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Tracing Denver's water history

Interactive timeline travels back in time before Denver Water was even born 101 years ago.

In 1918, Denver residents voted to buy the Denver Union Water Company for $14 million, and Denver Water was born. A lot has changed in that time, except for one thing, providing high-quality and reliable drinking water to our customers.

The last 101 years have provided some impressive stories: A whole town built solely to clean Denver’s water, a monumental project to bring water over the Continental Divide, even a massive dam that required a community’s relocation.

Follow the timeline below to learn more about Denver Water’s remarkable history, from its first hand-dug ditches to a complex, revolutionary system that delivers safe, clean water to a quarter of all Coloradans.

If you're not into fancy technology and interactive timelines, you can still catch some of our favorite Denver Water 100th Anniversary stories below:

Visit www.denverwater.org for more information on our history.