Larimer County District Court Map Collection

The Larimer County District Court Map Collection contains maps of water-related structures used to establish water rights and settle disputes in district courts. Under Colorado law, district courts presided over water matters until 1969 when Colorado's Water Rights Determination and Administration Act required district courts to transfer water-related information to newly created water courts.

Colorado was one of the first states to create a water administration system in the American West. The system developed over time and was the result of court decisions, the state constitution and legislation. The state officially adopted the prior appropriation doctrine that divided water on a priority basis when it drafted its constitution in 1876. This method of using water was already in use in some western states and territories. Prior appropriation differed from water law in eastern portions of the United States that followed the riparian doctrine and allowed only those living along the banks of a watercourse to use the water therein. Farmers did not need to divert water from rivers and streams for irrigation because the amount of rainfall was sufficient for crop growth in the humid East, as opposed to most areas in the West. The prior appropriation doctrine was a distinct departure from established United States' water law and each western state incorporated the doctrine differently.

Beginning in the late 1850s and early 1860s, appropriations in Colorado occurred when water users such as miners and farmers physically diverted water from rivers and streams to their land or mining operations. No formal system existed to record these diversions or their order of priority. By the 1870s, the population of Colorado grew, water demand increased and a system regulating water diversions became necessary as a series of conflicts demonstrated.

The Cache la Poudre River flows through Larimer County into Weld County and its valley was one of the first and most intensively irrigated areas of Colorado. Euroamerican settlers began diverting its water for irrigation in the early 1860s. The Union Colony arrived in the state in 1870 and established present day Greeley, near the Cache la Poudre's confluence with the South Platte River. Greeley residents diverted water from the Cache la Poudre in large, community-built canals. The increased use of Poudre water created conflict in the dry summer of 1874 when upstream Fort Collins residents diverted all of the river's available water and deprived the downstream Union Colonists of their prior, and therefore senior, water rights.

Within five years of the 1874 conflict, Greeley and Fort Collins representatives traveled to Denver and helped shape the first major round of irrigation legislation in Colorado. The 1879 Irrigation Act empowered district courts to determine the priority right of each water user on each stream according to when a ditch or canal was constructed and water was first diverted and put to beneficial use. The right to store water in reservoirs was also affirmed by the legislature in 1879.

According to the Map and Statement Act of 1903, those petitioning district courts for a water claim filed statements with basic information including a map of permanent ink indicating the name of the water claimants, the name of the new or enlarged ditch or reservoir, location of land including section, township and range, headgate location, length, width and depth of water, carrying capacity in cubic feet per second and estimated cost of the proposed structure. The amount of water claimed and the water source, the date of construction and the number of acres to be irrigated were also included. The maps and statements were reviewed by the State Engineer who filed a copy with the state's official records and returned an approved copy to the county clerk and recorder of the district court in which the headgate of the water structure was located. These maps, sometimes called filing statements, along with earlier maps with less information were used in district court cases as evidence.

Many of the court cases in the Larimer County District Court Map Collection were water adjudication cases. Prior to 1969, water rights were adjudicated -- or recognized by the court -- in groups and listed in one decree identified by one Larimer County District Court case number. In this collection, case numbers 1591, 2031, 2378, 2409, 2798 and 5362 are examples of water adjudication cases granting water rights to claimants.

Case number 3595, decided in 1919, involved the New Cache la Poudre Irrigation Company, the Josh Ames Irrigating Ditch Company, and the New Mercer Ditch Company. The case determined the abandonment of water rights and transferred a portion of the abandoned water from the Josh Ames Ditch to the New Mercer Ditch in Larimer County.

Case number 11217 contains the largest amount of maps in the collection. This was a water adjudication case from 1953 involving ditches, reservoirs and wells and is sometimes referred to as the "Coffin case" referring to Judge Claude C. Coffin who ruled some wells were non-tributary to the Cache la Poudre and other identified watercourses. These wells were declared non-tributary and granted water decrees before major groundwater legislation regulating and designating tributary and non-tributary wells was enacted in Colorado.

Researchers can do further research on the other court cases that form part of this collection at the Water Division One Branch office located in Greeley, Colorado, or at the Water Division One Water Court located at the Weld County District Court in Greeley. The State Engineer's office, part of the Colorado Division of Water Resources, keeps copies of filing statements and maps associated with water adjudications and is in the process of digitizing their collection. Researchers may visit their records section at the main office of the Colorado Division of Water Resources in Denver. Also, the Colorado State Archives is a repository for most district court cases, including water rights cases dating from 1861.