The story of irrigation in Colorado’s Grand Valley speaks volumes about the reciprocal relationship between land and community in the arid American West. Early white colonizers of Colorado’s Western Slope espoused concepts of landscape and water control…

Mesa County is situated on 3,341 square miles of the eastern Colorado Plateau in western Colorado. The county is named for the wide, flat-topped mountains within its borders. The Spanish called such mountains mesas—meaning “tables.” The county’s largest…