<br />As more people moved to Colorado, it became apparent that good farmland
<br />was available only at greater distances from the streams, which meant building
<br />more elaborate canals. Individual farmers, or even small groups of farmers,
<br />seldom had the capital to undertake these projects, so ways had to be found to
<br />construct them. One popular approach in the 1870's was the formation of
<br />agricultural colonies in which a number of farmers would pay membership fees
<br />to purchase land together, Each farmer got a small plot of land and
<br />irrigation works were constructed collectively. The first, and most famous,
<br />of these agricultural colonies was the Union Colony, which purchased land on
<br />the Cache la Poudre River near Greeley, under the auspices of Horace Greeley,
<br />the New York newspaper publisher. By 1872, the colonists had constructed two
<br />ditches, the second over 27 miles long, thirty feet wide, and four and a half
<br />feet deep, that watered 25,000 acres (Abbott, 1976).
<br />
<br />By the late 1870's, irrigation works were being financed by out-of-state
<br />and foreign corporations. English investors, for example, built the 50-mile
<br />long Larimer and Weld Canal in the Cache la Poudre watershed, the Loveland and
<br />Greeley Canal out of the Big Thompson, and the $2.5 million High Line Canal
<br />that wanders 44 miles from the mouth of the South Platte to Cherry Creek above
<br />Denver (Abbott, ]976). There were literally hundreds of such canals on all
<br />the major river drainages in the State, For example, on the Arkansas there
<br />was the 105-mile Fort Lyon Canal and the 48-mile Catlin Ditch that watered
<br />land around Rocky Ford, La Junta and Lamar. The Travelers Insurance Company
<br />financed canal construction across the mountains in the Del Norte and Monte
<br />Vista areas (Abbott, 1976). Most of these ventures failed within a few years
<br />of their construction, usually because the availability of water did not
<br />necessarily lead to population in-migration sufficient to make the ventures
<br />profitable and because farmers who were there resisted paying royalties in
<br />addition to buying water rights (Abbott, 1976), Practically all the systems
<br />were eventually reorganized by farmers as mutual irrigation companies (Maass,
<br />1978).
<br />
<br />By 1880, the demand for water along the most heavily populated rivers was
<br />greater than could be supplied by ditch diversions alone and the construction
<br />of reservoirs began O'oss, 1978). 'fhe initial reservoir built in the State
<br />was a small one on Coal Creek in Jefferson County in 1859. The first of the
<br />relatively large irrigation projects was the Chambers J.ake Reservoir on the
<br />upper reaches of the Cache la Poudt'e, started in 1882 (CWCB, 1952).
<br />
<br />About this same time, int.erbasin and transmount.ain diversions were
<br />started, primarily to move water to the eastern side of the Continental
<br />Divide. Among t.he earliest were those built by the same mutual irrigation
<br />compW1Y working on the Chambers Lake Reservoir. The Sky Line Ditch, completed
<br />in 1893, diverted water out. of the I.aramie River Basin and into the Poudre,
<br />The Grand Ditch, which diverted water out of the Colorado River Basin, was
<br />completed in 1895. The largest transmountain diversion in this part of
<br />Colorado, before the Colorado-Big Thompson Project, was the Laramie-Poudre
<br />Tunnel with a capacity of 1,500 cubic feet. per second. The project was
<br />completed in 1912 and prompted Wyoming to file suit to protect the amount of
<br />water flowing into that state.
<br />
<br />The markets for these early agricult.ural regions were in the mountain
<br />mining communities. The railroads spurred the development of agriculture by
<br />providing farmers access to these markets. By the 1890's, additional
<br />irrigation systems had greatly increased the quantity of agricultural products
<br />
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