A few miles south of present-day Crescent Junction, was once a thriving farming community. It was born around 1905, when the Grand Valley Land and Mineral Company had men working on a reservoir near Thompson that would irrigate some 2,500 acres of land. However, because the company had little cash on hand (its treasurer had reportedly bet a bundle at the racetrack and lost) a dirt dam was substituted for the originally planned cement dam. Three years later, sixty acres of orchard were being irrigated with dam water. But a torrential rainstorm then washed away the dam, not to mention the dreams of those who had invested their time, money, and hard work into the project. The dam was later rebuilt, however, and the town of Valley City had a schoolteacher in the 1920s and early 1930s. However, the periodic flash floods proved to be too much of a threat, and eventually everyone moved away. Today, only traces of a single building foundation remain.
