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Feb 7, 2023 · A monument on the northeast side of Washington Park honors ditch builder (and namesake) John W. Smith and the workers who dug City Ditch by hand. It is near the shore of Smith Lake, which filled in May 1867 and is the oldest manmade body of water in Denver.
Sep 12, 2023 · Throughout history, conquerors and civilisations have repurposed existing features, such as ditches, augmenting them with defensive banks and walls to suit their strategic needs. The Romans and the Normans, among others, have demonstrated this practice.
Jan 20, 2022 · Acequias are traditional irrigation ditches that date back to early Spanish and Indigenous influences in New Mexico. Learn how they work, why they are important, and how they face modern...
Nov 15, 2022 · Learn about the history and practice of ditch irrigation in Colorado, a nonrenewable resource that provides unique insights into past societies and environments. Explore individual NRCS irrigation projects and historic ditches in Colorado using interactive maps and media.
- Overview
- Mayordomo Virgil Trujillo marches briskly along the ditch’s banks above us as I and the other workers wait for our assignments. “One,” he shouts as he lays a lightweight stick perhaps 10 feet long on the dry earth, marking the length of the acequia that the first worker must clear. I am worker 13. Virgil wants us to square the channel and to remove any debris that has collected over the winter. Toward the bottom, where the flow of the water through the ditch is slow, our task is to chop out tufts of grass that have taken root and to go after invasive plants like Chinese Elm and Russian Olive.
- A ditch democracy
- The future of acequias
New Mexico’s community-operated acequias, some over 300 years old, demonstrate how farmers can fairly share this unpredictable resource.
This article was created in partnership with the National Geographic Society.
In the U.S. it’s long been accepted that communities cannot efficiently allocate their own resources, that private ownership is preferable and, indeed, superior. But a community-controlled irrigation system active in many communities across the American Southwest has been equitably parceling out water for centuries, demonstrating that people can share resources.
It’s spring again, the time of year—for the 300th time in some instances—when New Mexico communities come together to clean the acequias, irrigation channels that carry snowmelt from the mountains to newly tilled farm fields. Each annual cleaning is one more demonstration that at least here, in these close-knit communities arrayed across arid and rugged rangeland, it’s possible for people to share scarce resources to achieve a common goal—in this case, making sure everyone in the group has enough water.
Acequias are mutually managed, irrigation channels that have been in continuous operation in the arid American Southwest since before the formation of the United States. This communal water system traces its roots to the Spanish conquistadors, who brought their traditions to the territory in the 1600s, and who themselves borrowed it from the Muslims who invaded Spain in the 8th century. Indeed, the word acequia (pronounced ‘ah-seh-key-uh,’ stress on the ‘seh’) is an adaptation of the Arabic as-saqiya, meaning water carrier.
There are close to 700 functioning acequias in New Mexico, according to the state’s Acequia Commission, and a score more in Colorado. Many of these gravity-fed ditches that bring runoff from the mountains to the fields have been operating for three centuries, and some were likely dug long before that.
Most acequias are open channels and many farmers irrigate by flooding their fields, which means that lots of water leaches away or evaporates. Yet studies show that the dirt waterways provide more robust environmental benefits than concrete culverts and metal pipes, says Sam Fernald, professor of watershed management at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces and the head of the school’s Water Resources Research Institute.
Seepage—which can range between one-third and one-half of the flow—replenishes groundwater while also fostering a rich wetlands around each ditch, Fernald says. A number of other studies suggest that irrigating with acequias extends the hay-growing season and so boosts the number of cattle that can be grazed. And the largest benefit, though much harder to quantify, is that the acequias create communities that serve as stewards of the environment.
Acequias are customary democracies. By tradition, each ditch is governed by a three-person commission elected by the parciantes.
“The acequias are really the first form of government,” explains Martha Montoya-Trujillo, a commissioner of the 2.6-mile-long Acequia del Rincon in Pojoaque, which has 160 acres under cultivation divided among 60 farms. “They existed before the villages.”
The parciantes and commissioners also elect a ditch manager, the mayordomo. Each mayordomo manages the infrastructure of irrigation. Acequias capture their water by thrusting barriers out into local rivers, forcing water to pool at the side and run into the channels dug centuries ago. Years back, these diversions were hand-made reefs, mostly rock, sometimes augmented with junked cars. In recent years, funded by grants from the state and federal governments, most acequias have junked their haphazard blockages and built concrete diversion dams with metal valves that can open and close to control the flow.
Neighbors who share an acequia traditionally clean out the ditch every year around early spring.
Downstream from the diversion dam are the headgates, the main control valves for each ditch. At various points, every acequia also boasts a number of channels through which water can be diverted back to the river to ensure silt and rocks don’t block the channels. The channels can also safely evacuate excess volume if there’s a flash flood. Each parciante also has a small gate—typically a flat piece of metal at the side of the ditch that can be pulled up or pushed down to release or block the flow of water.
The mayordomo also presides over the annual cleaning of the acequias and, more controversially, tells people when they can irrigate and when they have to shut their gates. Being a mayordomo, then, guarantees that every parciante will be angry with you at some point during the season. This year, the late April snowpack in the hills suggests that water will be plentiful. The past five years, by contrast, were dry, and therefore contentious. Alex Trujillo, Montoya-Trujillo’s husband and long-time mayordomo of the Acequia del Rincon, says the key to the job is to not get angry when neighbors get angry at him. “Yeah, I get my ass chewed out every so often,” he says, “but we’re all still good friends.”
The New Mexico Acequia Association, which advocates for all the ditches in the state, has won several important legislative battles to protect traditional irrigation.
“Acequias are a voice from the past, but they’re also a voice for the future,” says Paula Garcia, the group’s executive director, as well as a farmer who depends on an acequia to irrigate her land in the town of Mora. “The day-to-day-water ethic and the day-to-day moral economy is really important for how we manage water for the future. It’s a model of how to govern the commons.”
Garlic farmer and novelist Stanley Crawford, who has irrigated from the Acequia del Bosque and the Acequia del Llano in Dixon since 1971, carefully considers the question of whether the tradition of mutual stewardship can continue on a hotter, drier planet. “The future does not look good for any of us anywhere,” he says, and notes that geographer Jared Diamond has determined that four years of stress can be enough to cause a complex society to fall apart.
The mayordomo presides over the annual cleaning of the acequias and, more controversially, tells people when they can irrigate and when they have to shut their gates.
Nonetheless, Crawford points out, a generation ago, when he wrote Mayordomo—a close-up chronicle of a year on the ditch—old-timers already groused that young people were too lazy to run the acequias. Still, the ditches endured, and Crawford thinks they will carry on into the future. “Acequias have survived disruptions of language and culture how many times over hundreds of years?” he asks. “Three times at least. I think they’ve got a built-in mechanism for survival.”
Crawford points out that each acequia is a tiny outpost of solidarity. “There’s a democratic structure. People control a basic resource, something that is very unusual in the U.S. And there’s a very strong aesthetic component. There’s something really magical about that.”
The need for water in neighborhoods like Capitol Hill, and later City Park was crucial. Completed in 1867, it was originally called the City Ditch or Big Ditch, as it was owned and operated by the City of Denver. It was a three-foot-wide unlined ditch that ran from Chatfield Reservoir to City Park.
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the City Ditch is the oldest pioneer relic in continuous use in the Front Range, that means Smith Lake is the oldest man-made recreational body of water still in continuous use today.
