Papers of W. D. Farr

William Daven "W.D." Farr was a water leader, cattleman, and businessman in northern Colorado. He served on Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District's board and the Greeley Water and Sewer Board for forty years and was extensively involved in other local and national water and agricultural organizations.

Farr was born in Greeley in 1910, the first child of Harry and Hazel Farr. He learned irrigated farming as a boy by assisting his father and early on developed an enthusiasm for hunting and fishing. He spent two high school summers working cattle on a ranch west of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, which greatly influenced his later career.

After high school, Farr left Colorado to attend the University of Wisconsin but returned during his second semester due to a severe sinus infection. This brought him back to irrigated farming as well as his father's lamb-feeding business. W.D. became engaged in finding solutions to various water problems and also helping with the lambs. After discussions with Warren Monfort, a prominent Greeley cattleman, new cattle-feeding techniques caught Farr's interest. He began trying these out in 1930 and quickly made a profit.

The severe drought of the early 1930s motivated Farr to work for a new reliable water supply for northern Colorado. Farr's work alongside his father and many others turned into the Colorado-Big Thompson transmountain diversion project. Farr was appointed to the board of the project's overseers, the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District (NCWCD), in 1955, and he served for more than forty years. He was also appointed chairman of the Municipal Subdistrict of the NCWCD, which built the Windy Gap project after a decade of negotiations, led by Farr.

With his increasing experience and interest in water issues, Farr was appointed to the Greeley Water Board in 1958 and served for 39 years. His local involvement in water and national involvement in cattle organizations, including the American National Cattlemen's Association among many others, contributed to being appointed by President Richard Nixon to the Water Pollution Control Advisory Board in 1970. Farr's extensive professional service continued throughout the next two decades and into the 1990s, including a term as the first chairman of the Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority, an organization created in 1981. Personal interests included the Boy Scouts of America, Rotary, the Congregational Church, and the Greeley Independence Stampede.

Farr received many awards and honors in his life, from a number of organizations. He was named Aspinall Leader of the Year by the Colorado Water Congress in 1985, inducted into the Colorado Agriculture Hall of Fame in 1995, and named the 1999 Citizen of the West. He received the honor of having the NCWCD pump plant at Lake Granby named for him in 1994.

W.D. married Gladell Judy (who dropped her first name and went by "Judy") in 1933. They had four sons: John Daven, William Robert ("Bill"), Harry Richard ("Dick"), and Randal James ("Randy"). Judy passed away in 1997, and W.D. followed in 2007. For additional information on Farr's life and family, see Daniel Tyler, WD Farr: Cowboy in the Boardroom (U. of Oklahoma Press, 2011).