Where to Learn More

For more information, please visit the following websites:

• The Colorado Foundation for Water Education
• The Boulder Area Sustainability Information Network (BASIN)
• The Carnegie Branch of the Boulder Public Library
• The Western History and Genealogy Department at the Denver Public Library
• City of Boulder, Office of Open Space and Mountain Parks
• CU Denver Center of Preservation Research
• The US Bureau of Reclamation

Here are some resources on the web which have been really helpful to me.

• Ditches and Canals in Colorado, by Michael Holleran   This excellent overview covers just about everything you need to know and includes an excellent bibliography.
• Silver Lake Ditch, by Michael Holleran   A 16 page pamphlet with great pictures.
  
• Anderson Ditch, by Michael Holleran    A 16 page pamphlet with great pictures.
• Farmers Ditch, by Michael Holleran     A 16 page pamphlet with great pictures.
• Boulder County Ditch Directory, 2008  A listing of all Boulder County ditch companies and their contact information.
• Boulder County Ditch Map 2000
  
• The City of Boulder E-mapping system  This map in layers is very helpful if you are trying to find out where a ditch goes in the City, or the name of a ditch, reservoir, street or address. You can see many things on the aerial feature that pops up when you  zoom way in.
  
• The Colorado Dept of Water Resources database on water rights   An amazing resource, once you figure out how to use it.  You must turn off your Pop-up blocking to make it work.  You can search for or look up all water rights in the state and find out size, dates, history, locations, etc.
• The Carnegie Library for Local History search-able database   Be sure to select "Boulder Carnegie: Local History" in the pop-down window.  You can view much of their collection of digitized historic photos and listen to oral histories over the web in the comfort of your own home.
  
• Colorado State University Water Archives    A collection that includes papers from many of the giants of Western water issues.
• The Denver Public Library Western History Archives   An amazing treasure trove of photographic images of the west, including W. H. Jackson.  Check out the Lillybridge photos.
• The Rocky Mountain On-line Archive  
• The California History Room of the California State Library    A digitized collection of historic documents and photos from California's history.
  
• The Colorado Foundation for Water Education, past publications   At this link you can access all past publications from the Foundation, including all past issues of their Headwaters Magazine, as well as their very informative Citizens' Guides series. 
  
• Well Regulation in the South Platte Basin, A Chronology    A well laid out blow-by-blow of an incredibly complicated and confusing series of tragic events.
• Table Mountain Association account of Coffin V Left Hand.  A colorful account of the confrontation that set prior appropriation into western water law.
• Colorado Historic Newspaper Collection   A search-able database of all kinds of very early newspaper articles in early Colorado.  A little studgy and difficult to operate.
• A History of Drought in Colorado    Once you start looking, you will find lots of other cool articles and Power Points by these authors, on the web.
• Land Use History of North America, the Colorado Plateau, Water Development    An overview of water issues on the Colorado Plateau, with a major focus on Arizona, much of which is applicable to Colorado.
• Digital Archive: Previously Unpublished Sketches by Henry W. Elliott united with the Preliminary Field Report of The United States Geological Survey of Colorado and New Mexico, 1869, by F. V. Hayden  Open-File Report 03-384 U.S. Department of the Interior U.S. Geological Survey  From Wyoming to Northern New Mexico, these are some of the earliest images of what our Front Range landscape used to look like.  They are available on a CD from the USGS.
  
• USGS Photographic Library    A digital library of photographs from early USGS expeditions.
• Hydrologic, Riparian, and Agroecosystem Functions of Traditional Acequia Irrigation Systems   Research on how acequia's impact the groundwater, among other things.
• River, Acequia, and Shallow Groundwater Interactions  
• The Village Technology Handbook, by US AID and Volunteers in Technical Assistance    This handbook for third world volunteers has diagrams and instructions for building many 19th century machines, such as the buckboard and the Fresno Scraper.
• The American Society of Mechanical Engineers Landmarks Program    A series of monographs on important engineering inventions, ranging from the Fresno Scraper and the Pelton Wheel, to the Saturn V Rocket and the Stanford Linear Accelerator. A great resource for finding out how things work and the challenges of inventing them.