Records of the North Poudre Irrigation Company

Since 1901, the North Poudre Irrigation Company (NPIC) has supplied water to Northern Colorado's Boxelder Creek Valley farmers and ranchers through its system of canals and reservoirs. Today, the company owns nineteen reservoirs and approximately 200 miles of ditches and laterals. Reflecting broader trends in Colorado history, the system provides an increasing portion of its water to municipal users.

In the 1870s, Larimer County residents recognized that an irrigation canal could divert from the North Fork Cache la Poudre River to enable cultivation of the lands north of Fort Collins. Local business owners incorporated a series of irrigation companies that formed and failed in quick succession: North Fork Irrigation Canal Company (1878), the North Poudre, Box Elder, and Lone Tree Canal Company (1879), and the North Poudre Land, Canal and Reservoir Company (1880).

The North Poudre Land, Canal and Reservoir Company used money from eastern investment companies to fund construction of the North Fork Canal (later renamed the North Poudre Canal), but in 1886 Traveler's Insurance Company foreclosed on the ditch and 16,000 acres of company land used to secure the loans. F.C. Grable purchased the renamed North Poudre Land and Canal Company in 1896 but was unable to make the enterprise profitable.

Northern Colorado investors bought the partially-constructed system in 1901 and incorporated the North Poudre Irrigation Company. The company located its offices in Greeley and increased the number of available capital stock shares, using the funds to complete the North Poudre Canal and construct several large reservoirs: Fossil Creek, Halligan, and Reservoir No. 15. NPIC also acquired higher priority diversion rights by strategically selling Douglas Reservoir to the Poudre Valley Reservoir Company and purchasing stock in the Larimer No. 2 Ditch, New Mercer Canal, and Box Elder Ditch and Reservoir Company. These improvements and the water exchanges they enabled spurred farmers to purchase company-owned land and brought about the founding of Wellington, Colorado, in 1903.

In 1912, investors again reorganized the company, which had moved its offices to Fort Collins six years earlier. They increased the number of capital stock shares to 10,000 and reincorporated NPIC as a mutual ditch company. That same year, NPIC merged with the Mountain Supply Ditch Company, originally incorporated in 1905. NPIC then took over the Box Elder Ditch and Reservoir Company in 1916, thus increasing its system substantially in a small number of years.

By the 1930s and 1940s, NPIC worried less about financial viability and more about how to maintain and expand its aging system. During this time, the company was able to rehabilitate some of its facilities with help from the Civilian Conservation Corps. Following approval of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project in 1937, NPIC became the largest holder of C-BT units (40,000 units), which were delivered from the Cache la Poudre River to the NPIC system through the newly-constructed North Poudre Supply Canal (also called the Munroe Gravity Canal).

As the twentieth century progressed, NPIC sought additional control of the water in its system. In 1964, the company moved its offices closer to its shareholders and system assets by relocating to Wellington. In 1970, NPIC upgraded Halligan Dam and constructed a project first discussed in 1905, Park Creek Reservoir, which held water from the North Fork Poudre River. After decades of dealing with destructive flash floods, NPIC partnered with the Soil Conservation Service for the Boxelder Creek Watershed Project. From 1977 to 1982, five flood control dams were built on Boxelder Creek. In 1978, NPIC voted to rehabilitate its entire system of canals and reservoirs, a project the company pursued through the 1980s.

Beginning in the 1970s, NPIC faced increasing pressure from urban development as Northern Colorado's population grew. Subdivisions sprang up along the edges of NPIC reservoirs and laterals. Towns looking to secure water for an increasing number of people began to acquire NPIC shares. Wellington negotiated use of Reservoir No. 3. In 1972, NPIC traded Joe Wright Reservoir and Michigan Ditch to the City of Fort Collins for improved water rights, and in 2004 Fort Collins purchased Halligan Reservoir, though NPIC retained its senior storage right. The transfer of water from agriculture to urban purposes accelerated quickly. Today, NPIC remains committed to its agricultural stockholders, but municipalities use approximately 75 percent of NPIC water.