Collection Guide

All Collections

Platte River Basin

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Signature Collections

Colorado's Waters Digital Archive
Current selections focus on the Colorado, Platte, and Rio Grande river basins and feature studies on water resources development and water supply. These reports and accompanying maps define water concerns and issues of the past that are valuable to informing present and future water management. Subsequent additions to the Digital Archive will relate to various aspects of water in Colorado and contributions made by Coloradoans to water activities and may include additional reports, correspondence, diaries, photographs, case files, and other materials.

Galloway-Stone River Expedition, 1909
Documentation of the three-month river expedition river expedition of Nathanial Galloway, Julius Stone and Raymond Cogswell, generally considered by historians of the Colorado River to be the first river trip undertaken purely for pleasure. The collection consists of diaries, photographs, and a short history.
Documentation of the three-month river expedition river expedition of Nathanial Galloway, Julius Stone and Raymond Cogswell, generally considered by historians of the Colorado River to be the first river trip undertaken purely for pleasure. The collection consists of diaries, photographs, and a short history. http://westernwaters.org/index.php/browse/bySet/4

Hoover Dam
After years of surveys and countless hours of planning, the United States government announced the Boulder Canyon Project. Consisting of a dam in the Black Canyon area and a canal to irrigate the Imperial Valley, the Boulder Canyon Project was the first of its kind in US history. The arid southwest would finally be made farmable and productive for the US economy. The Bureau of Reclamation had constructed previous dams throughout the American West, but none of this magnitude. The dam was to be built directly in the path of the powerful Colorado.

John Muir Papers
Muir was instrumental in the establishment of Yosemite, Sequoia, Grand Canyon, Mt. Rainier. Approximately 75% of the extant papers of Muir are housed at the University of the Pacific, Holt-Atherton Special Collections.

Karl Bodmer
During the years 1832 to 1834, the German naturalist Prince Maximilian zu Wied led an expedition to the Upper Missouri region of North America. The description of this journey, Travels in the Interior of North America, published after his return to Europe, provided one of the most significant collections of ethnological information available concerning the nineteenth-century American Plains Indian.

Powell's Exploration of Colorado River
During his expeditions John Wesley Powell compiled data and a number of sketches describing the landscape. This collection contains various writings and geographical publications to which Powell contributed.

Audio Video Collections

Water is for Fightin' [full record]

Contributed by The University of Utah

In Utah and the arid West, life revolves around water. Land use decisions, land development, law, politics, and economic growth have all been shaped by water or the lack thereof. As demand for land and water increases, Westerners must not only be able to determine and protect rights to water, but also to preserve the sanctity of their rivers, lakes, and streams. Water is for Fightin' offers the perspectives and insights of nine experts who are working to protect our waters.

Water: Lifeblood of the Southwest [full record]

Contributed by the Southwest Waters Committee of the Sierra Club

"Population growth, dams, and irrigation projects have dramatically transformed the waters of the Southwest. Alterations along the Colorado, the area’s biggest river, have been severe and numerous, but all waters of the Southwest will be increasingly impaired unless we change our ways. This video provides an overview of the impacts and challenges. Some actions and tools are suggested to ensure that our limited waters are used more wisely."

Soaking the Desert: The Story of Water in Utah [full record]

Contributed by KUER at The University of Utah

KUER reporters set to find out whether Utah truly needs the Bear River Dam, or whether conservation could be the answer. What they found was another story entirely……..the story of a water system bloated with inefficiency and waste, that unnecessarily costs taxpayers millions of dollars and forces them to pay for the water use of everyone else on the system…..The state's conservation plan deliberately bypasses many proven conservation techniques other Western states adopted two decades ago. And tax subsidies hide layer upon layer of a vast water bureaucracy from public view. No activist nor state official really knows how much money and water could be saved if the system functioned efficiently. And no one who has the power to change it is committed to doing so. This is the story you'll hear in this three part series.