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structures, inundating the entire system and damaging the fields. The lack of resources, both labor and financial, were to blame. Later as more neighbors combined their efforts they constructed slightly larger and longer ditches and diverted water out of the river bottom. In few cases did the early ditch builders have to make a cut of more than five feet in order to place the bottom of their ditch level with the bottom of the stream. They seldom constructed diversion dams. A temporary structure made of bags of sand, downed trees or a combination of stones and brush, required only a few hours to be built. Head gates were an exception rather than a rule. Community Effort The next period of development, known as the community effort, started in 1870. Settlers began to pool their labor, horses and funds and formed mutuals or colonies. They took out even longer ditches than their predecessors, to convey the water to the bench lands that in many cases were over thirty miles or more from the headgate and the river. Corporate Era Next came the “corporate era” , companies like the English Company and Traveler’s Insurance Company, which built big irrigation ditches in almost every major river drainage in Colorado, to encourage people to move to Colorado to live on lands located under the irrigation ditches that they constructed. T. C, Henry worked for Traveler’s Insurance and he knew that little could be accomplished without large canals. He eventually was involved in the construction of 12 large ditches throughout Colorado in the South Platte, Arkansas, Rio Grande and Colorado River Basins. Reservoir Era Many of the streams on the eastern slope became over appropriated by the late 1870’s and early 1880’s. The potential of capturing the runoff from the snow in the mountains and spreading it out over the summer months was seen as additional source of water. This ushered in the era of reservoir and dam building in the late 1800’s. The reservoirs were usually very junior in the priority system and only stored water during the non irrigation season or during periods of high runoff in the spring or summer following intense rainstorms. Many of the first irrigation water storage structures were constructed under existing irrigation systems. The reservoirs were mostly constructed by those who had junior water rights, without it, they couldn’t irrigate their farms directly from the river for long before they were called out by senior rights holders. Almost without exception, the first reservoirs were constructed for the purpose of supplementing the direct diversions from the river by making direct releases to downstream calling senior water rights and then diverting a like amount of water as a result of the exchange that occurred. Many of the first reservoirs that were constructed by these ditch companies were the result of enlarging natural lakes. In 1882 the building of relatively large reservoirs was begun with the construction of Chambers Lake in the channel of the upper reaches of the Cache la Poudre. Many large reservoirs followed that were constructed not only to meet the needs of the farmers but also to meet the needs of the cities. Cheesman Reservoir constructed in 1905 was constructed for the City of Denver.