Records of the San Luis Valley Irrigation District

The San Luis Valley Irrigation District has been delivering water to San Luis Valley farmers for over a century. Formed in 1908 with the intention of securing funding for large-scale irrigation projects, the district, based in Center, Colorado, manages the Rio Grande Reservoir near the river's headwaters in Hinsdale County.

In the arid San Luis Valley, farmers found it essential to work together to irrigate using canals and ditches. To this end, a group of men formed the Farmers Union Ditch Company in 1887 and began creating an irrigation system for the region. As a result of their junior water rights, the company, later named the Farmers Union Irrigation Company, began to explore the possibility of a reservoir at the Rio Grande headwaters in 1904. However, the U.S. Department of Interior denied their plans, and the company ran into problems acquiring adequate financing.

To solve their problems, the company turned to forming an irrigation district under Colorado's 1905 Irrigation District Act. This created a municipal corporation with the ability to issue bonds. The San Luis Valley Irrigation District formed on December 28, 1908, and included lands in Saguache, Costilla, and Rio Grande counties. All Farmers Union Irrigation Company assets were purchased and financing to fund the reservoir project began. Construction started in 1910, and water was first provided to residents of the valley in 1912. Two years later, by the end of the construction of the Rio Grande Reservoir (also known as the Farmers Union Reservoir), the San Luis Valley Irrigation District sold $700,000 in bonds.

Economic hardship fell on the district during the Great Depression. When at a meeting the inability to pay upcoming loan installments was discussed, there was a unanimous vote to raise the tax levy to generate funds. The payment was not made in 1932 and was called into question when asking to finance repairs on their infrastructure. During 1933 and 1934 the district had difficulty paying loans again, so members decided to work with the government's Reconstruction Finance Corporation to secure the bonds of shareholders.

Later decades brought the need for system repairs and improvements. This included transmountain diversion of water over Weminuche Pass in the 1950s and repairs to the Rio Grande Dam spillway in the 1970s. The San Luis Valley Irrigation District celebrated the centennial of Rio Grande Reservoir in 2012 and continues to maintain 135 miles of irrigation ditches and 60 miles of drainage ditches in Alamosa, Rio Grande, and Saguache counties.