HoleInTheRiverHistoryOfGroundwater

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and counting. The river was rising, and irrigators filed legal claims to the additional water. Farmers were not oblivious to the rive r’s change. Henry DeVotie, farmer and president of a ditch company near Greeley, noticed autumn flows steadily increasing downstream from his farm following years of irrigation and reservoi r construction on the South Platte. “The subsoil is saturated,” he asserted in 1922, “and a large amount now gets back to the river, making the river flow more uniform than ever before.” Here was an intersection of human and na tural conditions: Farmers resp onded to lack of rainfall by irrigating their crops, and appl ication of irrigation water, in turn, changed the river’s essential characteristics. The altered flow patterns were recorded by cottonwoods – “a rank hearty growth,” a cattleman observed in 1918, had occurred all the way from Denver 27 to the state line, with the trees becomi ng smaller and younger proceeding downstream. These additional flows served as the basis for new water rights. As availability of water increased, human use expanded accordingly. Early farmers also displayed an awarene ss of conditions below the earth. DeVotie noted that “irrigation not onl y assists plant grow th, but also serves the purpose of 28 underground storage of water.” Some farmers were tapp ing this underground storage even before the turn of the century. In 1889, E.F. Hurdle drilled the first recorded irrigation well in the South Platte basin, us ing a steam engine to operate the pump. Within a few years, a neighbor sought an in junction against him for diminishing the flow of a nearby creek. But the court ruled in Hurdle’s favor. Despite finding a probable connection between groundwater and creek wate r, allegations of the well’s detrimental 27 Hodgson, 3. Box 26, DEC. 28 Statement of Henry M. DeVotie, 20-23. Box 26, DEC 12