The Water Supply Infrastructure of Early Denver

Abstract

The City of Denver originated as a gold-mining town. Its geographic location and semi-arid environment posed unique challenges to the development of its water supply infrastructure. Multi-scalar historical and archeological analyses, reveal how the city coped with the challenges of water scarcity and distribution over time, illustrating the evolution of water management practices, and the ways in which infrastructure and governance systems evolved to meet changing needs and priorities. Historical analysis maps the changes in urban water infrastructure (cisterns, ditches, sewers, artesian wells, and reservoirs) using a systematic documentation review of the Denver newspaper citations between 1860 and 1929. This is corroborated through contextual investigation and archeological excavations. Taken together, the research demonstrates how the residents of early Denver were forced to continually seek new water sources for distribution even after other provisional priorities such as sewage management and flood control were initiated.