Boggsville
Bureau of Reclamation in Colorado
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…
Carter Lake
Carter Lake is a reservoir located in the foothills northwest of Berthoud and southwest of Loveland. Created by three dams, it is approximately three miles long, with twelve miles of shoreline, a maximum depth of 180 feet, and a capacity of 112,228 acre…
Castlewood Dam
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…
Colorado: An Overview
Colorado–Big Thompson Project
Flooding in Colorado
Horsetooth Reservoir
Land Use and Bird Life in Colorado
In the early to mid-1800s, when Europeans and Euro-Americans began arriving in what is now Colorado, they encountered a landscape that was significantly different from what we see today. The changes that have occurred to the landscape since then have had…
Lyulph Ogilvy
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…
Milne Farm
Two Buttes Dam
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,…
Wayne Aspinall
At the memorial service for long-time congressman Wayne Aspinall in 1983, Colorado Governor Richard Lamm said, “you can’t take a drink of water in Colorado without remembering Wayne Aspinall.”
Wayne Norviel Aspinall (1896–1983) was born in Ohio and…