In 1860, when Colorado was still a territory and the gold rush was on, farmers who settled on the eastern plains were looking for another source of wealth—water.
The state’s prairie is mostly without rivers, but many creeks flow out of the Rocky Mountains. So, to irrigate their crops, one group of farmers set their sights on a creek known as the Left Hand—a name given to the stream that was also the English name of Chief Niwot of the Arapaho tribe that lived in the area not far from present-day Boulder, Colorado. The farmers formed the Left Hand Ditch Company and began using the water.
When drought struck the region, the farmers had to look for alternative sources to irrigate their crops. The legend is that a Native American called “Indian Jack” showed them that they could get more water high up in the Rockies from a different creek now called the South St. Vrain and divert it over a ridge. The Left Hand Ditch group built a small dam and dug a half-mile-long ditch that took all of the water, drying up the stream, and eventually dumping it into the Left Hand Creek, and so, their problem was solved—or so they thought.
Unbeknownst to them, their diversion would send a ripple through the expectations of some who thought they could use water simply because it crossed their property, a system called riparian law that’s used in eastern states. Also, they were moving water from one watershed to a completely different one, even though it was close by.
Sean Cronin, the executive director of the St. Vrain and Left Hand Water Conservancy District (SVLHWCD), said, “Moving water around in ways that weren’t quite what people had been accustomed to on the East Coast with riparian law was something that was very new, different, and radical at that time.” SVLHWCD is a government entity that works to conserve and protect water in a 500-square-mile area from high in the Rocky Mountains down to the plains with many farms. As its name shows, the district includes both the St. Vrain and Left Hand Creek watersheds as well as the city of Longmont.
Today, Cronin and other officials are at the location of the dam, not far from Ward, Colorado, which, when it was first built, was just trees, logs, and dirt but is now a 12-foot-long steel structure mounted in concrete. Back in the 1800s, it did the job—so well that farmers down on the plains who depended on the St. Vrain for water began to notice.
Water War Leads to Colorado Doctrine of Prior Appropriation
Cronin tells the story of Rueben Coffin, who in the 1860s homesteaded at what is now called the Standstone Ranch in Longmont. One day, Coffin saw that the St. Vrain Creek running through his property had dried up. He and some of his fellow farmers ventured into the mountains—about a day’s trip on horseback—and found the South St. Vrain, a tributary of the St. Vrain Creek, was dammed and realized the water was no longer going down the creek but rather into a ditch. So, Coffin and his colleagues tore up the dam—some say they blew it up with dynamite—igniting a water war.
Learning what happened, the Left Hand Ditch group rebuilt their structure and stationed armed guards to defend it. Cronin says that legend has it weapons were involved, but that can’t be verified.
Terry Plummer, the superintendent of the Left Hand Ditch Company today says he has the original minutes from the company describing the earthen dam structure and that armed guards were stationed to defend it from being destroyed at night. He says the records don’t indicate that gunshots were fired.
Fortunately, bloodshed was avoided, and ultimately the controversy ended up in court when the Left Hand Ditch Company sued the Coffin-led farmers for destroying their dam.
The case (Coffin v. Left Hand Ditch Co.) went to the Colorado Supreme Court, which in 1882 upheld the right of the Left Hand farmers to build their dam and take water—even though they didn’t own the adjacent property. The ruling completely rejected the riparian law of water that existed in the East. The court said that, while the prior appropriation doctrine was recognized in the Colorado Constitution in 1876, it had existed from the date of the earliest appropriations of water within Colorado, which by European settlers was likely in about 1859. The decision gave birth to the Colorado Doctrine of Prior Appropriation, sometimes called “first in time, first in right,” which has been the basis for water allocation in nine states in the West ever since.
140 Years Later Collaboration Leads to Modernization
In 2024, more than 140 years later, the Left Hand Ditch Company still maintains the dam, which sends water from the South St. Vrain down to about 460 farmers. The diversion off the creek and into the ditch has a gate that can be lowered when not all the water is needed by the ditch company shareholders. The creek is then rewetted as water flows over the dam and down the South St. Vrain.
Up until spring of this year, the ditch owners had to travel up the mountain—a three-hour round trip by car—and manually lower or raise the gate, cranking it with a hand winch. Now, Plummer opens and closes the large metal plate using electricity from solar power—and a cellphone. He can operate the gate on a real-time basis from anywhere instead of having to drive up to the diversion. If there’s a storm dumping water and he doesn’t need it, he will lower the gate.
A collaboration between Plummer’s ditch company, the SVLHWCD, and the Left Hand Water District paid for this year’s modernization. The use of smartphone technology in this area was the challenge. Bruce Bacon of the firm Hydrologik installed the equipment and said that the location is about as remote as you can get using cell technology, and they had to spend time tweaking the antennas on the device trying to figure out if they could get a signal.
Plummer says the threat of violence is not a thing of the past, especially when you’re traveling on someone else’s land to protect your water right. He said he'd had a .38 caliber pistol pulled on him on the road to the diversion. He talked the person down, and then attorneys worked it out. Plummer said it's not uncommon for guns to be pulled, although it's rare. Another person had a shotgun pulled on him down in the valley. “The old adage, that ‘whiskey's for drinking, but water's for fighting’ is really true in the water industry,” Plummer added.
The new technology also makes accounting for every drop of water accurate, something Plummer is focused on for good reason. He said that he has been in meetings with the assistant district attorney, who pointed her finger at him and said they would come after him if he takes one drop of water that is not in priority, meaning his ditch company is not entitled to it.
Now, technology may save both time—and conflict.
Note: Sean Cronin is on the board of directors of H2O Media, Ltd.
© H2O Media, Ltd.
This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico including Aspen Public Radio.