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February 2024

Alpe at Lake Grandby spillway.

Women in Water: Alyssa Alpe

By Stories

Alyssa Alpe has been a student of history her whole life. It started in her early years where she grew up driving by Windy Gap reservoir, listening to her mother, a former Colorado State University Extension Agent on the North Platte Basin Round table in Jackson County, say that water was THE issue in Colorado.

When she started college, everyone questioned Alpe’s decision to pursue a history degree, unsure of the careers available for historians. But Alpe knew she, “loved researching in the archives to piece together a narrative that interpreted the story of the past,” and that passion would lend itself to her career somehow.

After graduate school, Alpe landed a job at a law firm where she discovered the world of records management, a profession focused on understanding records and making them accessible to others to tell a story or research an issue.

“It’s about being a ‘knowledge keeper’ and finding a way to communicate that knowledge to others,” Alpe said.

In 2015, Alpe was hired as a Records Data Analyst for Northern Water. Alpe has been with Northern Water for eight and a half years now and she has advanced in her career to the Records & Administrative Services Manager.

In the day-to-day, Alpe balances the managerial and Board of Director support roles along with the records and information management program. She can be found figuring out the best way to collect and store records, researching any number of topics like the origins of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project, or making plans for archival projects like digitizing collections to make them accessible. In the future, she hopes to add another job to her plate to work with the communications team to develop the public history components of their website.

“You have to have a bit of background on many issues,” Alpe said. “You don’t have to know everything, but you have to know a little bit about a lot.”

Q&A with Alyssa Alpe

Alpe at Lake Grandby spillway.

Q: What do you enjoy most about working with/studying water?

“The fact that it’s a constant state of learning. I don’t feel that you ever get to a point where you know everything about water because there is so much to learn. You’re constantly learning and that’s my favorite part.”

Q: What is the most challenging aspect of your job?

“It’s a challenge to keep up with the complexities of managing water in the United States and in our region. There’s been a real transition in terms of the institutional knowledge of folks that have retired during COVID-19 and moved onto different spaces of life. Transmitting that knowledge down the line to the next generation is a constant evolution. My hope is that through records and information management, that knowledge is accessible to our future selves 25 years down the line.”

Q: What has your experience so far been like being a woman in this line of work?

“Northern Water has modernized a lot since I started in terms of more diversity and women into this space. That’s been really encouraging to see. And I think further down the road we will have more and more of that. We have women in leadership roles across the organization which has been a shift from when I started 8 years ago. So, there is a legacy being built by women in these spaces that have historically been male dominated, and their voices will be preserved in our records for the future.”

Q: What’s a project you have worked on in this field that you are most proud of?

“When I first started with Northern Water, our former public information officer was working with a historian over at UNC, Michael Welsh, and he was writing a book along with the recently passed, former Colorado Supreme Court Justice, Greg Hobbs, who wrote prolifically about water in the west. They were working on the book Confluence: The Story of Greeley Water. We were able to dig into our records and give Michael these old newspaper clippings. He really appreciated that because we were able to give him pieces of information that contributed to this big project about the story of water in Greeley. I really loved that project because I got to work with Justice Hobbs before he passed and Michael Welsh as a historian.” 

Q: What or who has been an inspiration to you throughout your work experience?

“My number one mentor in all my life has been a former professor of mine, Heather Thiessen-Reily. She is a professor of history at Western Colorado University in Gunnison. She has done a lot of work with the National Park Service, working on public history projects. She has always been my inspiration because she is so driven. I am still connected with her, and she’s been a valuable person that I still go to if I have questions about something.”

Q: What is something you have learned about the water industry that you didn’t know before you started your role?

“It’s been hard for me to fully comprehend the prior appropriation system and how water is allocated because it is very complex. But it is also fundamental because it’s how we get water to our taps. I did not come into my role with Northern Water with a background in water. It’s been an evolution of learning and that’s the system that has been the most complex for me to learn, especially in terms of keeping the records and indexing with the appropriate terminology to be able to track back the history.”

Q: What advice would you give to other women that may want to get into this type of work?

“Be open to anything. You don’t know how that job will evolve. I didn’t think I would get into water when I left grad school and landed at a law firm working in records. I was just trying to navigate life after college. Be open to opportunities because it may not happen overnight, but eventually you do end up navigating your career towards what you want to do. It can get a little discouraging when you are trying to wedge your career into one path, and it’s not working out. But I believe all those experiences come together to make a package that will land you where you need to be, especially if you’re knowledgeable and passionate about things. Ask questions. And always be open to learning.”

“The other part of it is to be engaged with the public agencies, community organizations, your town, and other communities in the region that you may not know anything about. Learn about the region and its many histories, particularly if you are looking to work in the water industry in Northern Colorado.”

Just Add Water: Benjamin Eaton’s Life Experiences before Settling in the Poudre River Valley

By Historic Stories

Benjamin Eaton grew up in Ohio in the 1830s and 1840s.  Upon reaching adulthood, he undertook a series of tasks and adventures that prepared him well for the future role he would play in settling the Poudre River Valley.  While still in Ohio, he was a surveyor assistant on the new railroads passing near his family’s farm.  He moved to Oakland Township in Louisa County, Iowa, in 1854 where he taught school and initially farmed on shares.  He joined the Columbus City, Iowa, Pikes Peak Expedition in spring 1859 that departed for the Colorado gold fields.  The group followed the South Platte River into Colorado, camping one night at the mouth of the Poudre River. 

That summer, the Iowans searched for gold, encountering the rules and technology being used in the mining districts which permitted everyone to join the search for gold.  The Miner’s Codes allocated land and water in a first-in-time, first-in-right manner, making sure that each took only the amount of land and water that he/she could actively utilize.  Ditches were dug to move the water out of the streams to the sluiceways.  The mining camps had a great need for hay (fuel) for the horsepower needed to keep the mining operations active.  Observing this scene and noting its function and needs would serve Eaton well later in life.

After six months, all members of the Columbus City Expedition, except Eaton, returned to Iowa.  He decided to check out other mining camps and met another Iowan, Jim Hill, from Wappelo, Iowa – a community less than 20 miles from Eaton’s Iowa farm.  In December 1860, Eaton and Hill joined the Second Baker Expedition to search for gold in the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado.  The effort was unsuccessful with miners dispersing.  Eaton and Hill passed through Fort Garland on their way south where they observed the Hispanic irrigation developments.  They begin farming on shares at the Maxwell Land Grant, in Cimarron, New Mexico, working within the acequia system for constructing, maintaining and operating an irrigation ditch. 

In late summer 1863, Eaton and Hill departed Cimarron, heading toward Denver, with the intent of visiting Iowa (and, for Eaton, Ohio) before returning to Colorado to homestead.  Where to homestead?  Before heading east, employed as drivers of freight wagons, they returned to the mouth of the Poudre and camped, again.   About 12 miles up the Poudre, where the valley widened and natural hay meadows existed, they staked their claims with a hastily constructed claim ‘shack’. 

In March, 1864, Eaton marries Rachel Hill, Jim Hill’s sister.  Early summer they depart Iowa for Colorado via covered wagon, to take up the homestead claims made the previous fall.  As they travel up the Poudre River in July 1864, Eaton notes the extremely lush native hay meadows at their homestead.  Their arrival occurred a little more than one month after the flood that forced the military to move their camp from Laporte to a new site – Fort Collins.  Eaton realized, that July, that he could make a large sum of money transporting the large supply of hay from his farm to mining camps – camps he knew well. 

Over the next six years, Eaton constructs the B.H. Eaton ditch to water his hay meadows at times other than nature’s one natural irrigation each spring.  He establishes a prosperous farm and helps the growing community build its first schoolhouse along the banks of the Whitney Ditch, just north of the Poudre River, southwest of today’s downtown Windsor. 

In late 1869 Eaton learns of Nathan Meeker’s and Horace Greeley’s plans to create the Union Colony in the general area of the Poudre River.  Eaton suggests the broad area around where the Box Elder Creek enters the Poudre River (near the Council Tree).  However, Meeker decides to locate the Colony where the new train tracks cross the Poudre River, and about five miles from where it empties into the South Platte River. 

Thus, Eaton had experience with surveying, moving water away from rivers via canals/ditches, and procedures Hispanics and miners use to allocate water among competing users.   This, along with his strong initiative, puts him in an excellent position make major contributions to Colorado’s water infrastructure and, in turn, creation of Colorado water law. 


Photo Credit:

Archive at Fort Collins Museum of Discovery c. 1911

References:

Norris, Jane E. and Lee G. 1990. Written in water: the life of Benjamin Harrison Eaton.  Ohio University Press, Athens.  

Hobbs, Greg. 1997. Colorado Water Law: An Historical Overview. Vol 1(1): Water Law Review, University of Denver, Denver Colorado [http://duwaterlawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/1UDenvWaterLRev1.pdf]