economic development. The Grand Valley also attempted to recreate the industrial agricultural system of California's Central Valley, and so embraced available technology, especially in the fruit industry. Their devotion to pesticide eventually ruined orchards and perpetuated their existence as an Island Community.

After the U.S. Army removed the Utes from Western Colorado, white settlers quickly moved in and settled the Grand Valley. Early residents realized that, to survive in the arid valley, they had to build an extensive irrigation infrastructure to support an agricultural economy. Ditch construction, however, lay outside the means of most Grand Valley residents, so the valley looked outward to find financing; first to private enterprise, then to state and federal reclamation.