IKKIGATION IN NORTHERN COLORADO. 3 



In 1870 occurred two events of great importance in the develop- 

 ment of the valle3^ The first was the completion of the Denver Pa- 

 cific Railroad from Cheyenne to Denver, which afforded a safe and 

 quick means of travel from the East and solved, to a great extent, 

 the problem of supplies. The second was the establishment of the 

 Union Colony in the vicinity of the present town of Greeley. 



The first work of this colony was the construction of the Greeley 

 Canal No. 3 to water the town site and the lands adjoining.^ In the 

 fall of 1870 work on the Greeley Canal No. 2 was started, and water 

 was carried in the canal the following spring. The Greeley Canal 

 No. 2 is notable for the fact that it is the first large canal built by 

 community effort in Colorado and also the first built to Avater ex- 

 tensive areas of bench land. Mistakes were made in the design and 

 construction of these canals and the cost was many times the esti- 

 mated amount, but the colonists kept fighting against disheartening 

 odds and were finally reAvarded by success. 



The success of the Greeley colony in canal building was such that 

 construction by corporations or community effort soon almost entirely 

 supplanted individual effort, and by 1882 practically all the large 

 canals of the valley had been built. 'Since 1882 the development has 

 consisted of extensions of canals already constructed, the construction 

 of ditches to bring water across from other drainage basins, and the 

 building of the reservoir systems of the valley made necessary by the 

 diversification of crops to include those requiring late irrigation. 



METEOROLOGY, 



Meteorological records have been taken at the State Agricultural 

 College at Fort Collins for many years and are complete beginning 

 with 1887. (Fig. 1.) While there is a slight variation in climatic 

 conditions over the valley proper, due to a gradual transition from 

 a plains to a foothill climate, this difference is so small as to be of 

 no significance so far as irrigation is concerned, and the Fort Collins 

 records may be taken as representative of the whole valley. They 

 show the chief characteristics of the climate to be a light rainfall, with 

 correspondingly few stormy days and much sunshine, a wide range 

 in daily and seasonal temperature, low relative humidity, a moder- 

 ately high wind movement, and a comparatively low rate of evapora- 

 tion. In Table 1 is given a summary of 31 years of the Fort Collins 

 records. 



1 See Second Biennial Report, State Engineer of Colorado, 1883-84, by Col. E. S. 

 Nettleton. Also History of Greeley and the Union Colony, by David Boyd. Also History 

 of Larimer County, by Ansel Watrous. Also University of Colorado Historical Collec- 

 tions : The Union Colony at Greeley, 1869-1871, by James F. Willard. 



