Irrigation Photograph Collection

This collection of photographs, in whole or in part, was used for instruction of and study by irrigation engineering students. It originated with the establishment of irrigation engineering as a course of study in 1890 at Colorado Agricultural College (now Colorado State University). That course was also the first of its kind in the United States.

College catalogs from 1890 until 1901 include this sentence (or a variation) within the description of the irrigation engineering department: "There is also available, belonging to the Department and to the Professor of Engineering, collections of photographs and plans of engineering and irrigation structures in Colorado and other States of the Union, as well as in Spain, Italy, France, Algeria, Egypt, India, and Australia." This refers specifically to at least the lantern slides in this collection; the glass plate negatives, since they extend to other subject areas, may have been from a central file or have a different origin. Some are associated with the Agricultural Experiment Station.

The professor referenced above is Louis G. Carpenter, the professor of physics and engineering (later changed to physics and irrigation engineering) starting in 1888. Carpenter maintained a keen interest in the history of irrigation development around the world. He served as director of the Agricultural Experiment Station from 1899 until 1911 and as Colorado State Engineer from 1903 to 1905.

Though the collection's path after Carpenter departed is unclear, the civil engineering department seems to have retained the materials for decades but intended to dispose of them, apparently sometime in the 1980s. One of the collection donors, James Ruff, an emeritus faculty member of Colorado State University's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, saved the materials from disposal and stored them for, he believes, around thirty years, until 2016.