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Michigan Ditch at Cameron Pass
Transbasin diversion gage · MICDCPCO · USGS 06746000 · Division 1 · Water District 3 · Larimer County
Live gage at DWR ↗ · USGS monitoring location ↗ · Download daily record (CSV)
Source DWR administrative record · verify at DWR station ↗ Source Independent agency measurement · verify at USGS ↗ Source Our computation, no independent reference · computed here from the screened record
Two different numbers, deliberately: Flowing now is raw 15-minute telemetry, provisional and unreviewed. Latest cached reading is the end of the verified daily record. They are never merged, and the verified series is the one the trend is computed on.
What this gage meters
This is not a natural stream record. The Michigan Ditch moves water from Michigan River, North Platte basin at Cameron Pass (Div 6) into Joe Wright Creek, Cache la Poudre (Div 1), operated by City of Fort Collins — so this record is a ledger of those deliveries. Trends here reflect operational and demand decisions, not the basin's hydrology, and the basin trends page marks it accordingly (⇆). All of Colorado's curated transbasin diversions are collected at /transbasin.
The record
Readings come from the weekly-refreshed cache, never fetched live — the date beside the value says exactly how fresh it is. The live gage is one click up.
Annual flow & trend
Chart: annual mean flow at Michigan Ditch at Cameron Pass, water years 1932 to 2026. The measured record is increasing at 0.66 cubic feet per second per decade. A Pettitt changepoint is detected around 1986. The underlying yearly values are available as a CSV download linked at the top of this page.
This gage measures the Michigan Ditch, water carried across the Continental Divide. It is taken from Michigan River, North Platte basin at Cameron Pass (Div 6) and delivered to Joe Wright Creek, Cache la Poudre (Div 1) — so what this gage reads leaves one river basin for good and arrives in another.
The two ends: Michigan Ditch Exchange Reach (source, on Michigan River); Michigan Ditch Release Structure (receiving, on Joe Wright Creek)
- Decree in case 83CW0099 ↗ · imaged 2005-12-05 · filed under the source end, Michigan Ditch Exchange Reach
- Decree in case W9385 ↗ · imaged 2005-08-24 · filed under the receiving end, Michigan Ditch Release Structure
The ditch’s mapped channel is drawn on the map below where the USGS has surveyed it. Every crossing →
Where it sits
Location as DWR records it (5.0).
Provenance
DWR station abbreviation MICDCPCO; recorded station name “MICHIGAN DITCH AT CAMERON PASS”; operated by DWR. Daily flows from the DWR HydroBase snapshot plus CDSS REST updates, refreshed on the weekly cycle. Trend statistics are Mann-Kendall (Hamed-Rao corrected) with Sen's slope in native cfs, the same numbers as the basin Trends tab.