History Colorado

You are a homestead farmer in the 1930’s and you need water for your family and cows. Add up how much water you need in a day.

5. How Much Water Did You Use During the Dust Bowl?

Which place and time used the most water?

8. Who Used The Most Water?

The top 10 largest wildfires in Colorado's history burned in the last 20 years. Explore the hotspot map to find out more about what caused these fires and what needs to change to prevent them. 

11. Wildfires in Colorado's History

How much water do you think you’ve used today? Add up all the things you did this morning that need water!


9. Your Water Footprint Today

You are a manager of a ski resort in the Rocky Mountains today and you need water to make snow for ski jumps. Add up how much water you need in a day.

7. How Much Water Did You Use In the Rocky Mountains?

Imagine that you are an Ancestral Pueblo person living over 800 years ago and you need water for your village. Add up how much water you need in a day for yourself, the people, and turkeys that live in your village. 

3. How Much Water Did You Use in Mesa Verde?

In this resource kit, we’ll explore water in Colorado history, and how important water has been to people in the past and today. People need water for all kinds of purposes including drinking, cleaning, growing food, energy, recreation, and making things. Think about all of the ways that you used water today. Where does water in Colorado come from? Explore this map to discover common water sources in our state like snow, rain, and major rivers.

1. Where’s the Water? 

Ancestral Pueblo people thrived for thousands of years in a dry environment by respecting water. In the Mesa Verde region, water filters through the sandstone and emerges from seep springs. Ancestral Pueblo people often settled near these natural seep springs across the plateau and in canyon alcoves. They farmed in places that got the most rain and built check dams and terraces to keep water from running off. As the population grew, they built reservoirs to collect spring snowmelt and summer rain. At the end of the 1200s, a twenty-four year-long drought is one factor that may have led the ancestral Pueblo people to migrate out of the Mesa Verde region. 


2. The Mesa Verde Region in the 1200s

This timeline explores major droughts throughout Colorado's past. 

10. Droughts in Colorado's History

Homestead farmers needed water for their families and cows. In Baca County, farmers got water from wells and from irrigation projects that used small canals and ditches to move water to fields from reservoirs. 

4. The Dust Bowl in the 1930s

Mountain towns like Breckenridge were once camps for Ute people who hunted here. Then miners and ranchers settled in and changed the landscape. Now, a growing ski industry and the flood of people visiting and living in our high country have transformed the mountains again. More people and a changing climate have led to a crucial moment in Colorado history: it’s up to us to determine our future.

6. The Rocky Mountains Today

This is a live test page for the Apples to Oranges game for the Water Quest resource kit. 

12. Water Quest - Apples to Oranges

From Mesa Verde to the Dust Bowl, and to the changing contemporary landscape of the Rocky Mountains, discover the important role water has played in Colorado history — and the environmental challenges people faced in the past and present.

Students explore the relationships three different communities had with this precious resource through STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) and geography activities, and consider implications for water usage in times of drought today. This resource kit is designed for upper elementary and middle school earth science and geography classes and can be adapted for lower elementary and high school students.

Guiding Questions for the Water Quest resource kit:

Where does water in Colorado come from? 

How have people in Colorado used water in the past and today? 

How much water have people used for themselves and different activities over time? 

Visit the Living West Exhibit at History Colorado Center in Denver

https://www.historycolorado.org/exhibit/living-west 

Drought and newcomers threaten Southern Colorado's traditional water systems

Ancestral Pueblo Indians of Southwestern Colorado

New Deal Resources on Colorado’s Eastern Plains

Burning Truth: The Beginning of the End for Colorado’s Forests

Colorado River Water Conservation District

Water Quest

Earth and Space Science

Science

Geography

Social Studies

U.S. History

The southeasternmost corner of Colorado was near the center of the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl also severely affected the neighboring states of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, but its impacts were felt as far away as Washington, D.C.

Farmers needed 18 inches of precipitation a year to grow wheat. Between 1930 and 1939, however, southeastern Colorado only received an average of 12.6 inches of rain per year. 


View of a wheat field in (probably) western Colorado; shows a threshing machine, elevator, and horse drawn wagon. Haystacks and hills are in the background.


Negative, The Harvest

Cows need about 15-20 gallons of water every day during the summer months. If they graze on lush foliage with a high water content, however, they need much less water than if they only eat hay or other dry feed. 


A herd of cattle wade in and drink from a pond on a flat plain probably in Texas. Cowboys sit on horses in the distance.


Negative, Trail herd watering

A porcelain clawfoot tub in upper-class homes during the early 1900s could hold 40-60 gallons of water. In rural homes, a galvanized metal washtub might hold 30 gallons. Without indoor plumbing, the tub had to be filled one bucket at a time with water heated on the stove. Families often only took one bath a week, taking turns to use the same bath water. Otherwise, they used a washcloth and a smaller basin of water to wash up. 

Outhouses, of course, require 0 gallons of water!

Metal bathtub made from three sheets of metal, two seamed at the front and back and a third attached to the bottom. The bathtub has a top and bottom rounded edge and two heavy handles at the front and the back.


Metal Bathtub

Women in Baca County during the 1930s did laundry once a week by filling a tub with water and scrubbing dirty clothes on a washboard. They hung clothes on a clothesline to dry outdoors. The process of washing, drying, and folding an entire family’s clothes could take all day. 


Washboard with wood frame and metal scrub board


Washboard, National Washboard No. 801

In 1915, the grass was waist high and dark green. To newcomers, this land seemed promising for farming. Farmers were only seeing the good side of a drought cycle. They didn’t realize that native grasses held soil down in dry times, and that the soil was fragile. When the heavy rains of the 1920s stopped, fields began drying up. Drought struck in the early 1930s. Lush fields turned brown, and hot, dry winds started to blow. When the wind blew, the land would simply blow away. Without prairie grasses to hold the soil down, winds turned fields to dust.


Dust storm in southeastern Colorado circa 1940s

Resource Kits

Object Library

Museums

Water Quest

4. The Dust Bowl in the 1930s

Guiding Question

Baca County