PUB00068

• Year: 1952
• Title: A Hundred Years of Irrigatioin in Colorado, 100 Years of Organized and Continuous Irrigation
• Author: CWCB
• Description: Irrigation history of Colorado
• Publications - Doc Type: Historical

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The Early History of Irrigation in Colorado,
and the Doctrine of Appropriation.

6

Judge A.W. McHendrie
Irrigation Attorney, Pueblo, Colorado

As a background for a brief discussion of the above subject,. permit
me to suggest that throughout the world the history of civilization is
the history of irrigation.

.

When primitive man first emerged from savagery, ceased to live a
nomadic life, dependent upon the slaughter of animals and upon wild
fruits and vegetables, for subsistence, the cultivation and.conservation
of these vegetable products was the first step in his upward journey.
This in turn was based upon the artificial application of water in the
irrigation of those crops. This was true because the first attempts
along this line were confined to the more salubrious and gentle climates
of the semiarid regions. The research and study of prehistoric civiliza-
tion by students, scholars and archaeologists have definitely establish-
ed that for centuries before the beginning of recorded history, irriga-
tion of vast areas of land for the support of a large population, was
the basis of food production for the major portion of the then inhab-
itants of the globe. In the valleys of the Nile, the Euphrates and
other large streams, irrigation was practiced on a tremendous scale at
least 2,000 years before the birth of Christ. In the Valley of the Nile
alone, there then existed irrigation systems of canals and reservoirs
more extensive, perhaps, than any such systems in operation to-day. It
is known that thisocivilization perished because of some impairment or
failure of the water supply; what occasions this failure is wholly a
matter of speculation and conjecture.

In any event. it is known that the practice of irrigated agriculture
was transmitted by the Moors to Spain,' and in turn by the Spaniards to
the Western hemisphere in their conquest .of this continent follov;ing its
discovery by Columbus. The Spanish conquistadores brought the experience,
knowledge and practice of irrig~tion to the southern portion of North
America,' although these pioneers found in' their first explorations in
. that region, tribes of Pueblo Indians, the successors of cliffdwellers,
depending upon irrigation for the production of a major part of their
food.

.

And particularly connected with the present consideration, the
Spaniards. constructed and successfully operated irrigation'works in
what is now the, state of New Mexico, many years before the Pilgrim
Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock, and the descendants of those hardy and
enterprising pioneers in turn brought irrigation to Colorado.

.

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In passing, it might be observed that it is and always has been
common'knowledge, that the successful growing of crops depends upon the
application to those crops, of moisture, either by natural precipitation
or by the .artificial application of water to fertile lands by means of
irrigation. As a convenient yard stick for the land requirements of
water supply, some students have divided the land areas into four major

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