Early Agricultural Colonies and Cooperative Irrigating

Many of Colorado’s Front Range towns began as agricultural colonies. Colonies were often semi-cooperative with a decidedly utopian bent, and they provided an instant community and planned infrastructure where people with like-minded values could settle. Present-day Fort Collins contains two former agricultural colony sites within its boundaries—the Mercer Colony and the Fort Collins Agricultural Colony.[1. […]

North Poudre Irrigation Company, 1901-Present

The North Poudre Irrigation Company began with a tumultuous and complicated early start as a conglomeration of multiple early irrigation companies along the Poudre River watershed. Despite the company’s low appropriation and decree ranking on the Poudre, North Poudre Irrigation Company (NPIC) had shrewd leaders who recognized the company’s potential. By buying up smaller, faltering […]

Laramie-Poudre Irrigation Company, 1902-1937

The Laramie-Poudre Irrigation Company (LPIC) played a crucial role in Northern Colorado irrigation history despite its short lifespan. Both it and the related Greeley-Poudre Irrigation District (GPID) were fraught with logistical and financial struggles throughout their existence, but the irrigation infrastructure these organizations left behind remains an enduring legacy of the vision and hard work […]

Diversions and Decrees

In Colorado, citizens need a legal permission to remove water from a river for agricultural, municipal, recreational, or industrial use. Removing water from a river or aquifer “by means of a water structure such as a ditch, pipeline, boat chute, whitewater course, reservoir, or well,” is called a diversion.[1. Hobbs, Greg, Citizen’s Guide to Colorado […]