SCOPE AND CONTENT
The Ernest Tigges Papers were donated to the Auraria Library Special Collections Department by Mr. Tigges in 1980 and 1981.
Property rights to the collection are held by the Auraria Library Special Collections Department; literary rights are pending.
Linear feet of shelf space: .25
Number of containers: 1
Ernest Tigges was born October 9, 1910. He attended college in Iowa until 1939. Following college he worked with the Farm Security Administration, as acting Community Manager in Alamosa, Colorado
Tigges was Assistant Farm Superintendent and Farm Superintendent at the Amache Relocation Center from 1942-45. Tigges and his family lived at the Amache Center.
The Amache Relocation Center, which opened on August 27, 1942, was established by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The WRA relocated more than 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast to inland center.
Amache Relocation Center, in southeast Colorado near the town of Granada, housed 7,550 evacuees between 1942 and 1945. The camp was named for Amache Ochinee Prowers, the Native American wife of John Prowers, for whom the county is named.
Amache was a self supporting town where residents engaged in a variety of activities. The center housed several churches, a hospital, educational facilities, a post office, as well as fire and police departments. There were organizations for social and service activities. The center also sponsored recreational athletics. Consumer enterprises, owned and operated by the residents, offered a variety of services.
The largest of these were the agricultural facilities that Mr. Tigges administered. When Amache was organized, the government purchased land which had been the Fred Harvey XY Ranch from Elbert S. Rule. The government also acquired land from the American Crystal Sugar Company. Thus, about 10,000 acres of land were available for agricultural use. Seeds, fuel and equipment for the operation were furnished by the government.
The Japanese farmers grew vegetables, such as diakon radishes that local farmers insisted couldn't be grown in the area. Other vegetables and fruits included; lettuce, spinach, peppers, squash, honeydew melons, watermelons and cantaloupe. In 1943, the Amache farmers grew 3, 838, 669 pounds of vegetables and 55, 000 bushels of field crops. Seven hundred cattle were raised on the ranch sites, 100 of these cattle were maintained by the high school agricultural students. the farmers also raised 3, 664 chickens and 915 hogs. Amache had its own food canning plants and a slaughter house.
The total farm production yielded enough food to satisfy the needs of the residents plus surplus food items to be shipped to the armed services and other war relocation camps.
Operations at Amache were reduced in 1944, and Mr. Tigges left in the Spring of 1945. By October 1945, Amache Relocation Center was empty.
The Tigges Papers, which Ernest Tigges gave to the Auraria Library Archives and Special Collections, span the years 1938 to 1950, with the bulk of the material falling into the period when Tigges was a civil service agricultural specialist at Alamosa, Colorado and at the Amache Relocation Center, near Granada, Colorado, namely 1941 to 1944.
The Papers include a directory of residents relocated at Amache. This directory lists these names in both Japanese and English. The papers also include civil service employment records form the Farm Security Administration and Amache Center. Correspondence related to these positions is also included.
Folder 1 contains the Amache Directory and Folder 2 contains the employment papers related to Amache. Folder 3 contains employment papers related to the Farm Security Administration. Folder 4 contains personal and business papers and correspondence.
Closely related to these papers is collection number 17, the Phillip Tigges Collection, a series of photographs of the Amache site. Phillip Tigges was Ernest's son and was 7, 8, and 9 years old during the years that Ernest was at Amache. Phillip, who is a professional photographer living in Flint, Michigan returned to Granada to take these photographs in 1982.