irrigation

The United States Reclamation Service, later renamed the Bureau of Reclamation, was created in 1902 to advance settlement of the West through construction of large dams, reservoirs, canals, and other projects. Since then, the service has played an important role in the development of Colorado’s...

Built in 1890 along Cherry Creek south of Franktown, Castlewood Dam was meant to help irrigate Douglas County farms. In 1933 the dam gave way, unleashing a fifteen-foot surge of water on Denver and ultimately spurring development of the Cherry Creek Dam to prevent future flooding . Today the ruins...

The Colorado–Big Thompson Project (C–BT) is the largest transmountain water diversion in the state of Colorado. Built between 1938 and 1956, the C–BT Project provides supplemental water for municipal, industrial, and irrigation purposes in northeastern Colorado. Water from the C–BT Project also...

Horsetooth Reservoir is located in the foothills just west of Fort Collins . The Bureau of Reclamation began construction of the reservoir in 1946 as part of the larger Colorado–Big Thompson Project , which provided additional irrigation water for the northern Front Range . Horsetooth Reservoir was...

Lyulph Gilchrist Stanley Ogilvy (1861–1947) was an influential irrigator, rancher, journalist, and soldier in early Colorado. An immigrant son of Scottish aristocrats, Ogilvy helped build and maintain irrigation ditches in Weld County and later became a successful agricultural journalist in Denver...

Intended as a way to irrigate nearby farmland, Two Buttes Dam was built in 1909–10 on Two Buttes Creek, about seventeen miles northeast of Springfield . The resulting reservoir did not irrigate much land and was better used as a site for hunting, fishing, boating, and swimming. In 1970 the...