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Sand Creek

Division 1 · Water District 76 · As of 2026-08-18 03:01 MDT · 3 weeks ago
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Sand Creek on the ground — the ditches, wells, reservoirs and gages of Water District 76 · clicktap anything for its record

Browse this district’s ditches, gages, reservoirs, wells and springs as a list.

31% of normal flow, week of 2026-07-13
24 calls active on it right now

The Deadman Ditch is well below normal for mid July -- 31% of normal flow. 24 calls stand against it right now; the most senior right calling dates to 1860.

123 well permits on file — not decreed rights
98% household or domestic use
380 ft median depth, 87 wells reporting

73% are constructed wells; 4% are tied to a decreed structure. A permit is the State Engineer's permission to drill and use a well, not a water right; most here are exempt household wells that sit outside the priority line and never needed a decree — three things called “well”. Turn on the Well permits chip on the map above to see where they are.

The Driller’s Atlas · Plate 2 A cross-section nobody surveyed

Every permitted well within a few miles of the line, drawn from the ground to its drilled depth as the driller filed it. The bright part of each stroke is the perforated casing — where the well actually takes water — coloured by the aquifer named on the permit. Nobody arranged these; the aquifers arrange themselves.

Hover or arrow through the strokes to read a well.

The same corridor as a table
Miles from AWells drawn Median depth (ft)With a screen Most-named aquiferNo depth filed

Bins run from end A to end B of the line. “Most-named aquifer” is the family most often named on permits in the bin, with its count; permits naming no aquifer are the majority of the file and are not a family.

Drought

Right now

This is the 56th-driest week 29 in 91 years of record at DEADMAN DITCH NEAR DEADMAN PARK (as of 2026-07-13; this week’s flow sits at the 31st percentile for the date). On this week’s US Drought Monitor, Larimer County is 49% in D3 extreme drought (2026-09-01).

Every year since 1934, week by week

Each thin row is a year at DEADMAN DITCH NEAR DEADMAN PARK; each cell is one week’s flow ranked against the same calendar week of every other year — warm means dry for the date, blue wet, so seasonality cancels and droughts appear as warm bands. Gaps are missing record, never a dry river. Click a year to reconstruct it on the Historical tab.

The Drought Monitor’s view since 2000

Mean share of area in each class across Larimer county — the counties this district’s gages sit in, which overlap the district imperfectly. The Drought Monitor weighs soils, vegetation and local reports; it is CONTEXT beside the river’s own record above, not the water-rights picture.

What drought has cost here

Since 1991, federal crop insurance has paid $194,432 in drought-caused claims across Larimer county — 0.8% of all insured crop losses there. The worst year was 2017 ($39,168).

USDA crop-insurance indemnities where the recorded cause of loss is drought, summed over the counties this district's gages sit in. Counties overlap water districts imperfectly, and insured-crop claims are a floor on drought damage, not a total. Source: USDA RMA cause-of-loss files.

New to how a dry winter becomes a call on the river? Anatomy of a drought walks the chain in four minutes — snow to rivers to reservoirs to calls to the water table.

Topology cross-check: 1 parent disagreement (vs DWR's route framework — under review)

This flow network was built mechanically; DWR's Source Water Route Framework disagrees with it in the places below. Each row is a question a human reviewer has not yet answered — not an error verdict. Checked 1 streams, 0 agree. Know this water? Tell us →

StreamThis site routes it toDWR routes it to
Sand Creek the mainstem nan
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