HARVEY JOHNSON ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT (1985)

Transcription

1 HARVEY JOHNSON ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT (1985) TAPE 1, SIDE A My name is Jim Hansen. Today is August 27, I am in the Office of Harvey Johnson at the Water Supply and Storage Company. \HANSEN\ - What I would like to begin with is biographical information about you Mr. Johnson, I've got this outline. I think you can just kind of work from that and this will to some extent replicate the interview you did with Dave McComb. But I've pulled some other things together that I think will fill that interview out a little bit and really provide a complete biographical background on how you came to be associated with this company. So let's start with your family. Tell me about your parents. Do you have any memories of Kansas where you grew up? That kind of thing. \JOHNSON\- Yes, very distinctive memories of Kansas. Prairies and a sod house, and St. Francis being a few miles away. And only one railroad came in at the end of a spur. Of course I was approaching the seventh birthday when we left there and rode the prairies. I had put in one season on the school at a little town of Jakeway, one room schoolhouse. \HANSEN\- Were you born in St. Francis? \JOHNSON\- I was born on a homestead six miles out of St. Francis. When the folks first went to the homestead, they had what they call a dugout until they was able to build a sod house. The Republican River sods were such that they built a good sod house, and then the folks were there in Kansas for thirteen years ifi'm right about their time of living there. It was thirteen years. First Father and Mother married in Iowa and moved on to Nebraska and then went into Kansas. And the prairies, a few cottonwoods grew down on the Republican River, but we didn't have trees there like we have now. It was all open country. And we enjoyed the prairies, of course. That was the best we knew. Jackrabbits and lots of coyotes, some wolves. But it was pioneering at that time, yes, it was pioneering. \HANSEN\- What was your father's name? \JOHNSON\- His name was John Peter Johnson. \HANSEN\- And your mother? \JOHNSON\- Mother was Augusta Olson. \HANSEN\- Did they ever tell you how they met? \JOHNSON\- Yes. How they met, Father in Iowa. Well, Mother's folks came from Sweden. My mother was seven years old when they came across in the boat. And in those days, of course, they leased a section of the boat, that is they leased a permit to have a section of the boat, and they had their cows and a horse or two and their chickens and stuff in the boat, and they lived with them coming across the ocean some twelve or fifteen days in the water. And Mother was seven years old. She used to tell us youngsters about the time they spent coming across the ocean. But she had a sister that was two years older than Mother, or was some years older than Mother, and when they came to Fairfield, Iowa, Father married the older sister. They lost the older sister with pneumonia. In those days they didn't have any medicine to help combat the pneumonia. So, they had two little girls, Father and Mother's sister had two little girls that had lost their mother, so my mother as a young lady just couldn't see those little girls without mothering, so she took them in and mothered them. Of course Father would go and see his children, and then married her some years later. So the mother that I have is Father's second wife. So she was a sister of the first wife. And they lived in Iowa, and of course that's how they were drawn together. And they were all pioneer people. \HANSEN\- Now about when did they move to Kansas then? \JOHNSON\- Well, let's see, we left there in 1902, and for thirteen years he not only had the homestead, he had a timber claim as well. You could put in so many trees a day on another claim, so he had timber claim as well as a homestead. And that would have been about , something like that when they went to Kansas. \HANSEN\- And that's where you were born? \JOHNSON\- That's where I was born, in Kansas. No, 1885 wouldn't be true. Let's see we go back fifteen years before 1900, yes, 85. But I was born in 95, rather. I said 85. I was born in 95. So they must have been there about ten years before I was born.

2 \HANSEN\- What was your birthdate? You just had a birthday recently, right? \JOHNSON\- Yes, April the 28th in \HANSEN\- Now you had a lot of brothers and sisters, right? \JOHNSON\- Yes, I had seven brothers and four sisters. And I have still living three sisters and one brother. I was about the middle of the boys. There was eight boys. And one of the younger brothers died of pneumonia. Another brother, Wesley, after he was married, was killed by a tractor tipping over. And I had another brother, Ralph, that was killed by lightning. Lightning struck his team of horses. My older brothers, of course, passed away. My oldest brother was 89, and the next brother was 92, and the next brother was killed by the tractor, and the next brother was 92. He just passed away two years ago. And I have a living brother now that's still92. Clarence out in Washington was going on 93 when he passed away. So other than having accidents of some kind, the brothers have lived quite a while. Father was 88. Mother was 88 when she passed away. \HANSEN\- You've got some good genes there. \JOHNSON\- I don't have any brothers that ever was active when they were 90. They had pretty much retired in the 70's and the 80's, but I never had sense enough to quit. \HANSEN\- I'm glad you didn't. Do you have many memories of the homestead in Kansas? \JOHNSON\- Yes I do. I had a loving of horses. I knew the horses well, and was able to drive a team of horses following a harvester. Yes, the horse bam, and I knew the names of all the horses, six head of horses, when we came over to Colorado. And I could name each one of them horses today and give you the color of them. And Mother would have us hunt eggs for chickens that they'd lay out you know in the bam in the various places. Oh yes, and I can remember so well driving across the prairies. You'd just hit a trail you know, a horse trail, where one wheel would run. And that's all the roads we had of course. And rattlesnakes. We always had warnings of rattlesnakes. I can remember very well one time. I was just started to school. My older brothers. The school was some two miles from home. And I can remember of starting out from school because I was in the lower grades, and they turned me out at around 2:30, and the rest of them didn't get out until3:00. I didn't want to stick around school, so I hiked home down the old trail in the sagebrush and all. And I can remember so well of Dad being at the bam, and quite a ways from the bam the trail coming along there, and they had a Collie dog, Rover. He was a beautiful dog. He seen me coming. He bounded over to greet me you know. Just before he got to me, he grabbed a rattlesnake. Of course he would grab them and shake them. My dad came running over there and said, "You could have been bitten by that snake if it hadn't been for Rover. Don't you ever leave the schoolhouse again without the others." Of course that stayed with you. \HANSEN\- How did you travel back and forth? Did you walk or did you ride a horse? \JOHNSON\- To school, they would drive us in with a team of horses, and walk home. We always walked home. \HANSEN\- Even in the winter when it was snowing and everything? \JOHNSON\- Yes, I don't remember too much about the wintertime. They'd come and get us with a team of horses and bundle you up, you know. They didn't have much snow there in St. Francis. It was pretty desert country. And the snow would blow. It wouldn't stay on the ground very much. Didn't have the big blizzards seeming like that we have here. Didn't have the heavy snows that we have east of the mountains here. So I don't have any dread feeling of the snows there. Cold weather, of course, we kept in pretty close. The sod house had four rooms. It was quite a spacious sod house. We have a picture somewhere of the old sod house. And the windmill. I can remember so well the windmill. I was back there several years later and looking at that windmill. And it's right close to the house. Well, my memory was that it was pretty near a mile from the house because at night Mother would send you out to get a bucket of water or something, and to go out there and get a bucket of water in the dark, then get back to the house, it seemed like that was way down there. When I was back there it was right close to the house. \HANSEN\- For a little fellow hauling a heavy bucket, I'm sure it did seem like it was quite a distance. \JOHNSON\- A gallon bucket or so you know, but anyhow, get some fresh water. The windmill would run most all the time. It run into a tank, and run the tank back into a little pond that was made. And the 2

3 water run all the time. We had good water, very sweet water. Mother loved that water. But that was one of the first things I looked at when I was back there, thinking well that windmill hasn't been moved. Of course the windmill was all destroyed, but right where the well was and all that was still there. And I couldn't fathom the distance afterwards. And the bam. It seemed like that was a half of a mile from the house. Why it wasn't very far at all when we went back and looked at it. The visions a kid has when he's young, and distance was quite a thing. \HANSEN\- Oh yes, sure. Well, you were less than seven. Did you have a lot of chores that you performed even at that early age? \JOHNSON\- Yes, we had to gather the eggs, and at that time you know we burned the buffalo chips, and they would gather them in wagons. And they'd stack them just like you would stack wood. And then you could gather some brush, but not much wood. Of course, down on the River you could get some old dry wood, down on the Republican River. But corncobs. Dad raised quite a little com. The corncobs was a fuel. And I can remember so well when the corncobs were not giving quite enough heat and Dad would go get a bushel basket of com. Com was only worth 25 to 30 cents a bushel in the ears. He'd get a bushel of com in the ears, put it right in the fire. Go get another bushel of com and bum it as the heat to heat up the stove, the kitchen especially, to get a meal. Of course they could bum larger stuff in the old heater. And it wasn't too hard to bank that, but to get the heat out of the stove for cooking, Mother wanted to get to cooking for all the youngsters. She was a great woman to have provisions. I never saw a hungry day in my life. I've got to say that for the folks. They were good providers. Dad had a contract. The fuel was quite a problem there. Of course the chips was a very good heat. And jackrabbits, hunting the jackrabbits was quite a thrill. I can remember all the community gathering and they would stretch out for about a mile so far apart, you know, and move in a body and stir up the jackrabbits and shoot them and they'd have a wagon come along behind and put those jackrabbits in the wagon. And they'd gather up carloads of them and ship them to Denver for the needy people. I can remember one time doing that and being in the wagon when they were piling the jackrabbits in the wagon. Jackrabbits were pretty big in that country. So there are a lot of memories back there. \HANSEN\- What prompted your family to move? Why did they decide to leave Kansas and come to Colorado? \JOHNSON\- Father had this large family, and he was quite a church man. That is, we had to get our best clothes on. We went to Sunday School. And he had met someone, I think it was a man by the name of Phillips who was supposed to be a missionary and had gone through the country, and from Ft. Collins here. So Dad got on the train and he came out to Ft. Collins and spent a little time. And he thought that was a place to raise a family. So that fall he had a sale and sold his equipment that he had. He kept six head of horses, three teams of horses, had two covered wagons and a surrey. He had become prosperous enough to have a surrey with the fringe on top, you know. Take us to church with that. The first wagon, I can remember the wagon so much. Put a little straw in the bottom and us kids would sit in that, and just had spring seats that Mother and Father would sit in. Maybe somebody else with them. A team of horses, that was all the transportation we had. Or to ride a horse, of course, the horse would gallop across the country in pretty good shape, but -- had that sale. And he had a header--he had done quite a lot of custom heading. That is they'd go out and cut the tops off the grain. They didn't have combines or anything like that. They cut the tops off the grain and that would elevate into a header wagon, and you took those tops in and you stacked them, and then the trashing machine would come and thrash them out. He had a header and he had a bailer. The bailer we had in those days didn't have any power excepting they had a team of horses out on an arm that went around in circle all day. And that made the power on a drive shaft that done the bailing. It was a stationery. They brought everything to the bailer. The bailer now goes out to people. You brought everything to the bailer. Dad had a bailer, and he had this harvester that he had. He was a provider. He was out rustling all the time. So things were all sold, and we loaded up in the wagon. I was seven years old in April when we were in transportation coming out here. We had a little sheet iron stove on the side and a barrel of water on one side of one wagon, and then some grain for the horses packed on the sides you know. But Mother 3

4 with two real young children had to ride in the surrey. And I was not allowed in the wagon, I had to ride in the surrey. But Mother would let me hold the lines. Of course this team was the last one coming. There were three teams. We couldn't get away, but I was really a king pin. I could drive a team of horses. What a kick I got out of driving that team of horses. \HANSEN\-All the way from Kansas at seven years old. \JOHNSON\-One was a little old Roan mare named Daisy, and then a three year old Bay gelding named Prince. And the head team was a team of black, a gelding and a mare, Fanny and Cecil. Dad was driving the head team. Then the next team was driven by some of my brothers. And that was a team of three year old grey geldings, Tom and Dick. But an interesting thing, coming across the prairie the harness you have on these horses was oily, you know, and the insects or the gophers or whatever would be along the road craving some oil, so they would chew on those harnesses and ruin them, you know. So when you would unhitch the horses, you would take that neck yoke and put it on the end of the tongue and hang all of the harness on that tongue up above the ground so the insects couldn't get to it. Six head of horses, it was quite a little chore to get them ready. But you'd sit out this little metal stove with thirty-six inch pipe on it, and Mother would get a meal for them. \HANSEN\- Did you have a tent to camp at night? \JOHNSON\- No, we slept in the covered wagons. \HANSEN\-How was the weather? \JOHNSON\- Beautiful weather. We arrived here in May, in 1902, at Ault, right east of Ault. Yes, but the biggest thrill I had along the way, of course, we were told to look for Pikes Peak because you could see that way east of here. The air was clear then. But I will never forget, you talk about the train. Dad had an agreement or had a contract with the Jakeway Residence, Collins run a store in Jakeway, and Dad had a contract to freight the groceries from St. Francis to Jakeway with a team of horses. So I went along with Dad. I must have been six years old, anyhow, I went along with Dad one day and loaded up the wagon and we started home. A big old train came along. About the first train I ever seen running. And pulling up and those horses were scared of that train and took off, and Dad hanging on to them lines, ho, ho, ho. He was Swede, he couldn't say whoa, you know. Ho, Ho, and them horses tearing off. And I was eating an apple. That was quite a thing. The grocer had given us an apple, and I lost my apple. So those things stay with you. You look back on them, but they were big days. That was a big day. \HANSEN\- Well, you arrived in Ault. Was that where your dad had, had he---? \JOHNSON\- Yes, this man, Hauf Phillips. He was farming about three miles east of Ault, two and half miles east of Ault, on a rented farm. He was a semi-preacher along with the farming. But the farm there had a dugout, a potato dugout. And we could store things in there and stayed in the covered wagon. And it's an interesting thing. I can remember so well a man riding up on a Bay horse along the road, just barbed wire fences, and we were camped there, and this man, the two fingers of his glove were empty, they didn't have anything in them. This was a kid looking at that, you know. And he stopped and asked Dad if he'd seen any stray horses. He had a bunch of horses out on the prairies east somewhere. "Have you seen them in that area?" And he was riding a saddle horse. And Dad was one of them old timers, this was at twelve o'clock. Dad was one of them old timers--dad never had a lock on his house in his life. And Jack visited with him, and Mother had hollered that dinner was ready in the covered wagon. So Dad said to this man "Won't you come in and have lunch with us?" He was riding his horse way out away from any place. He said "Well, I'll just do that." He come in, sat along the benches of the table and after he got through, he was very gracious, he said "I got a farm down at Ft. Collins, just a place that you need to get these boys. Come on down, the house is empty." And that place is now right down on Drake Road next to the river. The city of Ft. Collins, the college, has that protected there as a park now. And that grout house is still there. You see the old white grout house. That's where we went. From Ault-- \HANSEN\- What was that man's name? \JOHNSON\- Jack Rigdon. Jack Rigdon, one of the most wonderful guys I ever known. And I can remember we hadn't been there very long, I can remember so well, Jack riding up on a horse and had a 4

5 big something on the back, gunny sack, reached back and untied his strings around the saddle. That thing rolled off and a quarter of a beef. Mother had come out to the house, and I can remember so well being with Mother, and Jack said "Here's a quarter of a beef. Take the wrinkles out of these boy's bellies." Yes sir, those things stay with you. \HANSEN\- So you're family took up farming there on the Rigdon farm. \JOHNSON\- On the Rigdon farm. We farmed there one year and Dad had the foresight or the vision and the ability to have had a clear deed to those homestead and the timber claim. And somebody, I don't know how this came about, but somebody had a quarter section right south of town here that he would trade for that. Through telephone conversation Dad traded that homestead and all for that quarter section south of town here right at Trimble. So that's why we didn't stay with Jack Rigdon. We farmed that the one year. \HANSEN\- So your dad filed on a homestead right away then? \JOHNSON\- No, he owned the quarter section here, traded Kansas homestead for the farm. \HANSEN\- Oh, he had already purchased that? \JOHNSON\- He had traded for it. \HANSEN\- OK, when did he do that? \JOHNSON\- That would have been in 1903 he traded for that, traded for that farm. \HANSEN\- What do you mean by trading? \JOHNSON\- Exchanged lands, exchanged deeds. \HANSEN\- OK, he already had some other land here? \JOHNSON\- The homesteads in Kansas. He traded those deeds to this man, and this man some kind of connections of range cattle there, and he could use that homestead in Kansas very well with his range cattle, and he had no business with this quarter section right south of town here. So they went down on that at Fossil Creek right where a big new addition is coming up now. And a year later, Roy Portner, just a young buck, had the enthusiasm of building a reservoir, and this had a hollow place on it, so he gave Dad $10,000 cash for that quarter section. And it's brought about a million and a half here just shortly ago. \HANSEN\- So did they begin developing that for water right after ---? \JOHNSON\- He developed a small lake there. \HANSEN\- So did you have water rights on that? \END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE A\ TAPE ONE, SIDE B [defective tape -- see notes] TAPE TWO, SIDE A \HANSEN\- Let's see, you moved to the Rigdon place and were on that for what, about a year? \JOHNSON\- Yes, about a year, one crop year. \HANSEN\- Then you took up your own land on Fossil Creek? \JOHNSON\- Yes. \HANSEN\- And your dad sold all of that off to Portner? \JOHNSON\- He sold the whole quarter section off. \HANSEN\- And then you moved out to the Trimble place. \JOHNSON\- Trimble place, yes. \HANSEN\- And did your dad purchase that? \JOHNSON\- No, just as a tenant there for Charlie Trimble. He was quite a land owner. Charlie Trimble had some business in town. I don't know what it was now. I believe he was an attorney. Then from the Trimble place, Dad took his $10,000 and bought a quarter section out on north Shields Street from Riddles, the Riddle place, and moved out there. And this must have been 1906 when we got out there to the Riddle place. \HANSEN\- About where is that located? \JOHNSON\- That's on Shields Street, if you might know where the Eaton Ditch is there on Shields Street anyhow. We were there one year, and then Dad had bought another eighty acres on 287 right east of LaPorte, two miles east of LaPorte. So that had a log house, so Dad built on to that log house, and we 5

6 moved up there in And they lived there from 1908 untill915 when Dad sold that out and moved into town, and then they retired. \HANSEN\- Did you change your farming activity at all as you moved from place to place or did you pretty much concentrate on beets? \JOHNSON\- No Dad was sugar beets and alfalfa and feed a few cattle, always milked quite a few cows. But it was just regular farming that Dad did. And, of course, that's where I grew up -- I went to #ll school, the country school on Shields. It's under Shields just before you get to 287, right under the hill there, is that little brick schoolhouse that's still there. But about I had entered the sixth grade and I Dad had three or four houses in town, and the depression was bothering him, and he asked me to help put in the crop. So I quit school and put the crop in and took over the farm operation. The other boys had established themselves pretty well. And my brother, Ed, just older than I was had gone to work for my oldest brother, and that left Dad with the farm, I was, let's see I would be about years old, and I took up the managing of the farm, put the crops in then. And I was managing the farm all of the time until--let's see I was twenty years old, going on twenty--dad's farm, I had no school education, had no trade of any kind, so I thought I'd better venture out a little bit. That's when I went to Michigan. \HANSEN\- Let's back up just a second. Did you do this managing of your dad's farm completely on your own, or did you have hired men, or how did you manage it? \JOHNSON\- No we did all the work ourselves there. Even my sisters worked inthe fields. We took care of the crops. We cut the hay, we stacked the hay, we took care of the crops. Dad would give us some help, but he didn't give us much time on the farm. We just had a hundred acres there, and it wasn't too big a place to crop. And we had ten, twelve, fifteen head of cows. We milked cows all the time. Then we'd have some colts come on every year. So we had some developed horses that Dad would sell, and some income from the farm. He owned houses in town here on Mulberry that rent for $10 a month. So you didn't get any good out of those investments. Had to live off the farm. \HANSEN\- Now did you have pretty good water rights in that place? \JOHNSON\- Yes, we had a good water right, and that's the little Cache La Poudre up here, it's one of the better rights. It had water any time we needed it. Had no water worries. Had water worries there at Fossil Creek. Had no water worries on the Rigdon place. Had more trouble with too wet of ground east of LaPorte. When you did irrigate, to get it off, it was so flat. So being a youngster, I raised the crops there and managed the farm and had the worries of getting it off. When I looked for a farm, when I got on my own, I looked for a farm where you could get water off. \HANSEN\- Yes, you learn by that kind of experience. \JOHNSON\- I learned by experience. It's just as important to get it off as it is to get it on the land. Still is today. \HANSEN\- Was that water diverted by a ditch onto your place? \JOHNSON\- Yes, that was diverted from out of the river, they have a decree out of the river, and it's still active, still irrigating and belongs to about eight or nine farmers. And the tail end of that is dumped into Terry Lake, what's not used by the farmers is dumped into Terry Lake, still active. \HANSEN\- Do you have any recollections of the ditch rider, people who were active back then? \JOHNSON\- Yes, very close contact with the ditch rider. His name was Bill Eldridge. Eldridge was that ditch rider. And one thing I did, of course, I had a little interest myself, I would have a few pigs and raise some pigs. I had accumulated fifty dollars, and I bought a little Indian pony. I broke this little Indian pony, and this ditch rider, Bill, he wanted that Indian pony. So I sold it to him for seventy-five dollars, and he rode with the little Indian pony that I had. \HANSEN\- So he used that pony on his work then? \JOHNSON\- Riding the ditch with it. Beautiful little pony. Yes, that all tied in to the ditch rider. \HANSEN\- Now in those days inspection of water rights must have been pretty by guess or by gosh, right? \JOHNSON\- Yes, they didn't pay too much attention to them. They went and got their water when they needed it, and there wasn't too much demand at that time. There wasn't so much developed out east. 6

7 They developed a need of water, and they just hadn't got it into an efficient method of irrigating it. Hit and a miss, had too many other things to worry about. \HANSEN\- OK, then you got the wanderlust about 1914, right? Nineteen years old. \JOHNSON\- Yes, I was pretty fond of a girl, and I realized, I looked at myself and I wondered what future there was. Because it was Dad's farm, Dad's livestock, and I grew up working, and, gosh, I wanted something a little bit different from then on. So I got to looking, and I had a cousin in Nebraska who I stopped to see, and he had visited with us that summer. He and his wife had been there and spent a week with us, Kearny, Nebraska. So I stopped and visited with them. He'd asked me to stop. He was probably the cause of my thinking about stopping there, at the period of holidays. \HANSEN\- What was his name, do you remember? \JOHNSON\- His name was Elmer Johnson. He was a cousin, and his com was ready to pick. He had to hire somebody to pick com, and why couldn't I pick com. So I took a team of horses and had the old wagon with a bang board on the back and husker on your hand. You'd walk up to an ear of com and you'd bring that down, the husk was on the right, I had to bring that down to open up that husk out of that, and the left hand took that cob of com and broke it off, and your right took it so it would hit the wagon. It would hit that bang board in the back and fell down in the wagon. The team of horses moved along, and as you moved from row to row on down the field. And that's the way we harvested com. \HANSEN\- Pretty slow process. \JOHNSON\- Slow process. Then you'd pick that wagon full of com. You went up and you shoveled that into a bin with a roof on top, open on the sides with just slats on the sides so the air could get to it. And that's how they harvested their com. And then trashing machine would come along and thrash that out of those bins. They didn't go out in the field and do things. And that's how I put in a good many hard days of that. Of course, I put in a lot of hard days on the farm. Raised several hundred tons of beets and hauled them to the dump with a team of horses, shoveled them onto the wagon, and then shoveled them offwhen you got to the dump. Didn't have cars, you'd have to put them in piles. So hard work was just a part of you. \HANSEN\- You just didn't think there was any other way. \JOHNSON\- No, and if you couldn't stand up to it, why you wasn't a man, and you had to be a man. \HANSEN\- When you set out for--did you know you were going to Detroit, and you just stopped at your cousin's' place on the way, or--? \JOHNSON\- Yes, I'd had a brother, my second oldest brother, had married a Michigan girl, and they had talked him to coming back to the old farm in Michigan. And he was always pretty close to me, I had to go back there and visit him, but on the way back, this other cousin had asked me to stop there. And I had one of the most pleasant Christmases you ever seen in your life because a bunch of Swedes, how they did celebrate Christmas. Went on back to my brother, Frank, there in Michigan. He had a different way of farming there than what they ever had in Colorado, and I helped him that one summer. He had quite a family, and I helped him. His wife was a very fine woman, and she had a nephew, policeman, in Detroit, Michigan. I had met him, and he wanted me to come on into Detroit and see him for a couple of days. So I dropped in there and he asked me to go on his beat. He had a night beat around Detroit. And one of the things that was astounding, on the policeman's beat, he'd go into a big hotel and he found in the hotel a pipeline had been laid across the river from Canada--those were no liquor days you know, they didn't have no liquor in America at that time--but a pipeline had been laid across the river from Windsor, Canada into this hotel. And liquor came out of this pipe and was distributed over in Detroit. \HANSEN\- That's real enterprise. \JOHNSON\- Yes sir, anyhow, I stayed with him and got a lineup on things there in Detroit. Of course, your Packard people, your Dodge people and your Ford people were the three domineering people there. The Packard people were a kind of a class of their own. And he had said that he always thought he'd like to be connected with the Packard people. They were in kind of a class of their own. And I said "Why couldn't I get a job there?" Well, sure they have a hiring there such and such days that they hire help. 7

8 So I took up all the nerve I probably could, took a street car and went down to the Packard Plant and, I expect there were twenty-five fellows there of all types. Line up and be interviewed by two men. They were behind kind of a cage. And as I lined up with these men, come up to them, of course, it didn't make a whole lot of difference whether I would get a job or not, but I was going to see if I could. I was a country boy, I probably had a couple of hundred dollars in my pocket and felt pretty independent. When I came up to the cage, the fellow said "What can I do for you?" I said "Well, I'd like to have a job." He said "Well, I come down to see ifl could get a job too." I remember he gave me kind of a smart answer. "What can you do?" And I said "I'm a farm boy, I can't do anything, but I'd like to learn toolmaking." And I don't know, something about that hit him I guess, but just in front of me a fellow had a diploma he had produced to him and he handed it back to him. He opened the door and he said, "Come on in here." So I went in and they stripped me, had me jumping around and everything inside of that room. "Put your clothes back on and go up to Department DL and see if he can't put you on something up there." That's how I got on, hiring the kid from the country, and wasn't hiring diplomas, so put me up there. This guy ahead of me, he had been with the Ford people, and he had a diploma from the Ford people. He called it a diploma, but it was just a sheet of paper that he had been successful there. And that's what it amounted to. He called it a diploma anyhow. But they weren't hiring the Ford people, they hired a farm boy. \HANSEN\- Well they must have known something. \JOHNSON\- Anyhow, I was there for quite a while. They put me on, the first job I had was so simple. These shackle bolts would come out. As they went through this machine, it shaped up the bolt and on the back of this bolt was a little tit there. So a colored boy brought out a big steel box of them and you put that against the emory wheel and let that grind smooth. One night of that and the foreman said, "Hey, I think I can use you over here on the press machine." Those same bolts came out after they were made, after the threads were made, they had to have a hole just a certain distance from the front and drilled through. These press drills were five in a row, and you set up all five of them and drilled to their specifications. You had a blueprint of those. Well, that was much better. They were running to be set for drilling. After a month or so, he thought I ought to take over the supervising of about eight of those machines all in a row. Well, I had made friends with quite a number of the fellows, and to set up those machines, I was to check these workers on these machines for a good job. After this was done they were put into a box and went back to an inspector. And then they were inspected and kicked back if they weren't just correct. I had made friends with quite a lot of the boys, and then when he put me in charge of these machines, about nine or ten of those, they were quite envious, and I lost my friendship with them. And I didn't like that. I told the foreman I would rather take a press machine. I didn't like to be in charge of them because they were pretty mad at me because of that, and I thought my friendship was worth more than overseeing the job. So he gave me a press machine where you have your specifications, and they brought in the press lathe machine, as big iron, you know, just in strips of iron, whatever it was, went into this machine, you set the machine and formed your part as your specification was. And I was there for thirteen months I guess. I enjoyed that tool work. But I said to him, this girl was writing to me and my mother was feeling pretty bad, that I left home when all the rest of the kids were around Ft. Collins. And I was way last, excepting the older boy that married. So I requested to come home and have a visit with them. I told this big old Irish foreman in the DL Department, that was one big department, toolmaking is a pretty big thing for a factory. In toolmaking, you make up the parts for them. And I said I was taking the train to go back home and visit the folks. I told this foreman, "I want a pass to go back and see the folks." I didn't tell him anything about the girl I was writing to. Of course I had.gone to church, and in this church met some people, and this man and wife had a room to rent. They gave me a front room as a roomer, breakfast only. I had my other meals out. Treated me just like I was their own kid. He was a conductor on the city tramway. They had bought a home, they were in financial trouble, and I had loaned them quite a little money. I was always taught to be 8

9 pretty saving. I never spent a nickel I didn't have to, you know. \HANSEN\- Were you paid pretty well for your toolmaking work? \JOHNSON\- Well, I was put in there at a dollar a day, and I got up to eight dollars a day, and I was rich. \HANSEN\- When did you actually begin that work, what year, do you remember? When you had that interview with the Packard Plant and they picked you out of that crowd? \JOHNSON\- That must have been sometime in \HANSEN\- Because you were working for your brother for a little while. \JOHNSON\- Yes, I worked for the brother the first part of that summer. That must have been about \HANSEN\- So you were contributing to this family's support a little bit. \JOHNSON\- Yes. The twin brothers, neighbors to my brother out there, they were working over with the Ford people. But we would take off the week-ends. They had me on some night shifts, and they kept me on night shifts more than I thought they should have. But anyhow on night shifts we had three days, we had Monday and Saturday and Sunday off. So we had a lot of fun. Winter time we'd go skiing and ice skating and had a lot of parties that we went to. Those two boys were really great. We had a lot of trips we made, Over the week-end, three days you know, you could get on a boat and go to Toledo. Ride the boat down quite a ways, then go to Toledo and spend three days for ten, twelve dollars. Just really have a party. Anyhow, when I told this old foreman I wanted to go back and see the folks, he was as mad as all get out. He said "You damn kids don't know when you got a good thing." He had a hunch that I wouldn't come back. I said "Well, I'm coming back." The next morning when I came back the old guy met me at the entrance to the DL Department there and said "Here's a pass for you." He said "I've had a spotter on you for thirty days, we never found you in a pool hall, never found you asleep at night on the job, I know where every dollar is spent. I visited with the folks where you stay." I didn't know any of those things. \HANSEN\- Was this customary? Did they normally do this at the Packard Plant? \JOHNSON\- I don't know, but this is what they did. He said "If you come back, we've talked to the head of the department, and we'll put you clear through the plant." Raised here in this old Colorado and you look outside, you had to have the lights on in the wintertime there. You'd long for this old sunshine here. I guess the old boy knew something about that anyhow, but I took the train, went home and Dad said, if you'll help me on another quarter section he had, put in a crop, I'll give you a team of horses. You work royally on the farm, I'll give you a team of horses. So I sent in all of my tickets and stuff I had on the Packard Plant and never went back. \HANSEN\- That's quite a story. \JOHNSON\- Well, it was a part of my life. \HANSEN\- It certainly gave you a sense of perspective about Colorado that you probably never would have had otherwise. \HANSEN\- I think we're at a pretty good stopping point. Why don't we call it for today, and then we can pick up on your return to Colorado. When did you come back to Colorado? Was this about 1916 or 17? \JOHNSON\- It must have been about 15-- \HANSEN\- Had World War I broken out yet? \JOHNSON\- Yes, it was in OF TAPE TWO, SIDE A START TAPE THREE, SIDE A-- JOHNSON My name if Jim Hansen. Today is September 3, I am at the offices of the Water Supply and Storage Company in Ft. Collins speaking with Harvey Johnson. This is the second session in a series of interviews pertaining to the history of the Water Supply and Storage Company. \HANSEN\- OK. We're going to continue with your biographical background. And where we left off 9

10 last week was you had just returned from Detroit having worked with the Packard Motor Company for awhile. And that was the one job you said that you had to really seek out. It seemed that other work was generally waiting for you. When you returned to Colorado, where did you work and what did you do? \JOHNSON\- When I returned, the folks had already sold the farm and had had a public sale and were in the process of moving into town. Father still had 160 acres of dry land, and he wanted me to work that with him. So that first summer was put in pretty well preparing that ground and putting a crop in. It had been a dry ground, it had no irrigation. Of course, in summertime the farm didn't require much work, so just a few odd jobs was about all I done that summer. \HANSEN\- Where was this dry land located? \JOHNSON\- Dry land was located six miles north of LaPorte. \HANSEN\- What kind of crops did you try to put in there? \JOHNSON\- Com and beans were the crops on that dry land, didn't amount to much. We had always been used to irrigated ground, and, of course, didn't know how to work dry ground, so-- \HANSEN\- Did you have much luck? \JOHNSON\- Didn't have too good of luck, no. It was no good crops. So father put that up for sale, and I had a neighbor that wanted me to take charge of his threshing machine. In those days in big crews they went out and thrashed all over the community, some three months of it starting in July, threshing because they didn't have the harvesters then, like combines. All the harvesters they had was a reaper that put it into sheaves, and then shocks and then hauled it into the threshing machine later and it dried up good. So that was a fall job. And I'd had some experience with threshing crews, so I had charge of this teams and men and thrashing crew over a period of three months that fall. \HANSEN\- Who was the neighbor that employed you? \JOHNSON\- It was Herbert Michell. \HANSEN\- Where was his place located? \JOHNSON\- His place was east of LaPorte. He was the neighbor to where the old farm was. And in my boyhood days I had at times helped him out. At times he'd be needing some help to rustle some horses or something, and I used to have a friendship with him and had worked some on the machine and knew quite a little bit about the threshing machine. So it was kind of getting back to what I had been used, and I enjoyed it. We'd have cook shacks that would follow that, and they'd feed all the men, some fourteen men, working with teams and horses that would haul that grain to the threshing machine. The threshing machine was set at one point and blow out large straw stacks. Go from one farm to another. That was the way of harvesting grain. \HANSEN\- I'd heard that the food that was served these crews was one of the real inducements for employment. Was this true? \JOHNSON\- Yes it was. Af that time agriculture was the only demand of labor in the community. Well, the sugar factory, of course, had some three hundred men working in the factory. That was the only project we had outside of agriculture. And that was agriculture background. \HANSEN\- No, what I meant was the food that was served the crews. That when you'd want to get labor, you'd get yourself a real good cook. \JOHNSON\- Yes, get a cook that could cook for fourteen people. And in the cook shack that followed, they pulled that around with a team of horses, the benches and table along the side and all sat on benches and fed them all at once. But she'd have that prepared. In one end of the cook shack, she'd have her kitchen and have this food all prepared and serve it to them. \HANSEN\- What would you get for like--can you describe the meals for breakfast or lunch? \JOHNSON\- Breakfast she would generally have some oatmeal or some dry food, but, yes, you had a regular breakfast every morning before they went to work. But they started threshing at six o'clock in the morning. Must get a lot of time in. Those days, of course, they didn't have this time savings time that we have now. So you had the team hitched up at six o'clock and you was ready to start threshing. So you got up in the morning at four thirty and harnessed your horses up and got your breakfast, then hitched up and was ready to go to work. The old whistle would blow on the steam threshing machine. It had an engine that furnished the power, and they'd have that steam whistle blow and you could hear it for 10

11 a mile away. It was the method of operation then. It's different today. \HANSEN\- Were those machines pretty reliable, or did you find that you'd have to keep maintaining them all the time or repairing them all the time? \JOHNSON\- Generally, you had a separator man, and he was a grease monkey, as they called him. He did the greasing, and this man would supervise it and watch the operation of it. They had pretty good machinery then. The Molina and McCormick built real good machines. Then they had a man on the engine and another man that furnished him coal and water. Had quite a crew there. Had about six teams and wagons that hauled it in. And men in the fields that put that on the wagons, and that consisted of the crews. They paid so much a bushel for thrashing the grain. The farmer paid that for threshing the grain. \HANSEN\- Was the labor mostly local, or was it migrant as it is today? \JOHNSON\- No, there was always labor that time of the year when it was a lull and the factory wasn't operating in the fall of the year. It was before the factory would start, and we always had quite a few of the wintertime factory employees that would go out on the threshing machines. Fact of it is this man had another threshing machine named Stewart that worked for this factory all of the time, and just in the summertime, had his threshing crews. So part of his project was to thresh grain in the summertime or in the fall of the year and work at the sugar factory. He was an electrician for the sugar company. That was the unit that we had in agriculture here. And it was all agriculture then. Sheep feeding, a lot of lamb feeding, a lot of cattle feeding, of course, the beet byproducts and the alfalfa was a big project here. Lots of alfalfa grown in Larimer County. It was very well adapted to the state, still is. (p.27) \HANSEN\- I've read some of the early experiment station bulletins when they were just starting to fool around with alfalfa \JOHNSON\- Yes, early years, it was well to get four dollars a ton for it. Not much demand outside of the area right around here. That's what started the lamb feeding in this country was the extra amount of alfalfa and some in Wyoming. And Western Colorado people had looked at some way to winter their sheep. Started bringing them down here, and at one time we had over a million lambs fed in this area because each farm would have from five hundred to four thousand lambs and feed them out. And, of course, that was good utilization for the water, that alfalfa did take quite a lot of water, and that's one of the demands that they had for the water, alfalfa and sugar beets, barley and oats. \HANSEN\- OK, when you finished this job with Mr. Mitchell, then what did you do? This would be winter now I guess. \JOHNSON\- Yes, fall of the year. After the threshing time was the harvest of sugar beets. I had a team of horses I had through the help of Father. I took a contract or took a job hauling a man's fifty acres of beets, hauling his beets to the sugar company, that fall, and that went into the winter. Then, following that part of the winter I had my team of horses, and I hauled some straw from out where we had thrashed out east of town, hauled straw into a cattle feeder. Monroe Company had a large feed lot around the sugar factory where they fed the by-products of the sugar company, they bought the pulp, to cattle. And he had to have straw. So you didn't have bailers for the straw then, so you'd haul that in a big bulk in a rack, haul it in town and pitch it on and pitch it off again. And that was my winter's job. \HANSEN\- Now this was about what 1915, 1916, or was it a little later? \JOHNSON\- This was a little later than that. \HANSEN\- Had World War I started yet? \JOHNSON\- No, this was before the World War started. And it didn't start... \HANSEN\- Spring of \JOHNSON\- Yes, was thinking it started... Yes, Then through the summer ofl916 I didn't do too much other than helping around. This man Mitchell, I helped him. That summer was not very much of any happenings. Father and Mother, when they sold the farm, they took as a part of payment two houses in town--and he had to overhaul those houses quite a little bit. So then he was a trader, and he traded these houses for a farm. He wanted to get back on the farm. He traded for a farm down at Barr Lake, right north of Denver. Folks moved down there. Then that fall is when I was, well I guess in the late summer, we had gone ahead and thrashed again that next fall. I operated his equipment in the fall. It 11

12 wasn't too large of an operation that fall, somehow or other, I don't remember now, it was drought had bothered quite a little bit. It wasn't so many months. But that fall I was just helping some of the neighbors. Then one night we had friends. Earl Anderson was quite a friend. They had folks that had come from Kansas here, and he was a boy about my age, and our folks had associated with their folks. And they would have Sunday dinners there, and we'd have them over to our house Sunday dinner, so we had that acquaintance. Now he had called me up and I met him in town and we said, "Well, let's go have an ice cream soda." Went over to Kelly's Candy Kitchen and were having an ice cream sunday there, and I noticed sitting in the back of the room was a man McClelland and his wife. He owned the Express Courier at that time. \HANSEN\- Was that Henry McClelland? \JOHNSON\- Henry McClelland. And he had a farm out south of town, but we'd said "hello," waved at him, and so he and his wife finished what they were eating there and came over, and he stopped at the table. And he said, "What are you gentlemen doing anyhow?" He knew our parents and all. He said, "Say, I've got a half section out here, and half of it is in fruit--apples, cherries--mostly apples, another hundred and sixty acres that we're farming." And he said, "I've got a man on there that doesn't seem to make too good of success at it, why don't you boys come out and rent that farm." Well, we didn't have any money--we were just boys. I had a team of horses. Earl's folks were farming and he was working on the farm. And in the conversation--"you just take my machinery and pay for it when you can and farm it." He said "I like young folks to get going and I haven't got a house on there, but..." He was living in a house just south of Harmony Road and College A venue. The house is still standing there. He was living there. And right south of that a half of a mile is still another house where he had a foreman looking after the farm and looking after the apples and all, and he said, "You can get room and board from him until I finish a house for you." He was very gracious, very fine gentleman. "OK," we made an agreement and shook hands right there in the restaurant. Went out the next day and made arrangements with the people that was in that other house to board us at five dollars a week until Henry--he put the contract out right away to build a four room house, and it still sits across the railroad track on Horsetooth Road. And we then went to work that fall spreading manure, cleaning out his corrals and getting the farm in shape. And in the winter sometime, he finished the house, and we moved the bam over there from where the other buildings were and set up quite a home there, the two of us. We enjoyed it. Earl was a very fine boy, and we got along real good. And come spring we put the crop in, and had a pretty good crop. \HANSEN\- What did you plant? \JOHNSON\- Planted sugar beets, and he had already a good fifty acres of alfalfa, and we put oats and barley, some wheat, put some spring wheat in. That fall, of course, it rained and rained and rained and the wheat grew into shocks. Ruined about all of it before we could get it thrashed. But it was alright. I'm a little bit ahead of myself, but along in May of that year, we were hatching and farming and Margaret Capps, the girl I had been corresponding with, for four years had been keeping company with her, and even when I was in Michigan I was writing to her. We married with the arrangement that Earl would pay for half the groceries, and she would keep the house. We had two bedrooms in the home there. \HANSEN\- Let's see, was this 1916? May? \JOHNSON\- This is Then pretty well along with the crops, the war broke out, and they called for all of us to register. I registered and Earl registered. And both of us passed the inspection and were subject to call. Henry McClelland was on the draft committee. And he came over. We thought perhaps we would be selling out, and, of course, my wife feeling real bad. Henry McClelland came over and he said, "I have orders from Washington to not take boys off the farm. We need production. But he said, "I've got two boys here, and you're married, and Earl is not, I am requesting that you stay, I have the orders to not destruct the farm. Well, I felt kind of bad because it looked like--well, we always had patriotic feelings on how to win this war. But then I was able to buy Earl's part of this, his equipment and all, and he was drafted. The amusing part about this whole thing was that we had this machinery, 12

13 and I had the team of horses, and I had some equipment, had a wagon and a few things like that, but we needed some money through the summer. I went to the Poudre Valley Bank. Charley Sheldon was president and Vema Wolf was vice-president. And \PAUSE\ [Interruption to answer the phone] \JOHNSON\ - And when I went in there to the bank, had no association with the bank, only I just had a few hundred dollars or so. I can remember Sheldon was a short fellow, quite wide, came wobbling up to the counter. The bank was on Linden and Walnut, right on the comer, the old hotel there now. And asked what he could do for me. I give him my story, starting in out there farming and had to have some money. Going to use the man's machinery until we could pay for it. And I remember the old boy, he looked at you, looked like he looked right straight through you, and I wondered if my story was taking off, and I got through telling him what I wanted to do and all, he said "Are you a son of J. B. Johnson's?" I said, "Yes." He said, "He's an honest man, and you'd better be," and he reached over and wrote out the note. And the note said "I Promise to Pay," that's all it said on it. Five hundred dollars. And I was in the banking business. Most marvelous condition that you ever seen. That old boy, Charley Sheldon, done a lot for the country. But that was my banking business, how it started. \HANSEN\- Pretty pleasant experience. \JOHNSON\- It was, to have the nerve to go in there without asking Dad to go along or anything. Those days a lot was done on what they thought about what a man consisted of. Anyhow that's how I started my banking. Anyhow, we had harvested the one crop and the crop looked pretty good, I went back to the bank and we had pretty well paid everything, and paid McClelland some. Told him again that I was buying out my neighbor, and he wrote out a note, whatever I needed. So bought out Earl. About that time we had a daughter to come, so we farmed the next year there. And that water was good water at that time. That highline water was good water, but that's my first experience in irrigating on my own. I was irrigating with Dad on the farm we had. We had ground where Dad was that didn't take very much water, and that was the least of our troubles there. I had more trouble to get water off than we did to get it on. But out at McClelland's we had to do a real job of irrigating. And we learned a whole lot about application of water and when to get it on and get it off. That's the first real irrigation we had. And I had a brother, my oldest brother was farming with Charley Evans. Charlie Evans was I think one of our biggest landowners at that time, between he and Sam Webster. \HANSEN\- Which brother was this? \JOHNSON\- My oldest brother Elmer was farming with him. And brother Ed had gone to war, so he had been working with Elmer out there on where he was farming with Charley Evans. Charley Evans and my brother Elmer came over and visited with me and said, "We'd like to have you come over and rent a farm we have." "Elmer was successful feeding livestock and we need somebody to feed lambs on the farm, and that's a better farm we think than you've got. South of town wasn't considered our top production in sugar beets. East of town where he was talking about was considered better ground. Margaret, my wife, was pretty well pleased there. She had made friends with a lot of neighbors, and she was pretty happy where we were there. But she was willing if she thought we could better ourselves to go out with Charley Evans because he was a big operator, but I said "I'll have to talk with Henry McClelland." He had been so good to us. The McClellands were just wonderful people, he was just like a father. If I had a suggestion about irrigating or about anything, he was right there to help, and when this little daughter was born, she would come over every day to see how my wife was getting along with the baby. They were just such grand people. Anyhow, I said I'd have to go talk to Henry. So I went and talked to Henry McClelland, and told him about what was offered. And Henry McClelland was really a big man. He said, "Well, Harvey, I am very well pleased to have you here, but Charley can do more for you than I can, I'm not a livestock man. Livestock--at that time we were starting to feed a lot of lambs in the country. That was the way of consuming the hay we were producing. I had to sell everything on the farm there, and it was a movement that was going through, feeding livestock. So he was really lovely about it. He could have 13

14 said most anything but what he did say. And so we finished up that season farming there and in the fall moved over on one of Charley Evans' farms and filled the corral that fall. I done pretty good. I had accumulated my machinery, I had paid Henry McClelland off for the machinery, I had purchased some more equipment. And then he put fifteen hundred lambs in there and said "I'll furnish the money, buy the lambs, and then we'll split with you." And when we got done it cost us five dollars a head, and I owed fifteen hundred dollars more than I had. First year \END OF TAPE THREE, SIDE A\ TAPE THREE, SIDE B But that irrigation there on that particular farm was not a good type of irrigation. \HANSEN\- Now where was this particular farm located? \JOHNSON\- This was at the comer of Prospect and Fairview Drive, right south of us right here, right on the comer there. The next year, of course, the second youngster came about that time. Gordon was born about that time. And the livestock feeding the next year was good, and we were there seven years with Charley. And times were pretty hard in the twenties. In those days if you were any good at all you would have some good milk cows and some chickens and you had a garden and you'd live off the farm. Your wife would do some canning, and you had your eggs and milked a few cows. After the latter part of the seven years, I'm sure that Evans was being pretty well pressed with finances and all, and he had insinuated to me that he was losing. I was a little bit peeved at Evans. He thought I shouldn't milk five cows. He thought maybe that I should do more farming. But we had learned how to live off of the farm. Anyhow, at that time the banks were having quite a lot of trouble. The First National Bank--working with Charley Evans, one regrettable thing I did do with Charley Evans, by insistence of Charley Evans, I moved from the Poudre Valley Bank to the First National Bank. And the First National Bank was having some difficulties. They brought a new cashier in from Reno. He was a banker, a new president of the First National Bank. The bank had loaned quite a little money at different places, but they had one place out in Black Hollow, six hundred and forty acres, a full section that they'd loaned quite a little money to the owner on that. And this Fred Brimmer called me in one day, and he said "Harvey, we're having trouble out there on that, that six hundred and forty acres, real good farm land, we want you to go out and take that over." Well, it was one of the best places, six hundred and forty acres. He said, "We'll finance you, we'll see that you get all the money you need." Well, it took an awful lot more equipment to go on that big a farm. That's the first entrance into Water Supply and Storage Water. \HANSEN\- Now what year was this? \JOHNSON\- This was in '27. And went back and told Charley Evans what they wanted me to do, and he said "You can't do that." Well, I said "Charley, you think I shouldn't have these cows here, and I've got to live." Farming wasn't doing any good, times w~re pretty hard, and banks were having trouble. He said, "I just bought fifteen hundred lambs to come in here, and I will just give you fifteen hundred dollars ifyoujust stay." Well, we thought about it quite a lot. Fifteen hundred dollars to head offthe future of a better farm and all was pretty small. So we decided to go out to Black Hollow, make a twelve mile move with horses and we just had a little old pick-up. But at that time everything was done with horses, horsepower and everything. To go out on six hundred and forty acres I had to have twenty four head of horses ready to hitch up every morning, harness for them, machinery. So I took quite another expenditure. The bank had no limit to what I would go in and ask for, I would get it because he wanted me to take over. Had some people that were not successfully farming it, and I had gotten some good lessons from my brother, Elmer, and from Charley Evans to do a good job farming. That was one of the things that they did teach me, good job of farming, proper plowing, proper irrigation, and proper care of the crops. And that's the reason they wanted me to go out there. So there's my first experience with the Water Supply and Storage. And the first year there in '28, we had one of the biggest droughts we ever had, a shortage of water. We run twenty-eight days of water. 14

15 And we had to have a man watching every drop of water that went to the field. When it got through, you moved it to another place. Good water, but it was awful short. But we produced a crop. It was good soil. Proper care of the water, produced a good crop. The second year we had a little better crop. And I was called in--the City of Ft. Collins used to have a Farmers Day they would have here, and they would throw a party for the farmers. I was called in to that and I was given a set of silverware for having the best production crop in the Ft. Collins trade territory. And I was living way down in Weld County. So the farm was good to me there. We were short of water. Doing a little better, but that's where we got educated to water. Where Father was on the farm, you'd put water on and it would stay too long, it would drown stuff out. Out there at Black Hollow, that land was what they call the Greeley loam, most wonderful ground there is, and it produced. And worked with my ditch company that I did pick up extra water, able to lease water from people. And with plenty of water you could sure produce. Got that experience of producing. Used to have a hundred acres of sugar beets, take two thousand tons of beets out of the field with a team of horses, or several teams, several wagons, haul them two and a half miles and deliver them to the dumps to the sugar company. It was quite busy times. I was doing quite well, felt that I was going to be able to do quite well, and then '29 came, crash came. We had four thousand lambs. in the corral, and two hundred head of cattle on feed. Wound up I owed thirty-five thousand dollars more than I could dig up. The First National Bank was closed along with a lot of the banks. The old Poudre Valley stayed open. But I couldn't go back to Poudre Valley after I'd quit them once because they had all they could do to take care of their own customers. So the county agent and I, we heard that the small loans department in Washington were setting some small loans. The county agent and I went to Denver. \HANSEN\- Who was the county agent then? \JOHNSON\- That was Toine in Weld County, Earl Toine. And they told me down there, "Well, we're just set up to help a quarter section or eighty acres, we're not helping anybody on a section of land." But I couldn't farm a section of land without any money. I was broke. And finally a man by the name of Mullen from Washington was there, and he said "Well, we'll stretch this a little bit, we'll give you three-thousand dollars to raise a crop." I come back home and said to my wife, "Now, you know how to work and I know how to work, there's a whole lot of things that we think we need, we don't need. We can get by on this thing all right. She said "Sure we can." So we put in a hundred acres of beets. How we took care of them, I don't know, but I had men fifty dollars a month worked for me, live in a house, take care of themselves. Fifty dollars a month was all I paid them. \HANSEN\- How many men did you have? \JOHNSON\- I had three men. And I stacked after two sweeps. I did two men's work, and I put in time irrigating. We raised a crop, and that fall my first beet check was twelve thousand dollars. \HANSEN\- So you got out of it. \JOHNSON\- Paid off my bills and paid the government off, and had four thousand dollars to pay down on a farm. \HANSEN\- Now, the Black Hollow place, had you owned that, or were you just renting? \JOHNSON\- I was just leasing. Denver people had it, but the bank here had quite a lot of money tied up in it. \HANSEN\- So did you then tum around and try to buy that particular place or another place? \JOHNSON\- I thought it was too big for me to venture into. I should have, I could have acquired it, running it like I did, but there was... Sam Clammer was quite a friendly old boy here in town, and he wanted to talk to me about buying a farm. That depression in the thirties was really rough. Everybody in this country here, all of the big feeders, had just taken a terrible loss. And they just kind of sit down to it. So my wife and I went and looked at about four different farms where people were depressed--the Giddings, and Charley Crane, the Zollners--all of them were just really hit hard. And I made up my mind that I wanted a place where you could get water off of it, as well as getting it on. Charley Crane was eighty years old, and he had been renting to his son-in-law, and he was asking fourteen thousand dollars for a hundred and sixty acres, and the building suited us. So Sam Clammer made arrangements with him that if he would get me a ten-thousand dollar federal land bank loan, we could swing it. 15

16 So we did, we bought the quarter section for fourteen thousand dollars, and paid down four-thousand dollars, and got a federal land bank loan at 3%. That had two shares of Water Supply and Storage. And the Poudre Valley Bank called me up. They had a half a share of Water Supply and Storage they'd sell me for twelve hundred dollars. Two years ago one whole share of Water Supply and Storage sold for a hundred and seventy three thousand dollars. And I bought that half of share for twelve hundred dollars. That got me into the Water Supply and Storage as a stock holder. \HANSEN\- Now where was the Crane place that you bought? \JOHNSON\- The Crane place is, from the interchange out here, it's a mile east of that, and a mile and a half north. It's still the place that I have. \HANSEN\- Is that out here on Mulberry? \JOHNSON\- Yes, and Highway 50. Mulberry here, one mile east on Mulberry from the interchange or just directly east of the new interchange. You know where the new interchange is? They've taken four and a half acres off of me there. So I run a mile through there now. You see, after I bought that I bought eighty west of there. Then I bought the sixty on the south of it. But that's the quarter section that I started in. And then... \HANSEN\- Now what year was this that you actually owned your own place? \JOHNSON\- Well, I bought it in '34. I farmed a couple more years out there, bought it in '34. It was rented here then. And I didn't move on it until the fall of '34. But the spring of '34 I bought that. Then I stayed out in Black Hollow one year because had pretty well arranged that, and this was rented; which was very lucky I did because I put a hundred acres of beets in out there and still had another crop and was able to make my payments in good shape.(p.39) But that fall then Dick Aken said, "I want to take you to a water meeting, a board of directors meeting." And I went up and Water Supply and Storage had office up on top of the old Larimer County--Portner Building on North College, the middle of north College block on north College. Upstairs was a hall. They had leased the hall, and they were having a meeting, and I listened all day long. There were reports, and they were having problems and all. It was all news to me because I had never been on the inside. I had been pretty well acquainted with, used for eight years there, used Water Supply and Storage and studied the Water Supply and Storage pretty well. During the meeting then they elected seven board of directors every year. And then after they had gone through the process all afternoon, along about dark, they called for election of board members. An old man, Gus Kluver, at that time, was our biggest land owner. He got up and said, "I have a young man here that's bought a farm out here, and I want to recommend him on the board. I nominate Harvey Johnson." I had no leading of it at all. Just because he said that, I drew the most votes of anybody. So that put me up on the Water Supply board. \HANSEN\- This was 1936 though, right? \JOHNSON\- This was '36, yes. \HANSEN\- That's when you came on. You actually came on in '3 7, right? \JOHNSON\- Yes, it would be January the 4th of 1936 when they had that meeting. So that's jumping around pretty fast. 'But I thought you'd probably want to get to where we become acquainted with the water. \HANSEN\- That's right. Now, in another interview, or in something I read there was mention made of your association with the Farm Bureau during this period. \JOHNSON\- Yes, during that period they were just trying to get the Farm Bureau going, and there was about six men in the state. Picked them all around the state. Put up a hundred dollars apiece, and one of them visiting up here. I believed that it was necessary to have a Farm Bureau. Farmer's Union was worked on, you know, a lot of other projects, but the Farm Bureau seemed to be the cleanest of any. So they asked me to come down to Denver to a meeting. They were organizing a meeting of the state. \HANSEN\- About when was this? \JOHNSON\- This was about '36 or '37. \HANSEN\- They had a Farm Bureau earlier on, around World War I, but had it gone...? \JOHNSON\- Yes, but it just wasn't active at all. And they were getting this active. They had a 16

17 secretary down there, a woman that was working. Phillips from San Luis Valley was president, and then they had a man from down southeast. A local man living here was trying to push it too. He had three daughters. One of them was Smith's wife. His name was Tarr, John Tarr. Lived out south of town. But he had come from the east and he was a member there, and he was trying to push it here., But I went down there, and then they put me on as state secretary. And I drove down there once a month for about four years. We had it going pretty good, and then we got our insurance under Kansas. We didn't have enough capital, enough back of us to set up insurance, so we set up under Kansas. I put up a little money on that to help boost it. Then as I got tied up in the water here I had to drop that. They gave me a plaque for being a constant member from '34 up to date. Insurance, I still have insurance with them. \HANSEN\- Now was this life insurance or crop insurance? \JOHNSON\- Just car insurance, and, yes, we set up car insurance. That's what we set up then. Then they took up life insurance afterwards. Set up an agency, and we had a little agency set up here, but I stayed on as state secretary for the four years. And I just had to drop out. But I did give them a lot of time. \HANSEN\- What kinds of activities was the Farm Bureau involved with during this period? Most of the "New Deal" programs were really not launched by then, right? \JOHNSON\- Yes, they were pretty much promoters of these deals and all, and legislation. They worked on quite a lot of legislation getting a break for the farmers. Yes, during the time that I was there, of course, Roy Green was president of the college, and I took him down there several times, and he helped us out with legislation. But I had to divide so much time, I was still trying to farm, you know, and working under indebtedness. I couldn't give it the time necessary, but we had a very good secretary, and Phillips could give us more time down from the San Luis Valley, he gave us more time. And we got Toine in there as manager, we hired him out of Weld County. He was county agent in Weld County. We hired him down there. And he was a good promoter, and he pushed the thing pretty good. Since that, I haven't had any time with them at all because I had too many other things that has kept me busy. \HANSEN\- How helpful were the various federal programs that were established during that time? \JOHNSON\- Most of them were just really good. Of course, they set up several programs that sure helped the farmers out. \HANSEN\- Which ones did you find most helpful? \JOHNSON\- Well, of course, we got tangled up in feeding livestock. The wool, we got them to put a price on wool. And then the sugar beets got depressed pretty bad. And they the Costigan Act through where all imported sugar had to pay a fifty cent tax, and this went to the farmers. There were several projects that really kept this thing going. The Farm Bureau supported them. And the time I was secretary, I attended a couple of nationals in Chicago and in Iowa, one time, in Chicago, in the national association of the Farm Bureau. Got quite a broad view of it, but I didn't have the time to give it. I just couldn't cut loose from other stuff. Andy Mair out here was a farmer boy, and we got him to go into the state pretty well. And of course he's retired. He went from there to the state department. And he's retired. I see him here in town now. He's retired with a pretty good pension from what they promoted him to. \HANSEN\- That's Andy Mair? \JOHNSON\- MAIR. You've probably heard of Andy. He moved back here now from Washington. He was at Rotary the two or three times that I've seen him lately, had a visit with him. But I just didn't have time. One of the things that took a lot of my time, the Federal Land Bank asked me to go to Wichita and learn appraising. So I did quite a lot of appraising loans at the Federal Land Bank. See they had an agriculture appraiser, and they had one from Washington. We'd appraise two of them, and they'd make the loans according to what they thought after we'd appraise it. Then I appraised for Prudential, but taking care of the farm and Water Supply and that appraising, why I had to drop some of the things. I just couldn't keep up with it. \HANSEN\- Now did they employ you to do this, or were you on special board? \JOHNSON\- Well, I got two percent of all appraisals. That paid pretty well. I appraised an awful lot of 17

18 this land out through here. And that two percent was thirty-five thousand dollar loan or something like that. You know, two percent off of that gave m e a pretty good pay. \HANSEN\- That's very good. \JOHNSON\- And at Prudential I appraised some for them through the contacts of the Federal Land Bank. But I had to think about my own youngsters getting in school and in college and all, and I had to think about getting a few dollars of my own. And then as I got pushed into the Water Supply and Storage pretty heavy in the '30's, of course, we began to see that we had to get the water. So we did get water. We have gotten water since that. But that's a story of its own. \HANSEN\- We'll pick that up next week. \JOHNSON\- But some of my brothers might have thought that I was out a mixing up around the country when I maybe should have been home taking care of things. But anyhow, I took care of home too, but I did get mixed up into a lot of the Farm Bureau and appraisal with the Federal Land Bank and all. And it was very educational, all of it. \HANSEN\- I'm sure it was. It gave you a feel for the whole region. \JOHNSON\- Hard to comprehend all of it, it just poured on me so fast. But, some of the most wonderful people in the world you get in contact with. Yes, I went to Chicago, and there were 4,000 Farm Bureau people there. And no preparations, no thinking about anything, called on by the president, Ed O'Neill, was national president, to come up to the rostrum and give a report on the western states. Talk about a man being embarrassed. \HANSEN\- Well, I'm sure by then you knew something about.... \JOHNSON\- Yes, I knew something. You had to ask for divine help once in a while, you would get into a spot you know. But it's been an interesting time. I just talked to my son, Gordon, he was 64 here last Sunday, and talked to him a little bit ago, he called up, and I had asked him to get some auditors to get up a new will for... \END OF TAPE THREE, SIDE B\ \START OF TAPE FOUR, SIDE A\ This shouldn't probably be on there, but anyhow, Whitney and Anderson are auditors that have a pretty good program, a will program where you get the farms and stuff turned over to the youngsters. And he just called up and said, "Whitney has been working with the national to figure out--well, he says "They don't have anything for a ninety year old man, it's all under that." So I've got to set up a new project. So I lived too long for the benefit of the... \HANSEN\- Well, this a problem for a lot of farmers. You work hard and you develop a family farm, and then so often the inheritance taxes and the real estate taxes are so burdensome that a youngster or a child in the family can't take the property over. It just gets lost at that point. \JOHNSON\- Well, Beatty had worked up a deal here where he was going to take $600,000 for them. And we've got to get something else. So that's what we're working on now. Anyhow, he was telling me this morning about that. And I think, well, you aren't supposed to be living here at this time. \HANSEN\- Well, let's go on to some of your activities after you joined the Water Supply and Storage Company that don't deal with the company per se. We'll come back and talk about the company next week. Now about by this time we're on the edge of World War II, 1940, 41. You're still living on your farm that you own. What happens when the war breaks out? Then what do you do? \JOHNSON\- Well, when the war breaks out, of course, I was appointed as a committee to sell bonds. And we'd have bond drives for the agriculture end of it. But Don McMillan was county agent here, and he never would leave me alone. We went into programs, of course, all programs, but then they had to have production of crops, advocating productions. And they had to have sugar. Well, the rationing came into effect, they had to ration gas, they had to ration meat, they had to ration flour. And the county agent had the appointment of those, and Jim Andrews was head of the Agriculture Department up here at the college, and, of course, I was appointed right away as chairman of the committee that was rationing all equipment and gasoline to all the farmers. And we'd have our regular meetings here. And then that summer they had to have these beets grown. We had twenty-five thousand acres around Ft. Collins, and all over the sugar beet growing country. So they formed an association to take 18

19 care of imported labor. The government would import labor in here. The county agent and the director of agriculture up here at the college formulated this and got it into operation, but as a member I was attending meetings. I had to by request. But they had to have a manager of this association. It was called--i'll get to the name of that later on--but the association was formed in charge of all the labor imported into northern Colorado. Those labor camps were set up. They had a prison war camp right west of Greeley. And those prisoners were ordered out on the farms. But we had these labor camps set up, and as high as three hundred Mexicans. At one time, we had one-hundred and fifty Kentucky boys. We had Jamaicans in here. We had a trainload of Jamaicans. And of course I got tangled up. Appointed manager of this. First grey hairs I ever had. \HANSEN\- What were some of the problems you had? \JOHNSON\- Imported labor had to be paid in cash every so often, and you had to have a record of every man. And I had four girls, and we had to see that they got food to these camps, they got meat and they got flour. I had power to go into the camp at Colorado Springs, Camp Carson, and command trucks, command refrigerators, walk-in refrigerators for these camps, and everybody looking at you. That was a job. I put in three years at that. The fellow that was supposed to open that up had a heart attack and passed away right afterwards, so then they forced me into that whole thing. And that was a job. \HANSEN\- Were you running your farm at the same time? \JOHNSON\- Yes, had the farm at the same time. But I had some good help. \HANSEN\- Which of the groups did you find most difficult to work with, the Jamaicans or the Mexicans? Were you in charge of the POW's too? \JOHNSON\- Yes, oh yes, we had several of those POW's come in here. Supposed to have a man come down here and answer that phone, but he hasn't shown up yet. Excuse me. \PAUSE\ [Mr. Johnson answers phone] \JOHNSON\- That was a very unusual situation. Mexicans, of course, was always real good, but we'd get some foreigners in here. I had one interpreter woman that was awfully good to interpret. They were more peaceful probably than anybody else. The Jamaicans, they sure couldn't take this cold weather. They would get stubborn. The warehouse out here now where they are making homes out here, old sugar company warehouse, turned that over to us, and we had cooks in there taking care... We had six hundred Jamaicans at one time. And we had to ship them back though. The Kentucky boys, they got into fights, we had to ship them back. But we had several prisoners of war. We had some of them in camps out here too besides what we brought out of Greeley. One time, see they had to have a lieutenant for every twenty of those prisoners to take them to the field. And one time we had a whole bunch, a thousand of them down here, and no sergeants or no one to look after them. Anyhow, we had those, and it was starting to storm, and the beets weren't harvested, and the army wouldn't tum them loose until they had those key men. Anyhow, Ed Johnson, was our senator from here and he was pretty well hooked up in the War Department. So I called him up and told him that the army was holding these men up because they didn't have sergeants to go out with them. And he said, "I'll get to headquarters of this division in Omaha; you'll have a carload of them in there tomorrow morning." And we did have too. Those boys, they really worked. We had a few Italians in there that was a little stubborn. I know one day I was called out here and any trouble to come up. These people working in the field, of course, they'd get a ten gallon can of water. You had to get them water, you know, and this one guy he kicked that tank over and the sergeant pulled a gun on him. So there was quite a disturbance. I had to go out, anyhow. Another night I came by out here at the sugar factory where we had them camped. They had turned over all the warehouses to--the ones that didn't go to Greeley camped down here. Of course they set up tents right away and fixed up, it would get kind of cold. I came by there, and the lights were all on and the prisoners were all sitting outside. \HANSEN\- What time of year was this? \JOHNSON\- This was in October, harvesting beets. So I stopped in there and I wanted to know what 19

20 was going on. And they said they didn't get enough done that day. They'd been fooling around enough that they wasn't going to give them their supper until he punished them awhile. And I said, "You get those men in there right away and you get them their supper and you get them to bed and get them out in the morning. You've got no business doing that or I'll report you to the Colonel." So he did. But I'll tell about your problems. Another night when we had the Kentucky boys here... \HANSEN\- Now where were the Kentucky boys? Why weren't they drafted into the regular army? \JOHNSON\- I don't know why. \HANSEN\- Were they young men? \JOHNSON\- Yes, they were young men. I guess they were a little ornery to have in the army. But we had them in the warehouse at Loveland. I had charge of that too. One night I got a call about midnight. They'd had a knifing down there. Of course I had to go down and go to the hospital. So they had this old guy in that knifed him, and a bunch of boys ganging up on him, and he was in a room, and he's got his bed up next to it, and let the boys push it open and he jumped on one and knifed a guy. The old Kentucky knifing. What a time we had. \HANSEN\- You had your own war right here. \JOHNSON\- Oh yes, we had war right here. Talk about your times though, those were rough times. \HANSEN\- How about the farm itself? I guess there was an unlimited demand for anything you could produce. So I guess financially you were in pretty good shape. \JOHNSON\- Yes, we were doing all right. The farms were doing pretty good. We were pretty prosperous right then. But we went into some hard old times here lately though. These boys now are facing some trouble. \HANSEN\- Well, do you want to go on and talk about your work after the war, or do you want to wait until next week on that? \JOHNSON\- About the... \HANSEN\- Starting up your farm equipment company and... \JOHNSON\- Yes, in '44, of course, I felt that the farm was kind of dragging me down, and had so many other things that I rented the farm and we moved into town. This siege with the War Food Administration began to lull a little bit, but the Allis Chalmers people from Omaha, had a branch office in Omaha, came in and wanted to know if I wasn't interested in setting up an Allis Chalmers Equipment Company here in Ft. Collins. And I said, "Well, I've never been in the equipment business." And he said, "Well, we've been referred to you because you knew more farmers than any other man in the country. We'd like to have you to set up the Allis Chalmers Equipment Company. We'll furnish you a block man in charge of a block of states to set you up and get your parts in and set your office up, your secretaries and everything." Well, I had Gordon; he was going to come out of college, and he was graduating in mechanical engineering, and he was quite enthused about it. So I signed up with them. And that's how I got in the equipment business. We went through some tight years pioneering new equipment that had never been used in this country. The Allis Chalmers hadn't been used here. It was used in the east all the time. John Deere and International was the only two that we had. That was very interesting though. It turned into a pretty good business. Had it for twenty-nine years before I sold it out. \HANSEN\- So your son Gordon went in with you right at the start then? \JOHNSON\- Gordon went in--i set him up as a partner--and at the same time, my daughter was the oldest of the children. She married Gene Cathey, a very fine boy-- but he was a filling station man and he had an automobile craze; he just loved to have a lot of automobiles around-- and very fine to the family, but he didn't make too good a living for them. So I asked him to come down, and I put him in the shop, take care of my shop, and I could have him where I could help him out. \HANSEN\- Now where was your shop located in town? \JOHNSON\- 360 Jefferson. And I just sold that a year ago now. I built that on the railroad. Put a Quonset up on the railroad to start in. \HANSEN\- So your son-in-law came in with you too then? \JOHNSON\- Son-in-law came in, and after he was in the shop for a year or so, he kind of felt he wanted 20

21 to come into the sales end of it. And Gordon, quite alert and all, he said "Dad I'd like to set up a business of my own in Greeley." It was open. So I went to the bank in Greeley and gave them a letter that I'd back for so much money. So he set up his own business over there then. And in four years time I got a letter from the banker over there and said we don't need Dad anymore, we're putting your son on the Board of Directors, and he's still on the Board of Directors. So that's how he got established over there. \HANSEN\- You mentioned that you were pioneering a lot of new equipment. Can you give me a couple of examples of some of the stuff you maybe weren't that sure of but.... \JOHNSON\- Yes, well the equipment that--had these little combines that you could sell out to a regular farmer and he would do his own combining instead of waiting for the commercials. And Allis Chalmers were more refined in their tractors and all. They were later designed, and the farmer that had the old two Iunger John Deere out here, he'd been sold on that, and the four cylinder International, they had that until--that was life as far as they were concerned--that's what they had. And now you bring in something new. Well, they hadn't tried that out, and you had to prove to them that it was advantageous. Had an amusing thing--john Deere man here; Ed Brenner was John Deere man, and Ivan Nichols, International. I went to church with the John Deere man, and I said "What do you think about a new equipment business starting up here? Do you think a fellow could make it all right?" He said, "Well, yes, if you want to take some hard knocks, John Deere and International have got eighty percent. Can you live on twenty percent?" After a while I had half of his business. \HANSEN\- Did you do any supplying for pivot head sprinklers? \JOHNSON\- When Gordon set up over in Greeley, he set up for sprinkling. He liked that. So we went into manufacturing over there, the Raincat, the big sprinklers. And he did pretty well going there, so he sold that out to the Toro people for a million and a half dollars. Of course he owed a lot of money on building the factory, the building and all. But, yes, we sold sprinklers all over this country. \HANSEN\- Now what did you think about that system of sprinkling? You know, it's really pretty wasteful, right? The pivot head sprinkling system, compared to running it out of the ditches? \JOHNSON\- Well, I wouldn't have it on my own farm. But there was a demand for it. You had the power--the conservation of water was the big thing--they thought you'd save it, but of course you put that big sprinkler up in the air, evaporation is so big. But the cost of pumping that up, the electricity and everything, oh I've done a little of the sprinkling, but it didn't fit with our farm. Right now the boys are in trouble using sprinklers because the cost is so great. \HANSEN\- Right, and with the energy costs now. \JOHNSON\- Yes, the energy cost is what's ruining them. \HANSEN\- You stayed in this business for what, twenty-nine years? Were there real ebbs and flows? When were the best times and the worst times to be in the equipment business around here? \JOHNSON\- Well, it was pretty slow. It never any boom to it all. It was just your return people were your main thing and service. Never had any trouble, never sued a man. I had a lot of them get into me several thousand dollars and they'd come to me and say they just didn't have it and they'd get it sometime. The farmers, they were very honorable. I never never lost too heavy. Be conservative in what you were doing. I sold that out. Well, the fact of it, the son-in-law and daughter, I'm turning it over to them pretty well, but then the son-in-law, Gene died of a heart attack, and I had a man to buy the business without the buildings. Of course we had a humble set-up there. I still have the old Anderson equipment. We could pay our bills. We paid our bills each month and got two percent off every month, and you could live on that if you pay your bills. These new people, that was too humble for them. They went out and spent $600,000 for a building and let their bills pass, and in one year they were broke and out of business. So it was a matter of watching your P's and Q's and taking care of your business; so you could stay in business. \HANSEN\- Stay away from the flashy overhead and concentrate on what's important. \JOHNSON\- Vivienne Woodward here, our secretary here now, kept books for me in the equipment business for some time. \HANSEN\- That's where your association began? 21

22 \JOHNSON\- The association with her began, so I talked her into this, you see. It all tied in together. It's just a matter of getting along with people. It's interesting, if you get along with people, that's important. \HANSEN\- That's the bottom line if you're going to be in the retail business. \JOHNSON\- Yes, I had a lot of people come to me after selling and say, "You got me in your business, and you go out of business, doggone it, I'm mad at you." \HANSEN\- Well, we've gone on for quite a little while here, and we're not quite finished with what I wanted to do today, but why don't we call it and... \PAUSE\ \CONTINUATION OF TAPE FOUR, SIDE A\ Today is September 10, I am in the Water Supply and Storage Company office in Ft. Collins talking with Harvey Johnson. My name is Jim Hansen. \HANSEN\- Mr. Johnson, last time we were discussing your activities outside of the Water Supply and Storage Company, and we talked about the farm equipment business that you ran in town. Today, why don't we begin with your involvement in the realm of politics and how you were drafted onto the Ft. Collins City Council and specifically what your role was while you were on the council and Mayor of Ft. Collins. \JOHNSON\- Well, having been a farmer, a farmer connection most of my life, I was quite shocked when the people came to me and said they were going to put me on as Mayor of the City of Ft. Collins. I had quite a lot of contact with people of course with the bureau and then with the War Food Administration. I prided myself in knowing most of the men in and around Ft. Collins by their first name. But evidently they had quite serious problems in Ft. Collins. Several attorneys and a couple heads of the banks, only at that time we just had the two banks, they met in the basement of Harold Warren's mortuary place, and had been discussing the problems of the City of Ft. Collins. Evidently the management for several years had said that we didn't want to have expansion of the city of Ft. Collins. We wanted to have people within the town who were considered with the town. They would not let any water taps outside of the city limits, and the city limits were very limited. They were just a surrounding of the people, had a little group of people inside of the town, and at that time it was a five man council. As they called me in, they explained the fact that the City of Ft. Collins was very limited on water. They were not allowed to sprinkle only twice a week and were not allowed to wash their cars. They felt very handicapped, and they had a manager; I'd rather not call his name, but he had been placed in as manager of the City of Ft. Collins from a little power plant that had been built here. And he had pretty well contolled--he had bragged to the fact that he controlled the council, and the council was unable to discharge him. As they explained to me, the council had sent this particular manager on a vacation, and hired a new manager from Michigan by the name of Max Norris. They felt that my income was not around the city, and I suppose they thought I was a stubborn old Swede anyhow. The fact of it was that they said they had to have a new management, and they were going to put me on as Mayor. And I said I never had been connected with politics around Ft. Collins, and I'm not a politician. They said "Well, you stay home and we'll put you on with a mandate." A mandate of cleaning up the administration of town and then the town itself had begun to be concerned about an air field of some kind. And they had been conversing for some time with Loveland that they might have an air field together. And of course had to be another mandate that we had to acquire some ground for an air field with the city of Ft. Collins and Loveland. So it was a pretty good order they were handing to me. And they did use full page advertisements. I offered to contribute. They said "No, this is taken care of." \HANSEN\- Who were the people specifically who approached you? \JOHNSON\- Well, Albert Fisher, Ward Fisher's father, was the first approach. And as I went to a conference, of course, they had Clair Wolfer and the president of the old Poudre Valley and the three lawyers at that time. END OF TAPE FOUR, SIDE A 22

23 START OF TAPE FOUR, SIDE B \JOHNSON\- I became Mayor, and I found myself with the City of Ft. Collins' problems. I also had my equipment business and was on the Water Supply and Storage and had two estates. Had a brother's estate that appointed me as administrator and another old gentleman by the name of Pete Olson. So I had my hands pretty well filled, but I was able to give very full attention to the city problems. One of the first things we needed to do was to acquire some water for the city of Ft. Collins, find out what was the matter with the filter plant that it was unable to filter about fifty percent of the capacity of the plant. They did not have any storage for filtered water, so they had to filter it just as they needed it. If they needed more water than they could filter then they had quite a shortage. So we found that we had to make several movements. One of the first things that was necessary, seemingly, for the problems they had was to get a water board. Their policy of acquiring water [was inadequate] and attention [had to be directed] to the care of the filter plants. Se we needed a bond issue. Then we came to find out the City of Ft. Collins had no rights to issue bonds from revenue. So in order to issue bonds from revenue we had to call elections. And, of course, it was a hurry up election that carried very strongly. We were authorized to get some money to start operation of the city water department. We were very fortunate. We sold five million and eighthundred thousand dollars worth of water bonded bonds and some for the sewers for small interest rate of 3.07%. \HANSEN\- That's unthinkable now. \JOHNSON\- We were ready to go to work. We did enclose a storage water capacity reservoir and were able to acquire Horsetooth water and some North Poudre water. We had the water problem taken care of quite speedily there, but we needed to have a new filter plant. \HANSEN\- Excuse me Mr. Johnson. Had the water board been constituted by this time before the election or did that dome later? \JOHNSON\- No, I appointed the water board, that is, I organized the water board and appointed members. \HANSEN\- OK, how did you go about deciding who should sit on that board. \JOHNSON\- Well, the thoughts were that I wanted the representation of the City of Ft. Collins and at that time we had a state water commissioner. The water commissioner here was Dugan Wilkenson, and he was a party. We wanted a business man, so I appointed Frank Ghent. We wanted a farmer. Fred Feit at that time was a farmer. For an attorney we appointed Ward Fisher. And then we wanted representation from the college; Norman Evans was our appointment there. And by virtue of my position, I was a member of the water board. That pretty well consisted of what the water board was at that time. It was a varied group of men that fairly represented the whole district. \HANSEN\- Now did the council pass some kind of local ordinance in order to establish their needs? \JOHNSON\- Yes, they did. They passed the ordinance that authorized the water board. \HANSEN\- This would be in 1967 then, just shortly after the election? \JOHNSON\- This would be in '62, yes in '62. This is some of the first business that come about. Then, of course, we had the problem inside of the city. Anything we tried to do or anybody tried to do, the old manager was still sitting there. He had his office, and the new manager had his office, and what one would suggest, the other one would kill. So I asked for their resignations, and they informed me that I couldn't discharge them. I got legal opinions, [and] was very fortunate. I had a group of attorneys that I could call on any time that I wanted some help. They were very gracious. The paper itself, Red Moffet was publisher, they were very, very ready to help in every way possible. We proceeded immediately to clean up city hall so that we could get something done. Seemingly, the only way I could handle that would be to call for a general meeting. It was very regrettable to have a general meeting and have all the accusations of managers and all. What hurt worst of anything was thinking about their children, how they were affected, the family affected, because of bringing accusations to people. But anyhow we did. We had a very good turnout. There were a few that were objecting all the time. They had been set at certain places to make the objections. But after the meeting I had called for the council to come to the chamber and informed the council that the public said 23

24 we must have this thing cleaned up. I wanted the council to make a motion that we discharge those gentlemen with a couple of months pay and clean up city hall. So we convened to the chamber and announced to the public that we had discharged Guy Palmus, Mike Norris and the chief of police; they had problems with the chief of police. They discharged the chief of police. He was from Kansas City. Se we had a clean house right now. And, of course, they asked for some time to remain and I said, "Tomorrow morning at ten o'clock we expect all these offices to be clean," and they were. We had to have an acting manager. Bill Widdows was head of the electric department; stable old boy. The council appointed him as acting manager. \HANSEN\- How do you spell his last name? \JOHNSON\- Widdows. He was acting manager. And things quieted down very good. Buck, Howard Buck, was head sergeant of the police department. Very reliable fellow. We appointed him acting chief of police. And the city quieted down. So we were on the road. We got the contract for the filter plant and got the old filter plant into operation at full capacity. Appointed committees to find out ground for an air field. And Tom Gleason was leader of different committees, and the town itself responded most graciously. Every angle that we took in, we had the help of people to try to straighten the thing out. It was a wonderful feeling. Later we hired Ralph Smith for chief of police. I served there for two years. And at the end of the two years, it was a two year term. They insisted I stay another two years, which I did. We set up a planning and zoning board. Previously zoning was carried on by the old manager himself. He said he could manage that better than any board. We set up various committees. In checking we found that the city was selling water to the college up here at a loss to the city. And there were so many problems that had never had any proper engineering. At the time when we discharged these men, I found that there was a city manager's association. I contacted the city manager's association that we would like to interview some person who was capable of handling a town like Ft. Collins, and we had 180 applications. I was told that by discharging the manager that nobody would ever come back to the City of Ft. Collins. But we had 180 applications. For eight months we went along when we were reviewing applications and everything was moving along smoothly. The police department was good on their books and management; and under Bill Widdows, the acting manager of the city, we were moving along very peacefully. It was an interesting period of time with a lot of problems that came about. To do some of those things, we did find a very capable engineer out of Laramie, Wyoming, who did a lot of good engineering. He passed away later during the campaign. Dr. William E. Morgan was president of the college. He was very helpful in all ways. And in '62, I believe the college was between four and five thousand, and when they had everything opened up, Dr. Morgan built this college up. He was a wonderful man. He was very gracious, very helpful every time I asked him for anything at all. What a great bunch of people they were. I'm an old farm boy sitting in something green like that, and to have everybody pulling for you, you felt pretty humble. It was a stage in life that very few people ever go through, I can tell you that. \HANSEN\- You mentioned that you were selling water to the college for less than... \JOHNSON\- The city had been selling. I can't just quote the cents. Anyhow, if I remember, it was about seven cents a gallon cost to the city, and they were selling it for about three and a half cents. \HANSEN\- So the college was willing to make up that difference then? \JOHNSON\- The city set the rates and no objections. We had no objections. The college would cooperate in every way because they were very happy that we had water for people, and we didn't have to short them. Previously they were shorted as well as everybody else. Everybody cooperated. It was beyond my imagination of what people would do. And it was a marvelous time. But there were problems. We had lots of opposition in a lot of other ways too--the City of Ft. Collins was stepping out when they shouldn't. And we bought the ground out there for an air field. We had to hunt for quite a while to find a large enough ground and enough length to have an airfield. And we fixed up an association between the city of Ft. Collins and the city of Loveland where Loveland would put up the first $25,000, Ft. Collins 24

25 would put up $50,000, and this gave us the money to buy the land. We bought that land for less than $500 an acre. we formed that association between the City of Ft. Collins and the city of Loveland. Ft. Collins would be responsible for two-thirds of it and Loveland would be responsible for a third of it. And the Federal Aviation Administration were very gracious. We hired an aviation engineer to set up the grounds, and the Federal Aviation Administration granted some $480,000 to start with. We were able to set up a good base for the runway. Very limited amount of buildings, but we got into operation. We had our manager and set up a board of directors to manage the air field. Loveland would have two men, Ft. Collins would have three. By virtue of my position then I was appointed as a member of the air field board. There were various problems throughout. we were contacted by United Air Lines for using the field as a touchdown. The manager of Loveland and myself went to Chicago and negotiated with United. We didn't get together. United about that time decided to remove the training field in Denver and moved it all to Chicago. United had a training field in Denver that trained as high as a thousand people constantly. They moved that back to Chicago because of some problems they had in Denver. All of these tied in to the city management. Immediately, of course, the city council, through the suggestions of the water board, had agreed by certain operations to extend water to outside areas. When the old council was in they had the limitation of any water being outside of the city limits. Now there were three water districts set up between Loveland and Ft. Collins. One took care of the north Weld and one took care of east Laramie; District Elco was one of the districts. So the board had set up some districts and started delivering to quite a group of people, and our purpose was to cooperate with them. They were acquiring some water on the side too. And now they do service a lot of the area outside of Ft. Collins. Elco right now is serving quite a lot of people inside of the area. But they are working out their plans very good. When I left the city council, we had acquired enough water that we were sure we could take care of the growth of the town as fast as the growth was and set up a policy. Previously the city, if they did annex, never asked for any of the water. They furnished the annexed areas with water, and no more new water was brought in town. So they were getting shorter and shorter. One of the first things I suggested to the water board was that if the City of Ft. Collins acquired any new land, they acquired the water with it. This gave an automatic build-up of water because if they built on some ground, there was naturally irrigation, and what irrigation was on that, pretty well took care of the need of water of housing. When the Big Twas put into effect, that is the Big Thompson, they had quite a hard time of contracting fifty-one percent of that water. People didn't have too much faith in the Big T going in, and it was hard to sell them that water at a dollar and a half an acre foot. So there were several who acquired more than what they needed just to help the build-up of the need of water so that they could get the Bureau of Reclamation to working on the Big T. And, of course, we had those people who had acquired rights to excessive amount of water. Those were the first people we had contacted, and we were able to acquire water from them. That was our big opening of the water. There were various projects we had and various ways that we acquired water. But that was the big problem we had at that time. At the time that I was mayor of the City of Ft. Collins, there were fifteen new churches built in Ft. Collins. The University Shopping Center, the one halfway between here and the big shopping center, was built up. I had the privilege of having the opening of that. And many stores, many restaurants; the town just took on life. They had faith in the town that they would have water. Recognizing the need of the growth, the town, had a tremendous growth in those times. The college was built up to around 16,000. Then they came out from under some bondage. The first manager we hired was manager up in Laramie. We had all these applications. He seemed to be a western man. It was pretty hard to find a man in all the applications that we had who had the knowledge of the western country. I can't recall his name right now. Anyhow, he fit in very well, he fit in with the growth. Then he had some health trouble. He had to resign in a couple of years. Then we hired Tom Coffey. He was a good manager. Moved along with the development of the community. And they had to have a new disposal plant. Engineers had done all of the ground work they could and found out that we had to have low enough down to the southeast part of the area to drain the 25

26 sewers to it. I was administrator for an estate where they wanted to put the sewer. So in order to get out of any complications, I sold that to sand and gravel people. The city then acquired that ground and built the filter plant. Interesting phase right now: the filter plant there and the one up above is furnishing filtered water to the power people. We built our new $400,000,000 power plant up north here. So we've had a lot of action since '62. It was an interesting phase. \HANSEN\- What was the thinking behind the Ft. Collins/Loveland Airport? Why did you think you needed an airport at that particular time? \JOHNSON\- There was quite a requirement of local people. The distance between here and Denver- the pressure was real heavy to get a local field. Greeley had a local field, and other towns--laramie up there had a local field, and all over. We had several businesses that had some planes. It was a hobby for a lot of people, but it was business for a lot of people. The college had closed its air field, and they had put the pressure on the city pretty hard for the last couple of years to get some kind of a field where the boys wouldn't be going to the others. They were having their stations at other towns, and they just felt we ought to have it here. Where we're sitting now, right across to the north of here, this flatland in here looked very tempting, where the field is now. But the Aviation Administration, we had to have their backing, of course. I was fortunate enough--henry was a local man in Denver, I can't recall his name, but he was very gracious--he helped me a lot. But in order to get Federal Aviation Administration funds to help build the field, they had to test the ground. And where the local field is now, did not test for planes of any weight at all. Underneath that is drainage and it didn't test out. So we had to get higher ground. We had the help of the Federal Aviation Administration and several boys. Forney's Welding, they had two or three planes, and they were one of the big pressures to get a field. And several businesses like that. They wanted an air field. But they gave us a lot of help in finding the ground. \HANSEN\- Was there any expectation that this might become a commuter stop for a local airline like Frontier or...? \JOHNSON\- That was the anticipation, yes. Because different ones had considered it. But then nobody came up with enough capital that we could tum it over to them. When I left, we had it all out of debt. But, of course, they have built some more buildings since. When I left the council they requested that I stay on the water board. And I did stay on the water board, and air field board. I stayed on several boards for some time. The water board was kind of close to me. Then about three years ago the council called me in and made me honorary lifetime member of the water board. So I'm still interested in the water board. \HANSEN\- Do you still attend meetings? \JOHNSON\- I have attended quite a bit, but the last two years my wife has been ailing. Just this last week, Molly, who has charge of the water board, wanted to know if I wasn't going to come back to the meetings. So I'm going to try to get active again because it's very close to me. It's been the lifeblood of the town. And Evans, who I appointed on the board, is still a member. Ward Fischer was on for several years. He resigned a couple of years ago. Dugan Wilkenson, they let him out several years ago, the water commissioner. He passed away. Frank Ghents passed away. So most of the old water board is gone now. \HANSEN\- What would you say have been the most important activities of that board since you have left the mayor's office? \JOHNSON\- They have acquired from the North Poudre Irrigation Company the Michigan ditch, transmountain diversion of water; and they have built Joe Wright Reservoir: They never had any storage before. The City of Ft. Collins went along all this time, and during my time with them, we did acquire the Joe Wright Reservoir and built that up. They spent ten million dollars in building up the Joe Wright Reservoir. So they have storage now of five-thousand acre feet of water and have rights. Of course they have that trans-mountain diversion water and they have rights now. And they have 6,500 units of Big T, and they have in the neighborhood of36,000 acre feet ofwater available to the City offt. Collins. Could take care of 125,000 people. \HANSEN\- How actively have you been involved with the recent project to dam the Poudre and 26

27 develop another reservoir? \JOHNSON\- In our position, the Water Supply and Storage, we, well I have to go back... END OF TAPE FOUR, SIDE B START OF TAPE FIVE, SIDE A\ \JOHNSON\- The community of Ft. Collins and different ditch companies, through the interest of Greeley and the interest of Ft. Collins, called this conference of the group. And they had the Bureau of Reclamation here, and they would make a study of the storage in the Poudre. Bill Farrand Jack Harvey were appointed here. And I was appointed on this group. And we spent four years--i was secretary of the group; I still have the papers. We spent four years with the Bureau of Reclamation studying the Poudre. This map over here, [on the east wall of Mr. Johnson' office], the Bureau of Reclamation drew that up for me. And they had a plan whereby they could have an upper storage reservoir. Idlewild up there is low enough, high enough, it's low enough that it would catch most all of the flood waters. They would take that water on a grade to just beyond a point at Columbine. They call it the Poudre City now. Then they had eleven-hundred feet drop there that they were going to put in a power plant. I have all this material right here in the desk right now. All of the four years of study. And then they would make power at the peak of need of power. The trouble is when you're talking about making power out of water at Grey Mountain, you only would make the power when they were turning the water out to the farmers. And it was ruled that was off-peak time. The power wasn't worth as much. They can't do anything like that. But this plan that the bureau had would have this water stored up in Idlewild, and they would make power at the peak time of need and hold it in Grey Mountain and tum it out as farmers needed it out of Grey Mountain. It was a very good plan. Run about two-hundred million dollars, and we had this all set up. I got all the figures on it here. Sent it to Washington. Washingon came back and said Ft. Collins would never need that kind of power. Turned it down. I've got the denial right here. \HANSEN\- What year was this? \JOHNSON\- I recall the four years that they made the study. And this has got to be back about twenty-five years. I'd have to look up and find that date. \HANSEN\- OK, we can do that later. \JOHNSON\- Now, then, we've had another movement later here. And of course the environmentalists have got so strong. \HANSEN\- So the first time you were just kind of closed down because they said you'll never need the power? \JOHNSON\- Absolutely, I've got the report here, Washington said they would never need that kind of power. And they had the Big T, and they think they have ample irrigation. \HANSEN\- What agency was that that turned you down? \JOHNSON\- The Department of Interior, I guess it is. \HANSEN\- It wasn't the Bureau of Reclamation itself? \JOHNSON\- Well, the Bureau of Reclamation, of course, they have to have their orders from higher up. They are the ones that brought the report from higher up that they wouldn't finance it. No need to finance that two-hundred million dollars, that's only chicken feed now days. It would cost several hundred million right now if you did do it. So they have had this movement. There were some objections as far as our company is concerned in diverting all of this water to the Grey Mountain Reservoir. The first part of the program was we'd dry up all of these lakes down below. Well, that's an impossibility because we have an awful lot of water comes in from the north. We have a lot of this water is used three times. The seepage gets to the next fellow, then decrees that and it goes on down the river. And we could never get rid of these small reservoirs because here's a big ditch that we've got that takes five-hundred second feet of water at the head. If you turned this out at the head it would be several days getting to the bottom, and the lower people wouldn't get any, so we've got to have filters along the way. We tum in so much at the head and a couple other reservoirs down below and able to hold a ditch. So many people don't understand about irrigation. They just think you can go up and handle it just like you'd tum water out of a jug. You don't do that you know. 27

28 You take care of this water as it comes about and then you have your distributions all worked out, and to change that would just upset the whole country. \HANSEN\-So there's an equilibrium that's established at every point? \JOHNSON\- It has been by necessity, it's been established. And until you know that, you don't have any idea of what the conception is of what can be done. So they are doing a lot of talking now, and I would like to see some more storage because the last few years we've let as high as fifty-thousand acre feet go by. And some dry years, if we keep on a growing here, they're going to need that water. They're going to need every drop of it. You see, agriculture is depressed right now. This is off of your question, but we're so depressed, a lot of these farmers are cutting down water. They can sell some water, they can get some money. And if we went back to intensified farming some day, the demand for food is going to meet the ability to produce. Somebody is going to go hungry after a while. Just as sure you're a foot high, it's going to change. We'd better take care of our fertilities of our soil now because they're building on it too much. They cut out a lot of production around in Laramie and Weld County, people building on it, selling water off. Industry is coming in and taking water, and they can't keep it up. Somebody is going to get hurt. \HANSEN\- Tell me a little bit about the more recent project then. The one that has really run into the environmental.... \JOHNSON\- Yes, well they have got some plans. Of course the environmental would like to have a wild river, and they'd like to have the things stay just as that--they think that the good Lord put this like here now. But he made it possible for us to do it, and people did it for a reason and it all fits into a pattern. But they need to store some flood water really badly and it's going to have to come. We are going to get real short sometime before they'll do that. But they're talking about storage. Now in 1980, well, the conservancy district has charge of the Big T down here. The conservancy district has been very gracious and offered to help in any way they could to getting some more storage up the Poudre. Well they have, for helping themselves, went and filed on to help out this outfit, filed on storage at Grey Mountain. And just the other day, that was 1980, the other day the courts decreed that. I've got a copy of it here. So it's been decreed that they could build a lake at Grey Mountain. But now to get that done. And the thing is that we need that water, we need it for storage of excess water. And all of us would want to put water through that. Even the storage we have. We have pretty near thirty-thousand acre feet storage, mountain storage that we have right now, Water Supply and Storage has with Long Draw and Chambers Lakes. And we could put that through the system, but there's so much too about this water. The North Poudre Irrigation Company has to irrigate to have water at a higher elevation. So you have got to have some mountain water for them or they can't get by. They can't irrigate all of their country from Grey Mountain. So you've got to have some high mountain storage even yet. But they sure need some. But they've got other thoughts now that maybe they can take it out of the river and make a storage right in back of Ted's Place. There's quite a hollow there. Well, this I can't understand how because the only water they could put in there is flood water, and the flood water comes irregular. It comes with a big bunch ofwater. Now, if you're not on the stream, how are you going to get that? You have to make another tremendous river to take it to the outside storage. Because you're only going to get this water when it comes in a flash. And how are you going to get it in that with just a small stream taking it over there? How are you going to get the water over there? So you pretty near have to have on the stream if you're going to get flood water. And that's what they're going after now, for the river itself is appropriated. But it's the flood stages that they've got to get. And if they're going to get flood stages, they've got to get on a stream. So some of the plans, I'm an old fogy enough that I can't understand what they're thinking about. They are looking for some miracle to happen of some kind. It doesn't do that. \HANSEN\- Do you think this compromise that Hank Brown is trying to work out is going to succeed? \JOHNSON\- Yes, I think they can. But we're going to have to get more desperate. There's too many people who think they've got everything they want now, and they won't work with us. And it's going to have to get desperate before they can get what they want to get done. \HANSEN\- We need another real hard drought cycle. 28

29 \JOHNSON\- But they've got to keep pecking away at it. Keep it before the public. But we're moving awful fast here, the whole front of the Rockies here, and they're going to need every drop of water. Now Colorado has been very regretful that the western and the eastern slopes are fighting one another. And I thought it had quieted down for a few years, and just here right now the western slope are saying no more water is going to go to Denver or anything because we're going to need it over here. And there's going to be some law suits or fights between the state. And while we're doing that California and Arizona are going to take the water. That's the regrettable part that I can see that if they're going to fight, all of them are going to lose it. California has already got way over their--this seven state compact they have--and Colorado is entitled to a lot more water. Arizona is getting a big chunk now in this new project they've got coming up. And California has got the water because they're going to take a lot of that away from California. And there's going to be suits on that too. We have a wonderful climate, we have wonderful country, a wonderful soil, but we're limited in water. And the people keep coming. They're going to use every ounce of it somewhere. But they better be getting in shape because we have too many people now that just accept the thing--well, here it is now, this is beautiful, and it's going to go on and on that way. But it's not going to go on that way unless we do a lot of work with it. That's politics. That doesn't belong in your story. \HANSEN\- Well, it does to some extent because it all ties in. OK. Well, why don't we back up a bit and begin to reconstruct the history of the Water Supply and Storage Company as you recall it. As it's been told to you and, particularly before, you came on the board and the context. You said that you ran water from it for a while. You had Water Supply and Storage Company rights as a... \JOHNSON\- Right, and the man that I was leasing from, [actually] Denver people, but the man who was looking after it [for them]--ed Monroe. Ed Monroe was one of the better developments of north Poudre. And he was a particular friend of mine, and he had a working knowledge of the water in Larimer County, a very practical man. But he used to spend hours talking to me about his development because he lived it. And I had a very good relationship with him. That's my first knowledge that I had. And, of course, one of the persistent things that you get to learning things is I was farming six-hundred acres that had Water Supply and Storage, and I bought a farm of a hundred and sixty acres under the same system. And years of shortage of water, when you went in debt for a farm, and you had to raise a crop to meet that obligation, put a terrible weight on you to find out why you don't have enough water. That put the biggest question in my mind. Why do we need more water? Where is there someplace we can get it? And, of course, that put a very, very urgent need to know something about where this water came from. Here I had an investment, my life savings and, promised over a long period of time to pay a debt, and how am I going to do it without proper water? That made a fellow very inquisitive, made him snoopy maybe. But this all fit into the fact that Mr. Kluver had been one of the biggest developers, and Mr. Kluver was a man of integrity. They said he come here with an odd pair of shoes, and I knew him when he was seventy years old, and I think he still had an odd pair of shoes on. He was saving, very careful. He had sixteen farms. He told me one time he never foreclosed on a man in his life. He had a grocery store and a few things, and people would get in debt, and they would tum the farm over to him. Well, he took an interest in me; I don't know why. Anyhow, he had asked to have a neighbor to take me to a meeting, Water Supply and Storage meeting. And I went there. We met up in the hall above the old Portner Building, they didn't have any office; they just rented some rooms. And I listened to reports, reports, reports for pretty near a half of a day, and they called for an election of seven board of directors, each one elected every year. And I was listening to all this stuff, and this old Mr. Kluver got up, and they had called for nominations, and he said, "I have a young man here today that has bought a piece of soil, and I think we should put him on the board." All a shock to me, wasn't looking for anything at all, didn't talk to me about it. Just because he nominated me, I got big votes, and there I was. At that time the company had filings on the Long Draw Reservoir. They had filings of 524-1/2 second feet of water out of the Colorado River. They had dug a ditch about four miles by hand, and I have the records here where the first year they got about three-hundred acre feet of water. And they had reservoirs that weren't too good, but there I was and the water commissioner, Bill MacAnally, who had 29

30 been water commissioner here for a long time. And just because I was a young buck, and I don't know why, but Bill asked me to come to his office several nights after the election. He was a state man, and he knew this whole system, and he gave me quite a story. Mr. Kluver had become quite aged and they turned it over to Clyde Bartles. \HANSEN\- Excuse me, Mr. Johnson, what did he turn over? \JOHNSON\- The management of the Water Supply. He was president and manager. And he said, "Mr. Bartles is such a nature that he rubs so many people wrong." And he said, "I have a lot of times, when their decree is good on river, and he's so damned independent, that I won't call him up, he's supposed to call me up." He said "The company is losing a lot of water." Now this is what the old boy told me. Now Rhodes had been lawyer--we can go back to the lawyer for this company--had been lawyer back in the turn of the century. He took Temple in as a young man. And, of course, Rhodes had passed out when I come on. Temple was the attorney. And Temple tied into me to give me a lot of history of what the Water Supply and Storage was. And then Temple had been--he was one of the best water attorneys we had in the state. And he saw a loss in the company because of improper attention to the lakes and everything. And he was disturbed about it. Well, in the meantime, though, this Bartles died with a heart attack. And we placed Ed Baker in as president. Ed Baker had never been much in water. He was a good reliable old timer here. And Ed Baker was very friendly with me. But Temple gave me a lot of stories that were hard for me to comprehend at the time. But right about the same time we were awful short of water. I was attending the First Baptist Church up here and I had some friends--mr. Barkley, and Douglas, Mr. Earl Douglas, professors at the college, and the other mechanical instructor, Bradley. Visiting with them one time, and I was on the Water Supply and Storage. They said, "You know, we're pretty heavy investors in bonds for the Tunnel Water Company, and they haven't been paying. What do you know about them?" Well, I didn't know anything about them, but I went to my attorney and I went to their president and the attorney. And we got to checking into it and two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of bonds that they weren't paying any interest or any dividends on. So here this company is in debt. Well, I've got to go back a little bit. They had set up a bond issue of around a million and a quarter to extend--well, they had to extend the ditch. They had this ditch there for two or three miles made by hand. And they had a filing on that to go seventeen miles to take in sixteen creeks. And they could file on this, and their filing was good if they kept working at it. But then after--let's see this was in and after so many years they had to complete that or they'd lose their degree. That's a legal phase they have. So they had made a loan, when I came on the board, they'd made a loan to compfete that ditch. Well, that was a couple of years off. We still had to irrigate. Well, then as we got to checking into the tunnel up here, we found that they had sold bonds for two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Well, Baker was very good, and through Temple's work, we got the Bank of Coops in Washington to put up two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars to buy those bonds. Well, then we had to go through foreclosure, foreclose on the tunnel, and that's how we acquired the tunnel for the two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That gave us around twenty-five thousand acre feet of water. This gave us a whale of a boost on our water need. \HANSEN\- When did this happen? What year was...? \JOHNSON\- This would be in '36. We started in '36, but it was late in '37 before we got it completed. So we didn't get the water until '38. But this was a whale of a big lift to us. \HANSEN\- Now the tunnel, this was one of the first diversions, right, from the Laramie River? \JOHNSON\- Right. Well, no. The Grand Ditch up there that I told you about they had dug by hand. It dated the filing on it in '82, and the first water they turned over was in '93. But the tunnel wasn't finished untill909 or \HANSEN\- Where was the tunnel water taken from? \JOHNSON\- It was taken from the Laramie River. \HANSEN\- Ok, so that's a separate. \JOHNSON\- Yes, that's the North Platte. Then the Colorado River is the other way, so that's the 30

31 diversion. Water Supply and Storage had the first diversion and if I can remember rightly now, Mr. Albert Fisher, the father of Ward, had looked up the decrees, and there were only two ranchers who had filed on the Colorado River ahead of the Water Supply and Storage filing. All of the California development and all of Arizona development came after this filing. Because there weren't people there. They didn't use the water there. They are all new areas. So the Water Supply and Storage filing is way up to the top. There are just some ranches filing ahead of them. So it's quite remarkable what the old boys did. Well, then we did acquire the tunnel, but then... \HANSEN\- Do you know any of the early history of the tunnel before you really began to get involved with it? \JOHNSON\- Well, just a rough history. The Greeley Water Company formed a company to build the tunnel. And they had a survey, and took in a territory of land above the Water Supply and Storage, a good fertile soil. They were going to irrigate, and had filings on several reservoirs, started to build a big reservoir, McGrew Reservoir. And of course we all knew what was going on. But their handicap was--now when the Water Supply and Storage set up, the farmers had the company, and the farmers had land to put water on. Now the Greeley Poudre formed a company to build the tunnel, but they didn't have any tie with the farmers. They thought they'd build this tunnel and then rent the water to the farmers. Well, when they built the tunnel, they didn't have the ditch finished to rent to the farmers. They weren't farming out across this country. So they would wait until somebody needed the water and they would rent this water out. And they couldn't rent it out to pay their bills, and to get enough money out of it, so their defaulting in the payment of their bonds. We all knew that, and we rented a little of it. The Water Supply and Storage rented some of it in my time, and we took it part way on that ditch that was furnished, and turned it in down in Weld County. Turned it into our ditch in Weld County, into the Pierce Ditch, and used it to water that way. Now, they were handicapped, they didn't have the ground tied to the water. That's why they defaulted. \HANSEN\- And so that's really a critical consideration is to have that connection. \JOHNSON\- The farmers were back of this because all of the farmers would pledge themselves for the water. But the other company, they had this tunnel, and had little inclination to--well, we're going to get rich out of this, see. That was the downfall. Now their own attorney sitting down there in his, I had quite a contact with him, sitting down there in his rest home, 95 years old, wrote me two letters. I've got them in the file here, hand written. O'Brien. And he was a great guy. But he was interested in the tunnel, even to his dying day, he was interested in this tunnel because he had been their attorney. But when we foreclosed on that, he thought that they could have kept it even so. So he was a little bit peeved at me, but yet he would write to me. I should have gone to see him, but, you get too busy to do those things. But that was the downfall of the tunnel. They didn't have the ground tied to it. And that two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and it's worth five-hundred million dollars to the country now, you know, that water. What a find that was. Then, of course, we had engineers, and had this loan, had to finish the ditch. Had to go the rest of the ditch. So we hired a man by the name of Gordon. And the first power equipment that went up in the mountains, everything was done with horses and slips, and men shoveled, hands on the shovel. Everything was done that way until in '36 Gordon construction people went up there. \HANSEN\- Now we're talking about the Grand River Ditch now? \JOHNSON\- There was only supposed to be about four feet wide, but his machine wouldn't operate unless it was eight feet. So we had to make the ditch a little bit bigger because of that. OK, well then, finished that. \END OF TAPE FIVE, SIDE A\ \START OF TAPE FIVE, SIDE B\ \JOHNSON\- Then we had a good eight foot bottom ditch going on from the three or four miles above. And here we just had a little hand made ditch down below, so then we had to get some more money and finish the ditch on down to the Continental Divide. Talk about your struggling. 31

32 \HANSEN\- So when you came on, there was this problem facing the company that they had to improve this ditch and extend it if they were going to continue to hold the rights? \JOHNSON\- Well, let's be honest now. They had their notice before I came on. So they borrowed money, twelve percent on some of this money to go ahead and finish it. And when I came on, we were all ready to go to finishing it. So I didn't set up the getting to it. So, yes, I have to be honest about that. The first year after I was elected there, then this engineer, Jim Billingsly, and Ed Baker was the president at that time, said "Harvey, you've got to go up now and look this thing over." I had never been in those mountains, and I was on this ditch board, and they had an old Dodge, a single seated Dodge. In order to get in to the ditch, the engineer and myself would have to get out every so often to roll rocks out or cut a tree and get it out of the road because it was just a trail we had going up there. And I came out and looked at that and thought what a dunce I am when I got into a mess like this, and I want to farm under this. I did, I was sick. But we had a lot of fine help, a lot of good people, and a lot of problems. Lost one man. And they built that ditch. Two years at it. Then when we had that water coming in the tunnel, we sure were pretty happy with ourselves. \HANSEN\- What other water did you have at this time? What did the company have... \JOHNSON\- Had decrees on the river. And the sad part of it was, you had the Greeley #2, a company on the south side [of the Poudre River], had the earliest filing, which allowed 800 second feet. The next filings up the river were made by the Larimer and Weld Company on several ditches [for 900 second feet]. Thus, there had to be 1700 feet of water in the river before Water Supply and Storage could remove any. It was then entitled to 600 square feet, plus approximately 40 square feet of old water rights. Only by exchanging some of four mountain water for some of their plains reservoir water [could we manage]. [WHERE DOES THE NORTH POUDRE IRRIGATION COMPANY FIT IN?] This is what forced them to file on this other water up there. This is what forced us to pick up any water we could. Water Supply and Storage was sitting out on the dry. For the fact that they weren't given equal rights to file on river water. Anyhow, had to be seventeen hundred feet in the river before Water Supply and Storage could come in. But they did have some good storage. Chambers lake was built, and Chambers Lake would fill, after irrigating time, the first decree on the river. Well, they had that water through the summer. That did help them. But the decrees, only at flood time did they have water. And of course they had several little lakes around, and they would try to get them filled in the winter time. But at flood times, they could get water in the spring, you know, at flood times. When the water would come up above seventeen hundred feet, why they could get in on the river. But they didn't have the early fills. And that's what forced them into having the Grand Ditch and forced us into the tunnel. The greatest thing that ever happened to us because it puts us in ahead of the rest of them. But this is what I got into. Being the youngest one on the board, every time we'd have a meeting, we'd have an office somewhere and we'd have a meeting, and they'd say, "Well, Johnson" had an old Chevrolet that had some big tires on, and you could go over the rocks you know--they'd say, "You have to take one of the board members up there. You have to go and look after these things." So they put me on the road a lot. Initiated me in really. And I can look back on it. It was a little rough, but it was the making of my desire to see that they got something better out of it. We used to get down as low as twenty-five, thirty thousand acre delivery. Now we could go all the way from eighty to a hundred thousand acre feet delivery. So we're quite a little different voice today than we were. But it was a long hard old drag. \HANSEN\- Yes, I can see how it was. \JOHNSON\- There were a lot of interesting incidentals down the line, very much so, that transpired. I've set in on courts. Temple was a very good man. Then followed him, Albert Fisher. I think about--that's the father ofward--1 think about attorney Earl Temple one time before I was on the water board, I had a little problem. No, I guess it was after I was on the water board. I went to Temple. I had a ditch that a fellow was making me some trouble on. And I went to Temple one morning, the first lawyer I had asked to help do much, only just to look at some deeds. I said to Temple, "I have a problem 32

33 here." And he said "Well, listen kid, I've got a court case, and I've got to work on a brief this morning." This was about seven o'clock in the morning. It was up in the old First National on top of the Columbia, where the Columbia is there now. And he said, "I hired a young buck, he's been city stuff here, he's just a city guy, he may not get here until nine o'clock, he don't go to work like I do. Sit down there." And I sat down there, and pretty soon Albert Fischer come up the steps. So this was the city kid. So that's when I first met Albert Fischer. And he was my lawyer for fifty years, a grand guy. But that's how I met him. He done us a whale of a lot of good. He rode this thing through, and, of course, Temple rode the deal through the purchase of the tunnel. But then Albert took us through a lot of courts, decisions, and we had a lot of scraps with various departments in order to hold on to our decrees. And I sat through courts with that old boy. Got a lot of knowledge out of the water decrees from... \HANSEN\- I'm sure. \JOHNSON\- Yes, it's been a privilege to know some of the greatest people in the world. \HANSEN\ Now when you came on, what did you know about the founding of the Water Supply and Storage Company? How did this company come into being? \JOHNSON\- Yes, well, seemingly from the first histories that I've picked up, there was a company that built the Larimer County Canal, they called it. It was to irrigate a bunch of this country down through here. They built a pretty good ditch from the river. And they were pretty much like the Greeley-Poudre. They were going to take water out of the river and irrigate to these farmers down here, and they come to find out that they could only have water at flood stages, and they didn't have it at other times. So a company was formed, the Water Supply and Storage was formed, and acquired the Larimer County Canal. That's our main ditch, the Larimer County Canal, they took that over. And they were formed so that they could make some dams around and make some holding of some of this water. And they were formed to build the Chambers Lake. And they took over the old Larimer County Ditch. All of that in records we've got here, dates and all; I can't go through dates, but that was the Water Supply and Storage. Later they built up the Chambers Lake, and, seemingly, from what I've collected in this, the Larimer County Canal water was distributed to a bunch of farmers. This company included those farmers and they could pledge the company; and the financial people could say, "Well, the farmers are tied into this," and they would loan them money on that because they were part of the company. They formed this company, and six hundred shares, and the need of the water. I don't remember the price of the shares. It was pretty cheap anyhow. They bought so many shares for--they thought that one share would take eighty acres and a man, whatever he could afford, he pledged for that water anyhow. And that was the way they were set up. Well, on the ditch they were set up to only get flood water. So then Water Supply and Storage, that's where your "supply and storage" comes in, they had the main thought about them was to get some storage. So they took over the canal and all, and it was always after called Water Supply and Storage. And then they began to top off these little lakes where some dead water was and if it was in connection with the distribution system... \HANSEN\- Now what were some of these lakes? \JOHNSON\- Curtis Lake, Richards Lake, Long Pond Lake, Lindenmeier Lake, Rocky Ridge Lake, #3 Lake, #? Lake and Kluver Lake. Well, of course, they worked on some of the lakes above the canal first. Chambers Lake was above. But at the time your Greeley Poudre outfit had gotten in and they built the Cobb Lake, and they got Douglas Lake up above; so the Water Supply and Storage had to get busy and get Chambers up above their system. And seemingly most everything was filed on above the system, so they worked up a deal with the Larimer and Weld people. That's some of the trading that they went into. Then they acquired, about the same time, Lindenmeier here. And another little puddle up above that, Richards Lake. Then Dixon had a couple little puddles up where No. 3 and Rocky Ridge is. Those were acquired shortly after that. Then in as late as '24, they built what they call the Kluver lake up there. They built on Mr. Kluver's farm, and he sold them the land, and built those lakes. Now that's how those lakes were acquired. Well, then they had to have some place to catch this water down below because they couldn't handle it all the time down on the branches down below. So then in '24 they built Black Hollow. Those 33

34 come along --once in the storage that they set up--come along as seen fit and need and all. It's a patchwork, what they did. \HANSEN\- So you were kind of following this while you were a farmer? \JOHNSON\- Oh yes, this was very interesting all of the time. What made all of these. Of course, I had a questionable mind. You wanted to know what fit into it. So that's the background of it. The history of the thing was very appealing. Well, you come across the prairies in a covered wagon, and so much of the country out east of town you had to carry a stick and beat around a bush for a rattlesnake and all, and the jackrabbits jumping up and running around. And here you could turn water on something and get things to grow so graciously, the good soil and all. Why can't we have everything like that? So that's in your background. You may be hoeing a row of corn for your dad or maybe you're riding a plow; or walking behind a plow, you've got a lot of time to think. And if you've not been to any jazz places and have your mind filled up with jazzes, you think about the natural things. I have always said that one of the most pleasant times in the spring of the year when we used to have a team of horses, you'd sit on a plow, you turned over that fresh soil, and you went across the field, and when you got to the other end, you turned around, your mind would run over about the beauty of things, about what nature did here. You turn that soil over and you put the plant in there, and here it come on and made a great plant. Your mind would run through all that stuff. You had clear thoughts. The most clear thoughts a man ever had was sitting on the back of a plow. That was my impression anyhow. \HANSEN\- I think that's a very valid one. \JOHNSON\- You had a lot of time to do some thinking. Our folks didn't let you get all muddled up with a lot of other corruption. You were supposed to think the right kind of thoughts. \HANSEN\- Well, I think that's a pretty good thought to end on today. Why don't we stop and we'll continue this next week, all right? \END OF TAPE 5, SIDE B\ \START OF TAPE 6, SIDE A\ My name is Jim Hansen. Today is September 24, I am at the Water Supply and Storage Company offices on east Mulberry speaking with Harvey Johnson. \HANSEN\- We're going to go ahead and try to see if there are some things that need to be inserted into this chronology that I gave you Mr. Johnson, the draft version. Maybe the best way to do it is just to proceed chronologically, and as things come to mind, we can go ahead and insert them. How would that be? This is the "Draft--Historical chronology of the Water Supply and Storage Company" compiled by Leach and Hansen, dated September \JOHNSON\- Well, that's fine. I am sure you have given this a lot of thought, how you want to set it up. I think you've got to start from some point, and I think that's as good as any. \HANSEN\- OK. Why don't we start with the Colorado system, provide a little bit of background on that. The system of prior appropriation as opposed to the one of riparian rights. Because that's really what sets Colorado apart or at least did during its early history. \JOHNSON\-The appropriations decrees, yes. \HANSEN\- You can explain the difference between the adjudication date and the decree date and priority numbers and that kind of thing too. \JOHNSON\- Yes, of course the adjudication follows, you asked for an appropriation ofwater, going through court, and has to wait for any questions or reports on it. It may be as much as four or five years before you get the adjudication. \HANSEN\- Why don't we start from scratch. Assume that we're going way back to these people who were filing on water on the Poudre River back in the 1880's. What would the steps be to acquire legal title to that water. \JOHNSON\- The State of Colorado, of course, is responsible for all the water in the state, and we have the first dating of appropriation here of 1862 on the Poudre, Seemingly, from all the reports that I have read or run into, they were aware of the fact that in order to acquire water that they had to know the amount of water they needed, and they had to know just what facilities they were going to do, but they 34

35 must get a permit from the State of Colorado. And as one of the old timers sons told me, the Coys had told me years ago, they even walked to Denver to file on the Coy rights. They would go to the capital there and file on so much water they needed. They didn't know just how much water they needed. They would use a figure. And so many times they would use a figure like they did on that particular time. They used a figure of fourteen second feet of water. And there is no knowing that they ever were able to use any big part of that. But they would file, and then it would go through proceedings of the court, and research on it, and sometimes it would be as much as four to five years. We have records showing four to five years later the state would decree that water as application was. That gave them a decree of the water. I think every decree that we have, I think you'll find a lapse of time between. Of course I don't know that anybody ever went down there and got the water they asked for because right off of the head of the thing, they didn't know the flows, didn't know the supplies of water in those days. Didn't have any realization of how much water was needed on a piece of land. Back in--we're speaking about in the '65 and '70s here--when several appropriations were, and the decrees in '80, '82 applications, it was more or less research. They felt that they had to have so much water, and if they would ask for plenty, then they were being safe. Otherwise they had to find out what they needed later, find out the soil. Different soils took different amounts of water. \HANSEN\- So at the beginning it was pretty much trial and error then. \JOHNSON\- It was much trial and error because there was history of the first ditch in Colorado down in the San Luis Valley 1895, but in the earlier part of the irrigation time, Larimer County was quite advanced. It seemed like Pleasant Valley, at Bellvue, west of here, there was a little group settled up there that was very early in their water. And some No.1 water in Larimer County is still in existence used up there in Pleasant Valley that they filed on. And that was astounding how they had planned and how they had worked very hard and learned as they went along. I can't remember of reading of any help from the state or from any engineers coming in here. It was just a matter of the men who needed the water, they needed to raise some kind of a crop. The river would drop down in the summer time, and they had to get the water when it was available. And even to feed their livestock, to have a little feed and have vegetables in a garden, they had to take some water out of the river to do it. And that started the irrigation. Went from zero to where it is today. \HANSEN\- Now this Dry Creek Ditch Company is one of the earliest ones as far as the antecedents to the Water Supply and Storage Company. \JOHNSON\- Seemingly, Dry Creek, was in the basin of where the Water Supply and Storage would start to operating. It's a creek coming in from the northwest, and it was dry the bigger part of the season. Had moisture in the spring, and that seemed to be in the elevation where they were, and so it was easier to start their project there, and easy to find a name because that was a local condition. But it was just a hollow. It's a creek that runs very little water today other than flood water. \HANSEN\- Where is that located? \JOHNSON\- It's located--go east of LaPorte two miles to Taft Hill, and then as you go to north area, Dry Creek drains all of that area up in that area. And it finally winds up, Dry Creek winds up down here to the north side of, well, it comes in near Jax Supply and winds up right down here east of Ft. Collins. And as we're sitting here at East Mulberry, it goes into the river just a quarter of a mile west of this office. That's the little creek you see as you come here. That's Dry Creek. \HANSEN\- And the Dry Creek Company was ultimately taken over by Jackson, Jackson Ditch Company, and then eventually Water Supply and Storage got controlling interest in Jackson Ditch Company. \JOHNSON\- It started from just the mere necessities of operation and the demand to growth was as the demand of usage. It just grew by a thrifty growth, and has no particular diagram or start of it at all. It, just as demand came, it grew according to the need as it went. \HANSEN\- Now why don't we kind of follow along on this chronology because I'm afraid there may be some discrepancies in it. According to the National Park Service study done in 1966, the dam was built on Chambers Lake in Is that accurate? Was it done that soon because neither the Larimer County 35

36 Ditch Company nor the Larimer County Reservoir Company were... \JOHNSON\- If it was built, it was never built for any purpose of irrigation because there was no companies in existence at that time. There is still a skeleton of a dam that was built inside of Chambers Lake as is now. It's inside of Chambers Lake, pretty well to the middle of what Chambers Lake is now, where they've built a log bench clear across with logs, and the water spilled over the top. It held back a couple of thousand, maybe three thousand acre feet of water. Well, the start of that, of course, history will show that Chambers Lake at one time, and it does very positively show the markings today if you want to take time to see it, history some years and years and years ago, shows all of Chambers Lake and all of the Poudre as it is here today, went down the Laramie River. And there is a scar on the side of the mountain where that mountain slid and closed off the valley going towards Laramie and put the water down the Poudre. And there is a body of water that was left above the slide in the valley, and the water is deep in that lake that's similar to the valley as you go directly north to the Laramie River, where the Laramie River starts. So there was a puddle with very much depth of water against the slide there, and that was the lake where they could hold water as it had been turned by the slide to the east to go down the Poudre. They could stop that, as it proceeded down the Poudre, with a log dam and could hold some water very easily. We don't have any records that I've ever seen whereby any company ever developed that water for any use, excepting Water Supply and Storage Company, and that went out in the '90s and it was not a very big body of water. They built that up again, and in 1904 we had a big storm come through here. I can well remember that storm myself. And Chambers Lake went out. The big amount of water around Ft. Collins wasn't because of the Poudre flow. Chambers Lake wasn't big. It wasn't so much flow there. The greatest amount of water came from the north creeks. I knew Mr. Zimmerman very well, who told me his dad rode a horse warning people down the Poudre?, and the horse died from the excessive amount of usage. Yes, old Jed Zimmerman rode a horse to death, because of that. There wasn't so much damage from Chambers Lake, it was not a big body of water. All of this in north here. I can remember Dad riding a horse down by Jax Surplus belly deep in water. Water was coming from the north. This property was most all under water. There was a strip in here that wasn't, but this was most under water. But it was coming from the north, and half of the water at least was from the north coming into town here. The Poudre itself wasn't that big of a body of water because it did roll some rocks. Nothing like the Thompson flood did. \HANSEN\- This was in 1904? \JOHNSON\- 1904, yes. \HANSEN\- Well, the Chambers Lake originally was owned by the Larimer County Reservoir Company, right? \JOHNSON\- Yes, right. Evidently that's the company. They had organized so many different companies to do a certain job. And they had to be legal to call themselves a company to do the things, and they would go ahead and do it. What was back of it at that time, I think from all the reports that I've seen, the six-hundred shares of the Water Supply and Storage stock consisted of all of the farms out east of here. That was the supporting finance that backed up the whole thing to go ahead and build things. That allowed them to go borrow money on the formation of that. And it was the good farmland out here backing it up. The farmers, there were many farmers, and they would make a go of it. That's why they had to have these companies. \HANSEN\- Well, you had a situation in the '80s for awhile where a number of foreign investors came in, English investors, and they were going to try to in effect claim the ownership of the water simply by building their canals. And there was a court decision, I think it was Wheeler vs. The Northern Irrigation Company, where it said that these ditch companies were simply common carriers, and all they could do would be to charge a carrying fee, but they couldn't claim ownership. And that then caused a reversion to the kind of system that you've got here, where you've got a bunch of individual farmers who are actually owning the water rights, rather than outside companies coming in and providing that as a general service. And there were insurance companies involved tooth Traveler's Insurance Company was one, and a couple of others, came in and were using this as an investment scheme rather than one that was 36

37 really going to provide water. \JOHNSON\- Trying to get it under their power is what they were trying to do. What year was this again? \HANSEN\- Well, the supreme court decision was in The Colorado Grange had lobbied for that and put a lot of money up for it. \JOHNSON\- I never got into that very much because that was some politics. I do remember them talking about that they were trying to take the power away from the farmers that built it, into control of engineers and political, they were trying to put it into a political game to acquire big profits. \HANSEN\- Really, it was outside investors trying to kind of rip off the water, and make it strictly a profit making enterprise rather than a resource that would be used by the people who actually needed it. \JOHNSON\- I think Edmonds and some of them were into that way back. They, of course, were not effective in any of the history that I went back on, but they were some of the old ones that kept this thing on a balance. Edmonds and Tedmon and some of them old pioneers were down to earth people. And that's what saved it was down to earth people. \HANSEN\- It's interesting because your first minute books are--no.l is the Larimer County Ditch Company, No.2 is the Larimer County Reservoir Company, and then No. 3 is the Water Supply and Storage Company. So it's obvious that your antecedents are there with those other two companies. \JOHNSON\- Didn't the Water Supply and Storage--my remembrance--water Supply and Storage was organized after the floods? There was a suit against them. And the Water Supply and Storage was organized as a company to pick it up at that time. \HANSEN\- That's right. I'm trying to check here because this was in Augustus Edward's diary, and he was one of the founders of Water Supply and Storage as well as having his hand in a number of other water companies at that time. And according to him, there was a flood in June of 1891 where Chambers Lake Dam broke, the first dam. \JOHNSON\- That one I'm speaking of, those logs? \HANSEN\- Yes, it could be that one. \JOHNSON\- I'm pretty sure that's the one. \HANSEN\- And there was a whole lot of damage on that. There was a man named Rist who was apparently an inspector of some kind, who went up and checked that dam, and then coming down the trail, his way was blocked because the dam had broken just after he had inspected it, saying it was OK, and this was what prompted a whole lot of legal difficulty for the Larimer County Ditch Company. And at that point a reorganization took place, and Water Supply and Storage came into effect. And I'm not quite sure what the tie up there was between the Larimer County Ditch Company and the Larimer County Reservoir Company. Whether both of them were at fault since the water, I guess technically it would be the Larimer County Reservoir Company water, right? \JOHNSON\- It should have been. \HANSEN\- Yes. But I don't know, maybe... \JOHNSON\- Because it was reservoir water. It wasn't the canal water, it was the reservoir water that done the damage. Did that history show they ever got much out of the damage suits? \HANSEN\- That I don't know. \JOHNSON\- I never did know whether they ever did or not. \HANSEN\- Yes, that's something that would have to be checked out. \JOHNSON\- I felt all the way as I went into that, as I went through it, hurriedly, that was the way of the people dumping the load they had and organizing the new Water Supply and Storage and going from there. This is what I've been informed by Tedmon and Gus Kluver. \HANSEN\- It's too bad we don't have them around to do some more interviewing to get that early part really nailed down. Apparently, and this is from minute books basically, the Larimer County Ditch Company had seven reservoirs or water holdings once it was formed back in the early 1880s. It had reservoirs two and three, which is really one body of water. Reservoir four, Long Pond, Richards, Elder and Rocky Ridge. Now Elder, has that been...? \JOHNSON\- It's been transferred to Larimer Weld Co. I don't remember the transfer now. Elder is 37

38 right under our system, farther east there. \HANSEN\- East of Black Hollow then? \JOHNSON\- No, Elder is belonging to the Larimer and Weld people. And then they take water out of No.8 just north of that. They take it through there. And just deliver it to the Eaton Ditch down below. I don't know where that transfer came about. I don't know the exchange on it. We never went into that. But I know that they did own one time Elder, that is, I knew Jim Elder quite well, he lived on the farm right there. And then Jim Elder was one of the developers--ed Monroe and Jim Elder and Bill Grable were the big developers for the North Poudre anyhow. But Jim Elder, being the developer up there, he got the transfer somehow, I don't know how he got it. \HANSEN\- OK, I'll have to check the date on that, when that actually occurred. \JOHNSON\- Yes, I don't remember what the transfer was. Now we had some exchanges later on down at Dry Creek where we were sued in my time. And we exchanged water with Larimer and Weld, when they take water out of Douglas, we take water out of Douglas because they were sued for running down Dry Creek, washing it. We were included in that. So we take Douglas and a big part of Cobb, and then they take Long Pond and Richards and those in exchange. It's all exchange water. \HANSEN\- It's just kind of trading back and forth as you need it. \JOHNSON\- That's why we have a very close relationship all the time. \HANSEN\- That's really important. Larimer County Reservoir Company, according to the early minute books, had Chambers Lake, Lost Lake, Laramie Ditch--would that be right? \JOHNSON\- Yes, that's right in north of Chambers Lake. Those are small lakes in hollows there that they built. \HANSEN\- Peterson, is that a lake also? \JOHNSON\- Peterson is a lake, but it was owned by Greeley. I don't think Portner and Sherman ever had any connection with Peterson Reservoir. Now owned by the City of Greeley. \HANSEN\- OK, because the Larimer County Reservoir Company had some water holding, Peterson something, I don't know, it could have been a ditch maybe? \JOHNSON\- It was a ditch- Greeley flood ditch. Wouldn't that be the Portner and Sherman? \HANSEN\- Possibly. \JOHNSON\- That would be the Portner and Sherman because they had Peterson, they had Hour Glass, Comanche and Barnes Meadow and all of them. That was Portner and Sherman. \HANSEN\- OK, so that would be in another company. \JOHNSON\- They were the Larimer Poudre Irrigation Company, or something like that. \HANSEN\- OK, and then there were the Twin Lakes as part of the Larimer County Reservoir Company? \JOHNSON\- Twin Lakes, I never run into Twin Lakes. Only filed on. \HANSEN\- What about Chain, Chain Lakes or Chain Leg, or something like that? \JOHNSON\- It never was developed. It was filed on, never was developed. You see, we'll go back to the Laramie River or close to that, the Laramie and that other lake up there around Laramie, what is it, you named it awhile ago? \HANSEN\- Lost Lake? \JOHNSON\- Lost Lake and Laramie. What happened there, this was in my time, they had to develop those two little lakes right north of Chambers, and that water was going down the Laramie River. They headed it off from going down the Laramie River there. Well, as we got into further development of the--after we got ownership for the tunnel and all of the Laramie River Water and the Skyline water--the courts decreed that we had to abandon those two. \HANSEN\- Why did they do that? \JOHNSON\- Well, because our rights, we were getting our water through the others, and we didn't have any more rights for that much more water. There was a limitation to our rights of water. \PAUSE\ [Telephone call interruption] from home. \JOHNSON\-... since two o'clock this morning. My wife, we were in Arizona for seventeen years, wintertime. 38

39 \HANSEN\- I remember. \JOHNSON\- And she got bronchial pneumonia. I took her to California, and I had to leave her there, and she visited around, and she got pneumonia, went to Arizona, and finally we were to as many as eight doctors. The pollen is so strong in Arizona. We had to sell out. She's still got this asthma. Had an attack yesterday and last night. \HANSEN\- Yes, my kids have that, so I know what it is. They're down with it all the time. \JOHNSON\- Yes, poor kid. It's pitiful to see her go through all this trouble. But, again, the organization of those companies back there just developed, needed to do things, they had to do it. There was no other reason. \HANSEN\- Something comes to mind. I haven't gone through minute book by minute book, but maybe this is the distinction between the Larimer County Ditch Company and the Larimer County Reservoir. Could it be that the Larimer County Ditch Company was essentially interested and actually moving water, whereas the Larimer County Reservoir Company was interested in finding sights where reservoirs could be subsequently developed. \JOHNSON\- The Larimer County Ditch Company is a distribution Co. It absolutely is a distribution. The reservoir company was formed and they built the Chambers Lake and built those other three lakes next to it. Then as we got further along in my time we were asked to dynamite, the fact of it is, they did dynamite those three little lakes--lost Lake, Laramie Lake and other little small lakes. They were not very much, but the amount of water that they had... Y ou see, the state of Wyoming had a big interest in this. They had big suits. \HANSEN\- Right. Wyoming versus Colorado. \JOHNSON\- And then it went through into the federal government. And the federal government then stepped in and said "This is the amount of water the State of Colorado will have." And so Wyoming figures on so much water. Well, then, that was right around forty thousand acre feet of water the State of Colorado got. Well, that included the meadowland users all down there. Well, of course we jumped in, greedy, as we would be through the skyline ditch, and get all the water we could because we didn't have the tunnel at that time. \END OF TAPE 6, SIDE A\ \BEGINNING OF TAPE 6, SIDE B\ \JOHNSON\- Meadowland users went to court, and so we made an agreement whereby we would take half the water and they'd take half the water for the meadows. So that when we would get our 19,875 feet, we closed our head gate. That's our allotment now. That's a federal and state arrangement. We can't change that without a whole lot of problems. This all ties in with what.... we have this water here, so that's why when we had those three extra lakes up at Chambers, we were getting more than our state allowed. So the state said to destroy those two lakes. So they dynamited them. Well, then game and fish came along and said "we want to use those lakes." So we released the lakes, but no water. We wouldn't release any water. We released the lakes. They have them as fishing lakes now. \HANSEN\- I see. When was this? \JOHNSON\- This would have to be in the early forties. \HANSEN\- Let's see, Carr was governor at that time? \JOHNSON\- Carr was governor at that time. \HANSEN\- That's interesting. Well, if you had already dynamited them, was there enough left to really be able to use? \JOHNSON\- No, they washed them out, but they had to go build up a dyke. They didn't build them clear full. They built a part of it up so they got a good fishing lake. Beautiful. You've never seen them? \HANSEN\- No, I don't think I have. \JOHNSON\- Well, as you go up to Chambers Lake you take the Laramie Road around above Chambers Lake; lay right to the right of you. You could get a glimpse ofthem through the timber. Beautiful. A lot of beautiful fishing going on. They keep them well stocked, you know. And they can walk around, kids and women. Everybody can go around them. They're not dangerous lakes. \HANSEN\- OK. Now we've established that the Larimer County Ditch Company was strictly 39

40 distribution. Larimer County Reservoir would you say was something else? \JOHNSON\- They were developing reservoirs. \HANSEN\- Just developing reservoirs. \JOHNSON\- Developing reservoirs. \HANSEN\- Not really owning the water, is that correct? \JOHNSON\- There is a decree, yes, there is a decree on Chambers Lake. And that was decreed there as storage for irrigation. Somehow or other, Water Supply and Storage picked up those decrees and those obligations. Real early decrees. We always try to drain Chambers Lake because we can always fill it in spring thaw. \HANSEN\- OK, even before Water Supply and Storage comes into being, according to one source, there was some construction done on the Grand River with the idea of diverting water across the Continental Divide. Is that correct or was this really initiated by the Water Supply and Storage Company? \JOHNSON\- Water Supply and Storage Company surveyed in '82. I talked to the man, Ed Baker, before he passed away. He was seventeen years old, he carried the stick of the surveying of the sixteen creeks of Grand Ditch. Sixteen creeks come in there. In '82 they were the first surveyors that filed. \HANSEN\- In '82, that would be the Larimer County Ditch Company? \JOHNSON\- That's the Water Supply and Storage. \HANSEN\- Well, Water Supply and Storage didn't come into being until '91. \JOHNSON\- Well, that's right, but this surveying company, I mean to say, that did that. But they were really hired, I guess, by the group of farmers here to survey, I think. \HANSEN\- So as early as '82 there was a survey done on the ditch then? \JOHNSON\- The earliest survey was in '82. Roughly they went up and found those creeks. But August Molander--I don't know whether I ever told you this story or not--august Molander was 80 years old, now this was fifty years ago. And I was told when I went on this ditch, I was a young buck and I had a pretty good durable car to take August Molander up there, we took the whole day going up there. He couldn't drive, I had to drive him up. But as I come up and I seen this excavating and this survey all along, I looked at it from the side of the mountain looking across, and I said to August "How in the world did you folks have the stamina or the forethought or whatever come about you folks that you'd go up and survey this way up here and ever develop something like this where you had to go afoot and everything. And the old Swede he thought quite awhile and he said "Well, you know, we had some big families, and we didn't have water, we had good soil, we just had to do something." Now that was the initiative back of those boys at that time. [Johnson opens a file folder on the desk.] \HANSEN\- Now what source is this Mr. Johnson? \JOHNSON\- This is the hydrological data of the Cache Ia Poudre Basin. In 1896, first water in June, 122 feet of water. July they run 60 feet of water, and 37 feet of water. But that year that was the first water run. 1896, 393 acre feet of water. \HANSEN\- So 1896 was the first year they actually run water. \JOHNSON\ was the first year of active. So in '93, I believe it was '93, when they started the digging by hand... \HANSEN\- Well, you can take a look at that chronology. I've got a couple of sort of conflicting sources there as far as dates are concerned from some of these Forest Service studies. And some say that there was construction that began in '93, and then there was an extension in '94 of about three miles, and then another one in '97 that went to Opposition Creek, and then one later on that you'd be familiar with, 1934 to Baker Creek. And then another source says that there was a lot of work done between 1907 and 1908 that took it to Dutch Creek. That kind of conflicts with the other information. \JOHNSON\- When I came on [in January 1937], Dutch Creek was where they were. And they were contracting just to go beyond Dutch Creek, according to the construction people working here. But Dutch Creek was the end, and that was just a little narrow ditch at that time. \HANSEN\- Then once you made that extension in the thirties, you had to really expand the whole thing, right? 40

41 \JOHNSON\- That's when the first power piece of machinery that went in there. And it was a pretty bulky sort of a rig, but it had a back hoe, just a big back hoe. And it would only operate on an eleven foot bottom. So they took a contract; Gordon's Construction, took the contract. I remember so well the problem we got into. Jim Billingsly was engineer. Of course, I was up there [many times... ] As I said before I was delegated to go there a lot, to take people up there that the board of directors were supposed to go. Anyhow, they had this ditch started up toward here at Baker. First part wasn't any wider than... you could pretty well step across it because that was all done by hand, you know. And then construction went on up to Baker. Well, here we had a beautiful ditch on up beyond Dutch Creek, but just as luck would have it, we were able to borrow another three-hundred thousand dollars and widen the ditch from Dutch Creek clear on down to the Continental Divide. So that had to be done then. But dynamiting and digging and all, and we turned the water in, and I can remember so well sitting in the back of a pick-up, most of the board was up there, and water would come down one creek, and by the time it got to the next creek, it must all be going down through the bottom of the ditch. And the next creek you'd have some more, and that would be gone. So when we got down below, we only had very little water. It was all going down through the rocky bottom. Here was all of this ditch made, a million and a half in debt, 12 percent interest. I was sure sick that I owned a farm under that system. So congeniality of the boys, they said "Well, my gosh, what little water we have down here, couldn't we take a little clay dirt and seal up. Couldn't we find some clay?" So we found some clay, pretty much clay, about Number 7 on Golf Hill. \HANSEN\- Where did you find it? \JOHNSON\- Well, within five miles of the top there. There was a hill that had quite a little clay in it. So we got old John Anderson. We used just a team of horses. Hauled a little dirt. Those creeks would come pretty good size creeks, flowing about the size of this table. And it all disappeared as it went into the ditch. You would see a little trickle where the water would be going down cracks in the rocks you know and the dirt. So you'd shove a little dirt in there and rile that up, and after a while that would seal. So, by golly between us we made up our mind that we could do that. Well, we got Johnny Anderson, little old Ford ton trucks, about the size of this table to haul a ton of dirt. In the mountains you couldn't have a ton, you would have a half of a ton of dirt because this mountain is rough. And load it with a little old cat loader that we had, and then they'd go down the dyke, and the dyke was awful narrow. It was one of them truck bodies you could trip, and by helping you could push it, and it would dump the dirt out. No automatics or no hydraulics at all. And by a fellow getting in there with his boots and a shovel and rile that up, gosh, you could stop that leak. So one whole summer we put a contract with John Anderson. He had two of them little trucks, and we furnished a loader. We had a little old cat loader. And went on down the ditch, and we would have those boys in the ditch, hip boots and rubber gloves. That was cold water, right off the snow, you know. And big socks on them. And they'd work them days. And following those trucks on down. We went pretty much the whole length of it, where the biggest leaks were. By fall, we were having a good stream of water coming. Simplest little old thing, but a lot of hard work. \HANSEN\- It sealed permanently that way then? \JOHNSON\- Excepting the fact that later in years as we--let me see, Prof. Everett Richardson, we gave him a contract, four-thousand dollar contract. His post graduate students went up there, and he would put in some galvanized tube with some gauges on it below each creek. And then he would gauge the next creek, and he would find out where the biggest seepage was. So we went in where we found some large seepages. We went in, and this was in the '70s, and we took up, I don't remember now, four-thousand in one place, five or six-thousand all together. Took up fifteen inches of dirt. We had to have a separator to separate all the rocks out. Then we laid a vinyl on the ditch bank side, through the bottom, and put back fifteen inches of dirt on top. Several thousand feet, and saved about ten percent of our water. \HANSEN\- What kind of vinyl was it? \JOHNSON\- Reinforced. Gosh, we gave a lot of money for that vinyl. We shipped in a carload of it. It was a--we still have some left--we use it now a lot of places where we do patching. It had a little fiber 41

42 in it. It was vinyl with a little fiber in it. Don't know the life of it. \HANSEN\- So that will be trial and error again. When it wears out, then you'll know you need some more. \JOHNSON\- We were told that the only research they had on it was fifty years. But they don't know anything beyond that. But that's some of the things we went through. \HANSEN\- You started with picks and shovels, just doing--and brought in oriental labor to do that in the twenties, right? \JOHNSON\- Yes, they had a bunch of Chinese labor. But those were really, really trying times. But when you look at that beautiful ditch now... \HANSEN\- Yes, it's well worth it, isn't it? \JOHNSON\- Yes, there's a world of history up there. \HANSEN\- About the time the Water Supply and Storage Company organizes and takes over the holdings of Larimer County Ditch Company and Larimer County Reservoir Company, it's filing on the Skyline Ditch. That's one of the first things it does once it's organized as it's... \JOHNSON\- Yes, they saw those creeks coming down and going into the Laramie River, and on the west side of the Laramie River, and went up there by foot, filed on, surveyed and filed on the Skyline Ditch, and they had that in existence way back there. When I first came on there, we had to crowd that. We crowded that, we didn't have the Grand Ditch or the tunnel or anything. We crowded that ditch. We did a lot of work on it and crowded it and put eighteen-thousand acre feet through that Skyline Ditch one year. \HANSEN\- So you were putting a whole lot more water in there than it could almost hold. \JOHNSON\- Well, I'll tell you what we had. We had a man every five hundred feet all night with lanterns, coal-oillantems, walking along the bank, they were just that full. And the next fellow, he had a lantern, and we went down that whole ditch, something like three miles of ditch. Twelve different men and lanterns. \HANSEN\- What were the jobs of those men with the lanterns? \JOHNSON\- Every one of those creeks that came in [required]... check board. The only thing [the men] had to work with was lumber, boards. They sawed their own boards from logs. They would make a board affair that those creeks that came down, you'd tum so much water down the ditch, Skyline Ditch, and what that wouldn't hold, you would open some boards and spill it down the spillway, that old creek spillway. And if this ditch, you got some storms above, or the thaw got a little greater, and go over somewhere, immediately they'd tum some out. But we had to have water so desperately that, every inch, we had to have every inch of water they could get. So we had men walking that ditch bank at nights. \HANSEN\- When was this? This was when you just came on the board? \JOHNSON\- This was when I came on the board in the thirties. \HANSEN\- Would this be the time when we had the real bad drought period in the early thirties. \JOHNSON\- Yes, in the drought of the thirties. We had to have water. And there was water up there in the mountains, and we were destitute to get it, and we got it. Took that through the Chambers Lake, you see. Didn't have the tunnel. We use the Skyline now only as an extra because we've got the tunnel. We take it mostly through the tunnel instead of running both systems. And when we have more than we can take in the tunnel, we take it through the Skyline. And if we have a condition where we need to store some, and we've got room in the Chambers, we can take the Skyline and put it in the Chambers. So it's a universal help there. Now we're getting away from extremes back to the years, but we're getting away from that pioneer times there. \HANSEN\- Well, that's OK because we can kind of track the evolution of these systems, and I think the filing on Skyline was about '91, and the construction was finished about '94. \JOHNSON\- Yes, and that was done with wheelbarrows and some horses with slips. \HANSEN\- Now the men with the lanterns, where did you get those men? Where did you hire those men? \JOHNSON\- They were laborers we had. We had camps. On the Skyline we have a very beautiful camp still sitting up there. It's going to wreck, but good logs when we built them. Beautiful logs still 42

43 standing in some of those cabins today built way back there. And they would have thirty, forty men. And they had log cabins out where they bunked in. And you could hire those people for a dollar a day and board them, and they'd work. And they liked to go to the mountains, a lot of them liked to get in the mountains. \HANSEN\- Again, this was in the depression era when you came on, so a job was really something that people desired. \JOHNSON\- And bread and butter was there. \HANSEN\- Now the Tunnel Water Company is one that starts kind of far back and has its own history before it becomes part of Water Supply and Storage. \JOHNSON\- Of course, the Tunnel Water was a company set up of its own, and they sold bonds to get the money to develop the tunnel. They built a long ditch up above the Water Supply and Storage where they proposed to irrigate a lot of ground, something like forty-thousand acres of ground. They proposed to do this. But instead of tying this in with farmers there, it was all dry land, they weren't farming it. Instead of tying it in with the farmers like the Water Supply and Storage did, they were an independent company developing the tunnel. They built the tunnel and as they got water into the tunnel, the farmers weren't in existence out there and, this was dry land, and they didn't own the water, and the water was quite uncertain at the time. When they [the company] first turned that in, they had so much trouble they didn't have any crops or anything to sell to bring in any money. So they got themselves really in debt and they couldn't pay on their bonds. That's when we found that the bonds were delinquent. We can go back there about in '28, before I was on the board in '28. The Water Supply and Storage board of directors that I know--i was living out on a section of land out east of town--and the board of directors came there, and I went with them to Rattlesnake Gulch. They had leased some of the Laramie Tunnel water as the tunnel water reached that point clear down to Rattlesnake Creek and turned it into the Pierce, and then irrigated under Pierce lateral with that water, and then took the Pierce water to the Water Supply and Storage. This was before I was on the board. This was in about thirty. I didn't go on the board until later. I was farming out east of town then, so that was their troubles. They [The Tunnel Water Company] didn't have land to tie to, and of course they couldn't make payments. They couldn't have a steady sale of the water, so they were really up against it. And that's when we bought the bonds. \HANSEN\- OK, the history of that particular construction project is one that goes way back. The tunnel itself, Laramie Poudre Reservoir and Irrigation Company, back around the tum of the century, started construction on that thing. \JOHNSON\- Yes they did. Of course it was as late as '09 before they finished it when they finished it. I have a picture of the dedication in there in 1909 when they finished that. That was Grabble, Charlie Grabble. He had a ranch up there where the country club is now. And he was a developer of the Larimer Poudre. He was one of the pushers of it. \HANSEN\- Do you know how to spell his name? \JOHNSON\- GRABBLE. He was more north Poudre, but he was interested in the development of the tunnel. And let me see, O'Brian was a foreman, but I was trying to think of the attorney, 95 years old, he died about ten years ago here in Greeley. I was a pretty good acquaintance. I got two letter from him when he was ninety-five years old. He wrote me two letters. I've still got them in the desk. He was an attorney for the tunnel people when they were building, and attorney Bill Kelley was doing the engineering. \HANSEN\- Burgis Coy? \JOHNSON\- Burgis Coy, \PAUSE\ [to look at pictures] \JOHNSON\- That goes back to what we were referring to anyhow. \HANSEN\- Well that company, or that tunnel, went through several, or that tunnel, went through several changes as far as ownership was concerned. \JOHNSON\- The bankruptcy, yes. 43

44 \HANSEN\- Yes, because the Laramie Poudre Reservoir and Irrigation Company started it, and then Tunnel came in there at some point, and... \JOHNSON\- Well, let's see, of course, when we acquired it, we acquired it under the law. We had to name it and form a company, so we had to form a company as a holding company in order to foreclose on it. We couldn't just do it as the Water Supply and Storage. It was foreclosed on as the Laramie Poudre Tunnel, was the name we gave it to do the foreclosing, and we just left that name on it. It's operated with a board of directors itself. \HANSEN\- Right, as the Tunnel Water Company. \JOHNSON\- The Tunnel Water Company. \HANSEN\- And what was the name of it when you took it over? \JOHNSON\- Well, it was the Laramie Poudre Reservoir and Irrigation Company. \HANSEN\- OK, good. We're getting a little low on time. Maybe since we pretty well covered a number of these early holdings, we could break here, and then next week kind of pick this up and just progress chronologically through these holdings... \END OF TAPE 6, SIDE B\ \START OF TAPE 7, SIDE A\ My name is Jim Hansen. Today is October lst, I am at the offices of the Water Supply and Storage Company on east Mulberry in Ft. Collins speaking with Harvey Johnson. \HANSEN\- Let's see we're continuing a discussion of the various acquisitions of the Water Supply and Storage Company, the ditches and the reservoirs, etc. and trying to trace when these actually came under the control of Water Supply and Storage and then how they were developed once Water Supply and Storage attained them. And we talked about the acquisitions from the Larimer County Ditch Company and Larimer County Reservoir Company, the Grand River Ditch and Chambers Lake and a number of these other smaller properties. I think today we're at the point where we can talk a little bit about the Jackson Ditch Company, which originated as the Dry Creek Ditch Company, which we talked about earlier. But now it comes into the possession of the Jackson Ditch Company; and subsequently Jackson becomes part of Water Supply and Storage, or a least it is controlled by Water Supply and Storage. Why don't you tell me what you know about the Jackson Ditch Company. \JOHNSON\- The Jackson Ditch Company, of course, is one of the older companies, merely for taking care of about four thousand acres, reaching from the river above LaPorte to some four miles east of Ft. Collins, the vicinity in there that they had filed on the Jackson Ditch. And evidently it was in different companies before the Water Supply and Storage became partners in it and had the controlling interest. At that time Gus Kluver, having been a pretty heavy land owner in the vicinity of LaPorte and east of LaPorte, along with his other lands, having been associated with the Water Supply and Storage for a good many years, and the Jackson Ditch having filed on a good amount of water--they had four filings. They had some of the original filings, and then from twelve feet on up to twenty-six, thirty-eight, and then fifty-one feet. Had some excess water and some of the stockholders of Water Supply and Storage had lands under both systems. And they thought it would be a good exchange if they had association with the Jackson Ditch whereby they could move some of that water up into the Water Supply and Storage and irrigate some lands. I understand from the reading of the transactions there were some five different farms that made agreement that they would take water out of the Jackson and transfer it up into the Water Supply and Storage and irrigate certain lands as far east as the Boxelder Creek. At that time they had put a limitation on the amount of water needed under the Jackson ditch. So the others that owned stock in the Jackson Ditch were in the minority, and in order to be able to transfer water from Jackson Ditch, the water supply ditch, to do this transfer Water Supply Company demanded control of the Jackson Ditch, giving the power to the Water Supply and Storage to vote their stock. Therefore, the control was made to control the Jackson Ditch. And it could be fitted into the Water Supply and Storage. That program that they instigated there in the early part of '24 as I understand it, that has still been in effect, and still doing the same thing of the, let me see, it was twenty-four shares of Jackson Ditch, and some eighteen now are controlled by the Water Supply and Storage. The Jackson 44

45 Ditch still has their own board of directors, and of course the Water Supply and Storage being in control, have the right to name three members of the five members of the board of directors of the Jackson Ditch. So that it does leave it within control of the Jackson Ditch and the Water Supply and Storage, and the waters have been able to make an exchange advantageous to the whole community. When relieving the water that would be transferred from the Jackson up to the Water Supply and Storage would leave some Water Supply and Storage to be released to some of the people at the eastern end of the Water Supply and Storage to the advantage of everybody concerned. So it has been very successful. \HANSEN\ Yes, it really sounds that way. How much water is involved with Jackson? \JOHNSON\- Jackson, the first decree of Jackson, is one of the oldest decrees on the Poudre River, twelve feet, and then the next decree is twenty-six feet, and that's a good decree. That runs nearly all summer. And thirty-six is another decree. Then fifty-one is the full decree. The fifty-one decree is not good for much beyond the middle of August. The river has dropped to where that is not very good flow. So it is a early decree ditch, and no storage flow in the Jackson Ditch, just the original river flow. \HANSEN\- So this association is really important in that concept of exchanging water. \JOHNSON\- That is right. It's advantageous for the exchanging. \HANSEN\- Was much of this going on before the acquisition of Jackson? \JOHNSON\- No. They were quite confined. Of course when we go back to the earlier days, when using so much depending upon the decrees of the Water Supply and Storage, there was a very limited amount of water. The farmers were very limited in water. And any exchanges like that were advantageous because it was very helpful until the tunnel was acquired, and the Grand Ditch was advanced to the seventeen miles of the ditch in the mountains, which included the sixteen creeks. Up until that time, the limitation of water was very limited, and any exchange at all was very welcome. There was a shortage of water. Crops were reduced to half production some years because of the lack of water. \HANSEN\- So that was really a very important concept. \JOHNSON\- It was, and the farmers used to follow that water as they would turn it down the rows, they'd follow it, and as it got somewhere close to the end of the row, they changed rows. And they stayed with it day and night. It was very important because it was livelihood of the community. And I lived through a great deal of that and saw the time when without the water, you just didn't have anything, and to take care of that water, you were able to get something. And those were right perilous days. Before we had much storage too, we didn't have the good storage, and then some winters not too much snow. I've seen the time when the lights across the fields, following the water on down and making exchanges all through the night. \HANSEN\- Making sure every last bit of it was used efficiently. \JOHNSON\- Every drop had to be taken care of. And there was a shortage. That was quite a different day than what it is now with this amount of water. \HANSEN\- That's for sure. \PAUSE\ [Telephone call interruption] \HANSEN\- OK, at about this same time, around the turn of the century, you had the development of lots of national forests, and the Chambers Lake area became national forest land I think about Did this create any problems for the people who were trying to develop water with the national forest lands all around the streams and things? \JOHNSON\- No, not to any history that I've seen. Now I believe in 1908 was when Roosevelt set up the national forests. And as the national forests were set up, it had the three phases. It was for preserving the water, for timber, and third was recreation. And as they were set up, they were set up subject to the then existing water rights that were. And outside of a few different times when we'd have some new appointees of supervisors of the national forests, outside of a few of them that did want to make some changes, we'd have to say that the Forest Service has been very cooperative. In the later years they have seen fit to try to claim some water, but Forest Service as a whole has been helpful to developing water up the Poudre. \HANSEN\- Specifically, how have they been helpful? 45

46 \JOHNSON\- It was necessary to have permits to extend some ditches, and permits to cut some timbers and do various things that they have been helpful. Of course, the Department of Agriculture in Washington has been very positive in that too that they did cooperate. And Forest Services in my time have been most cooperative until just the last few years when they have tried to put claim on some waters, but as a whole I'd have to say the Forest Service has been helping to build water usage in Larimer County because so many of the superintendents have been local people, or have lived as local people here. And, of course, they get some requests in Washington, but, no, I would have t say that the Forest Service has not given us any one problem very bad. Of course we've had to have permits to build telephones across the mountains. We did have our own phones going up from here clear up to LuLu Pass and down to the Long Draw Reservoir. Outside of a very few people, they have been cooperative. \HANSEN\- That's good. That's important because they could really be obstructionists if they wished. OK, some of the other holdings, I guess reservoirs, storage facilities, come into the hands of Water Supply and Storage again about the same time, near the turn of the century. Curtis Lake? What can you tell me about that? \JOHNSON\- Curtis Lake is a small reservoir and happened to have been an indentation right below the Larimer County Canal. It was very accessible to the company to put in a small dam, and at the excessive flow in the spring of the year in the river, they had a place to put several hundred feet of water, to put it away. And that was the reasoning for acquiring the Curtis Dam, but it didn't have the facilities to expand very big because the water level from the ditch was such that you could only put out so much water without having any more fall in the lake. It was a very limited lake laying right close to the canal. Has not got too much value of the company, but it is a part of the facility. It is not one of our best reservoirs because it was built at the time that they did not have the big plans. They merely went to work and put in some dams and turned the water out in it and got a decree on it. \HANSEN\- OK. This is about 1902, \JOHNSON\- Yes, any little place at that time that they might capture and hold a little water was very essential. And that was the purpose behind the whole reservoir. \HANSEN\- OK, how about Richards Lake? Would that be in the same category, or...? \JOHNSON\- Richards Lake was farther down just directly north of Ft. Collins, and it had been an indentation in the ground, and it was some dead water there. Richards had a farm there, and they had a place where they could put some of the extra water that they might have. But they had their possibilities of building a dike, some ten foot dike, and cutting through from some of that dead water, cutting through that that could be let out into Long Pond into canals that were irrigating farms there. So it was really instigated by Mr. Richards himself in a small way, and then it fit into Water Supply and Storage acquiring it, and building a seven and a half foot dike, and cutting some eight feet of the ground, then the fill of ground, between that and the lower ground. Therefore, they were able to acquire a good little reservoir. And it's a very useful reservoir. \HANSEN\- Now what do you mean when you say dead water? \JOHNSON\- There is some hollows in all of this country, when it would storm that the water would accumulate. And the lay of the land is such in different places where there is always some natural pond that has been created because of the hollowness in the ground. And it was just a hollow place in the ground that storm water had accumulated in, and ducks had been there, and the farmers enjoyed having that as a part of the farm. They didn't have centrifugal pumps that they have today that they could pump the water out, so they just enjoyed that water. Livestock watered in it, and it was a nice asset to the farm. Long Pond, Lindenmeier, Richards Lake, and various ones of that type to start with. Some forty acres or so would be involved in the dead water, or just water, natural rainfall water, snow maybe melting, water would stay there all summer, evaporate away, and probably only half of it would be left in the fall. But those were what we termed as dead water. And those were hollows that they could go on the lower side and increase darils, and excavating a cut from those and excavating out the land, it could be taken out on a grade to a lower part and could be used as irrigating some land. And that was the systems they had to use in those days. \HANSEN\- So it was really a little windfall for the... 46

47 \JOHNSON\- A little windfall to the community. \HANSEN\- That's great. I guess a more important reservoir that was developed at this time would be Black Hollow, right? \JOHNSON\- Well, Black Hollow was a necessity to start with. But Black Hollow Creek draining off of quite a body of dry country up above that had made a creek which they called Black Lake. And it had gone into a low indentation of the earth and it held a small body of water, and it would hold it the season out. And after it filled up that body there, then it worked on down into Black Hollow Creek and would go clear on down to the river from there. But that was not taken on until about 1924, I believe. That's right, the sale of the land, when they purchased that land in '24. But the big thing that it was to Water Supply and Storage was that when they would tum water out the canal, and this was a very crooked canal from the river on down to the end of the delivery of water of the Water Supply and Storage, something like thirty miles of canal, angling over and around the low places. Them days they went to the least resistance, you followed the gravity of the ground. Would be something like fifty-eight to sixty miles of ditch in a forty mile area. And to get water in the front end of that and have water left when you get down to the back end was a very big problem. If they could develop the Black Hollow Reservoir that they could put water into that at such times as they might have extra rain water or extra snow water, they could put water in Black Hollow. Then they would have a point part way down in the system that they could have an equalization. They could have water run into there all times of the year, and then it could be available for the lower end of the ditch when needed. And it was one of the biggest assets that they ever made was being able to handle the system by having water at that distance down the ditch. It was a very important factor. \HANSEN\ Now with all of these acquisitions, did the stockholders just keep assessing themselves? They'd decide they needed something, and then they'd make an assessment on themselves, or they'd arrange for a loan? Or how did...? \JOHNSON\- Yes. The records show that they made loans, and they paid a high rate of interest, some of those loans. And then they would assess themselves for paying that over a period of years. No, the farmers were not in the position to make a big assessment against themselves. It was very much more equal and very much more workable by making loans and doing it that way. And they show records of making those loans and how they made the developments. \HANSEN\- Were local banks the primary source of this money? \JOHNSON\- Local banks were limited of course. We had two good banks here, and two other smaller banks. But you will find that big loans, what they used were loan companies. They even went to New York to get some loans. The reason I wanted to bring this out, when they developed the Grand River Ditch up there and had that big loan, that was eastern money, New York Loan Company money, paying a high rate of interest. The Denver banks came here, and Charlie Peterson, a man that I had known, had met him a time or two, he came here from Denver and said the Water Supply and Storage, having had a very fine record--they never missed a payment--that he would like to have that million and a quarter dollars of Colorado money. And we were paying twelve percent. And I remember saying just what can you do? And he said "Ifyour company is willing, we'll go to Denver and see what we can get done." Mr. Peterson came back after a good month and said "The banks in Denver are picking this up and they have other banks. Ft. Collins bank, the Greeley banks included are putting up so much money, we'll put up all of this money at two and a half percent and make a payment over twenty years." And that was one of the greatest things that ever happened to us. In twenty years we paid that up.- \HANSEN\- I would think so. Twelve to two and a half percent. \JOHNSON\- Wasn't that a lovely thing the state of Colorado banks did to us? \HANSEN\- Now what was Mr. Peterson's position? \JOHNSON\- Charlie Peterson was field man for the U.S. National Bank in Denver. \HANSEN\- And he went ahead and put this pool together? \JOHNSON\- He put this pool together. He went to the banks and the banks put it together, the banks in Denver. He was field man. And they had sent him up. So really the heart of it was from the banks in 47

48 Denver. They were the very gracious people that put it over. \HANSEN\- Now what year was this about? \JOHNSON\- This was in about '40. This was a lot later than what we were talking about. \HANSEN\- Sure, but it really provides a wonderful contrast to the kinds of financing difficulties that those earlier people had to cope with. \JOHNSON\- Well, there is another story in the preceding of this. We're going back to '36 when we paid the twelve percent. The bank of coops come across and said, "Well, hey, why don't we have the government to make this loan? We'll reduce that twelve percent to the government." This goes in between that. And, OK, well, the bank of coops were something like six percent. This is '3 7 anyhow that this loan come through; those loans would take about a year to come through. Anyhow, in '3 7 they made this loan just for the amount of indebtedness. Well, then, through the summer we had expenses of operating the ditch and went to the local bank and borrowed fifty thousand dollars from the two banks in Ft. Collins. The two banks would get together, they'd make a loan, because then it wouldn't put too much of the load one bank, The First National Bank and Poudre Valley. And in the summertime, here come the government out and said "Here, you can't do that, you've got a mortgage on your ditch, and you can't do that." Well, we had to operate the ditch. So, we didn't say anything to them, but we went to Prudential Insurance people and said "Here, we can't have the government telling us what to do, you give us a loan." This was another eight and half percent loan. Well, we paid the government off. Independent outfit as you ever seen. \HANSEN\- Which agency of the government had that earlier loan been made from? \JOHNSON\- The Federal Bank of Coops. And so they paid them off anyhow. Then the Prudential. Yes, that came in between what I was telling you before anyhow. Then for that why then the banks in Denver come back and said, "Hey, Charlie Peterson said you never defaulted. Now let's use the Colorado money." That's how we did that. There's a long story to all of it. \HANSEN\- Yes, it's a fascinating story too. That's the part a lot of people don't think of. You know, you think about the engineering and then the agricultural uses of the water, but how you get the money together to make all of that possible is... \JOHNSON\- The financing--those were really problems. Yes, they have been problems, but they have been... the old thrifty bunch of farmers have made their way and paid for it, and they got the respect of the country anyhow. \HANSEN\- Well, that's what it takes. You pay your debts, and people are going to believe you when you come and ask for more. OK, the Rawah Ditches? \JOHNSON\- The Rawah Ditches were a part of the tunnel in our foreclosures. Yes, the Rawah Ditches were the supply of water to the tunnel. \HANSEN\- Now these were more than one? \JOHNSON\- There are two ditches. Rawah Ditches are two. One's about a mile and half, and the other is about two and half miles. And they were constructed along the side of the mountain by the construction people that had constructed the tunnel. And, of course, as we acquired them. We were fortunate enough to have the assessments up to where we did buy a lot of 4 foot galvanized corrugated pipe. And we laid it in the ditch as needed I wouldn't right now--but in the neighborhood of four thousand feet of pipes we laid in the various perilous points. And we got away from losses of water by laying pipe---we have a lot of pipe laid in the Rawah Ditches up in the mountains. When I say ditches, there was another ditch that has been filed on that we haven't needed to use. By putting the main Raywah Ditch and the Skyline in good shape, we just use the two of them now. \HANSEN\- OK, did you use the same kind of improved piping for Skyline as well? \END OF TAPE 7, SIDE A\ \BEGINNING OF TAPE SEVEN, SIDE B\ \HANSEN\- OK, we're talking about the Rawah Ditches, and the use of pipe and the fact that this piping really made a difference in the efficiency of the water. \JOHNSON\- Yes it did. They had used a lot of wood cribbing in different places. And, of course, cribbing had begun to shrink up and decay some. And the losses in the ditches, we were only getting 48

49 thirty to forty percent clear through the ditch. And by getting pipe up to that, we had to buy that in twelve foot lengths and get it back up to the ditch with jeeps, with trailers on jeeps, and built it. So we went through a lot of hardships to place that. The Rawah Ditch and the Skyline Ditch in the forepart of their construction, was only a very small part of them that was accessible to vehicles of any kind. They had drug in logs, of course, with a team of horses dragging them on the ground. We did not have roads to go in. So one of our main things was when they began to improve those ditches was to widen the dikes and build so that we could get a narrow vehicle up there and could move small equipment in. Those were very, very trying times. We had some very, very fine constructive men who stayed with us all through that. But that was one of the most trying times we had in order to seal those ditches until we could get water from some of those higher creeks in the mountains there coming from the Rawah Lakes. They had a big flow, and those are the creeks that we wanted to tie in, bring down some four miles to the Laramie River and then take it out of the Laramie River into the tunnel is the process we had to go through. And we put a lot of hard years in getting those. We couldn't do it all one year or in two years or three years. We did some four or five years of a little construction each year because the season up there is so short. You can only work up there from some time in May into October. You didn't have much time to do those kind of jobs. So with a whole lot of work and heartaches and all, it's operating pretty nicely right now. \HANSEN\- Yes, it must have been just formidable to get that piping up there and in place. \JOHNSON\- One of the biggest problems, you could not use a long piece of equipment of any kind, all of the turns in the ditches and all. So finally we found out that we could do it with twelve foot pipes, and then had bands to seal them together every twelve feet. And those have been quite successful. We have yet today. Of course, it's a copperoid metal steel that is not deteriorating, but the bands are deteriorating some, and we have to replace those. But the repair is nothing at all now like it was some forty-five years ago. It's been an experience. \HANSEN\- I'll bet. Did you have your own people doing this maintenance? \JOHNSON\- Yes, we did some contracting. Mostly earth moving contracting. In the early parts of the contractors when they were coming into equipment they could use in these mountains, were quite a specialty. And it took quite a specialty of people that we did some contracting. But the ditch company itself have done an awful lot of teamwork and done an awful lot of work up there with small equipment. Since they made the first little crawler tractor, we've always had one up there, and we've had to use jeeps because the width of a jeep is narrower than a regular pick-up. You can't take a regular pick-up on either one of them ditches because of the width of the wheels. And some of those places you just have four inches on the side where you've got left after you've moved along the ditch. So it's quite particular work for somebody to maintain that right now. It takes good people up there to do that. \HANSEN\- It sure sounds like it. \JOHNSON\- It's not one of those natural things that just happens. This is made to happen. \HANSEN\- So the Rawah Ditches become part of this Laramie Poudre Tunnel complex, and then, subsequently, was it about 1914 that Water Supply and Storage acquired the...? \JOHNSON\- No, they didn't acquire that untill93 7. \HANSEN\- OK. There must have been some water though that Water Supply and Storage was able to... \JOHNSON\- The Skyline. The Skyline was active. \HANSEN\- Did the Skyline use the tunnel at all? \JOHNSON\- No, the Skyline at that time went into Chambers Lake. They did have use out of that. But they had no use out of the tunnel only there was about three years that they rented water from the tunnel people. They rented water, but they had no use out of the tunnel. Then in '3 7 when we finally got a deed to the tunnel.... \HANSEN\- OK, so they were just really renting water all that time until the late thirties. \JOHNSON\- They just rented water at that time. They had no ownership or had no obligations to it until they went through court and foreclosed on them, and then become owners of the tunnel and the 49

50 Rawah Ditches. \HANSEN\- OK, then back in this early period, it looks as though the next acquisition once the construction on the Black Hollow begins is the Kluver Reservoir. That would be about 19ll. \JOHNSON\- Yes, Mr. Kluver at that time was president of the Water Supply and Storage, and Mr. Kluver was like all of the board members, they were looking for something that could improve the system. So Mr. Kluver owned a half section of land there on the edge of Water Supply and Storage, and it had a little dead water, the same that we spoke about. It had a little dead water in there, so they got with the engineers and they figured out where they could build a reservoir there, and have the Kluver reservoir. Then Kluver sold to the system some hundred and fifty acres of ground, and then they bought from Walker fifty-seven acres that covered on the next quarter to the south of there. They bought that fifty-seven acres there and built the Kluver Reservoir. \HANSEN\- What was Walker's full name, do you remember? \JOHNSON\- John Walker's farm. It belongs to Jack Nitesy now, that particular piece of ground. Ted mons had it for some time, but Walker was the owner of it when the Water Supply and Storage--the records show that they bought it off of Walker. And they bought that off of Kluver too. And then they built that dike there. That was all done with horses and slips and working like that. No power equipment was used at all. They just didn't have it. \HANSEN\- Were there any special problems related to the construction of that reservoir? \JOHNSON\- No, I don't know of any that has come on record at all. Well, yes, all systems have had problems. When they built the Kluver Reservoir, they put a spillway far on the north end. Then part way from south of there, they built an outlet. Built a big pipe coming from the bottom of the lake and dumped the water into Dry Creek. And as they dumped it into Dry Creek, they went down and they traded it to the Eaton Ditch, and the Eaton Ditch would give them some of the Douglas water in replacement of it. They'd make exchange. Well the Douglas Reservoir and Eaton Ditch, that's a pretty good size reservoir, seven to eight thousand acre feet. Douglas Reservoir would dump into Dry Creek and proceed on down to the Eaton Ditch. And the volume of water from Kluver Lake and the bottom of the water from Number one and two were making some cuts and bad washes down the Dry Creek. So the community along Dry Creek proceeded to have a law suit--and this was in my time, the end of'36. They threatened to stop us from dumping any waters into Dry Creek. Something had to be done. We had a congenial engineer and water commissioner, Bill Macanally. And he came up with an idea where we could excavate and take water back out of Kluver into No. 4 and No. 4 into the Jackson Ditch, the Jackson Ditch into Long Pond, Long Pond to Eaton, and get away from washing of the Dry Creek. Well then Eaton Ditch is still stuck on--they own Douglas--they had to get some water out. So we made an agreement, and it has worked ever since that whereby they would put an entrance into our system up above that from Douglas. They would dump water into the Water Supply and Storage, and we use it in our regular system. Then we would take Kluver, No.2 and 3, the bottom of Rocky Ridge and No. 4, and put it into Long Pond. Long Pond dumped directly. We had to put in a five foot pipe for about twelve-hundred feet and dump that water right into Eaton Ditch. This is still in process today. \HANSEN\- About when did this happen? \JOHNSON\- This problem there was in '36, '37, about '37 I guess we finally wound it up. And it was in '3 7 I know they were charged on me to get some pipe, and I couldn't find any cement pipe. I had to go clear to Cheyenne to find cement pipe to build that pipeline from Long Pond down to Eaton Ditch. Had it trucked in from Cheyenne. We didn't have anything any closer than Cheyenne. Denver didn't have that kind of a pipe for us. So we went through some perilous times. But this arrangement, by working together, is successful today. \HANSEN\- So you satisfied the people who lived along Dry Creek? \JOHNSON\- Yes, they have forgotten all about it now. They are friends now. So every one of them things has got a big story about them. \HANSEN\- Well, these are the kinds of things that often don't get into the records too. That's why your memory is so important. Well, let's see Black Hollow was started before the First World War, but not completed until the early 1920's, is that correct? 50

51 \JOHNSON\- They had to--it was in '24 when that was finished--they had to, Dick Carroll owned that quarter section. I knew Dick Carroll quite well. He was a stubborn old boy. He wouldn't sell to them. They had to go into foreclosure with him on that. And now they didn't only get off of Dick Carroll, they got some off of the Bimontys. I wouldn't know just the amount of acreage off of Bimontys, but.... \HANSEN\- Now who was that last....? \JOHNSON\- Baiamonte, Joe Baiamonte. Italian. Still got one of his sons out in that area. \HANSEN\- I've got one date here about Would that be too early when the construction actually began? \JOHNSON\- No. You see the first ditch that they had, and there is still scars there, bypassed Black Lake. They excavated a new ditch to get an elevation. They had to go back on the old canal, some two miles above that and raise the ditch up to get an elevation whereby they could meet the height of the survey of the dam at Black Hollow. This [was] during the time that, oh, let's see we go back to about I had an older brother who was fifteen or sixteen years older--my brother was quite a little older than I was--and he took a team of horses and worked on that one summer. I can remember as a kid going out there with Dad, and they had to re-elevate the ditch. And, of course, in those days the ditch wasn't very big that they could make with a team of horses. But they'd have twenty-five or thirty teams of horses, one following the other with a slip of dirt, and going up on top of the dike. Two or three men down below would hold that slip, and they'd fill it. When you would tum it loose, then a team of horses could pull it on up in the dike. Then this driver could take that handle and bring it up enough, and it would catch and dump the dirt out. And then the horses coming over packed that dirt. That's how they used to pack the dirt. That's how they built a dike in those days. \HANSEN\- Well, the horses hoofs would literally [pack it.] \JOHNSON\- They would pack it because of the horse pulling, not only that thousand pounds of the horse, but the pulling on that put another thousand pounds of pressure. Some of these dikes are perfect today because of the packed compaction they had. Let nature compact it, you see. Yes, you'll find we've done some testings up there to find conditions, when their making some drillings, you'll find a six inch difference. You'll find a different kind of soil, where another slip had dumped. Finally, they find a little gravel over here in another one as you go down in depth. But those days were perilous, I'll tell you. \HANSEN\- So they had to keep making these adjustments and then acquiring additional land in order to provide the proper elevation, is that [right?] \JOHNSON\- Yes, they had to acquire it. At that time people were very helpful. You would go to them and say, "We need this and we need that." "Well, go ahead." It wasn't very much value to them then, you know. And we find a lot of places where we don't have a deed to a piece of ground. When they went to the farmer or the homesteader, whatever he was, and he'd say "Well, go ahead and do it." Well, then, of course, according to the law of the State of Colorado, we have that right after twenty years of usage, and everybody recognizes the right of the water. We have once in a while a fellow that contests some of these old workings, but we don't have any trouble after we take them to court. We can get it straightened up pretty fast. \HANSEN\- You can prove you've had it longer than he's claiming. \JOHNSON\- Yes, well the rights of the State of Colorado you know. The irrigation is so vital to it that the law does protect that. \HANSEN\- Well, that's really important to know. It looks as though the next major acquisition, and this would be in the late '20s, would be Long Draw Reservoir, and was a contract for the construction with the Dooling brothers. Can you tell me about Long Draw? \JOHNSON\- Well, Long Draw is just east ofthe Continental Divide where the Grand Ditch was filed on with sixteen creeks, and it came across the divide there at about eleven hundred elevation. They filed on a site where they could put a dam across the Poudre Pass water. That's where it is. It was a faulty construction. They were just coming into existence of a hydraulic headgate. And this headgate was put into the system way out into the reservoir. The dike was some hundred and eighty feet wide, and forty some feet high. But they put the headgate out into the lake to the elevation of the creek 51

52 that came down through there. They put a three foot pipe in there, but they did not gravel bed that. They put it on regular dirt. And so it settled in places, and it was very up and down. And then they put pipe from a little building on top clear on down into the water, clear out to that headgate. And you pumped oil on a two inch pipe all the way out some hundred and eighty feet, I believe it was, that raised those gates. Those pipes, leaking so much, [were always] freezing and thawing. They leaked so much in the cold weather up there. This main three foot pipe they put in there, swelled until it was so uneven, and with it up an down so uneven. And with it up and down [and] so uneven, [it was] causing airlocks in there, we couldn't get much out of it at the lower ends. Didn't use that lake only once or twice with a little bit of water. So that expenditure was a loss to the system. Then as we rebuilt in 1975 when we finished rebuilding the Long Draw, we corrected all that. But that old dam, Long Dniw Dam, was a failure. That is the headgate was a failure. But of, course, at that particular time they only had a narrow hand ditch built up to Dutch Creek. So the volume of water you got at that particular time was very limited. And we could use the water down here. We didn't use the old lake because of the poorly constructed headgate, so we're not too much of a loss at that time. \HANSEN\- So the amount of run-off was minimal anyway? \JOHNSON\- Very minimal because it didn't have the capacity to take it. So those times if they got up to a thousand feet of water, they were doing pretty good. Of course, we got all the records of all of them here, but they did get some pretty good flows at times, but they didn't get very much until we extended on in '35, '36, '37. We began to get some good flows. So you can imagine the heartaches, the boys still short of water, and then having a little water losses; there were heartaches in those days. \HANSEN\- Yes, the hope of a place they could hold some water, and then finding it's all going back into the ground with those leaks. OK, then I guess after the unsuccessful building of Long Draw, well about the same time you undertook an enlargement of Skyline. This would be around 1927 [1937] maybe? \JOHNSON\- Yes, we repaired Skyline, and at that time we began to have a little equipment that we could work on it. Of course they had done so much cribbing, building flumes out of lumber that would catch and absorb a leak. So much of that was cribbed along the side of the mountain. And the leakage in that was so bad, we began to get away with that and put in some piping, four foot galvanized corrugated pipe. \HANSEN\- What do you mean by cribbing? \JOHNSON\- Cribbing--take lumber. You would have to take time to build logs four foot on the bottom, four foot logs on both sides, and four foot logs on top, that was a log crib. They would cut a four foot log about the same size and length they needed to crib different times several hundred feet in a row and have them cut so that they could go down into the ground. Well, first they'd take one and they'd lay a whole mat of them on the ground. Then they would cut logs about four foot length, and then they would have one across the top. So they would have a square built of logs. And they would have to hewed and set together at the four points. One six to eight inches after another. See how much work you'd have to go a foot, two feet, ten feet, twenty feet, a hundred feet. [The] work put in, the amount of manpower you would have, with axes and hand saws and little cross-cut saws [was enormous.] They didn't have power saws or anything. So you can imagine the work done to build a cribbing. And those cribbings, as that lumber would shrink and dry and shrink, leave cracks for the water to get away. We had to remove all of those later and replace with steel pipe, and at the time then when I came into the picture there, we just had to have water. The water was available there, and the board of directors was ambitious enough, wanted to do something. So we could get some planks, and we could get them delivered up there. It cost an awful lot of money, but we began to build some cribbing out of planks. And you could take a two-inch plank or a three-inch plank and you could lay that against another plank pretty good, and by the time you got that wet, it would swell up and tighten up so we could get a lot more water by doing that. So we did a lot of planking, places where we were losing so much water. And then we were able to get the water to Chambers Lake--there was what they call a badger, a little backhoe. It was on crawlers, and it was the first usage of a backhoe. But it had a scooping effect; it 52

53 couldn't reach out and pull something to you. You could push into it and fill the bucket, and you could swing your tractor around and could dump it outside. Today you have a backhoe that will hook it up and swing around itself. We had the old one of those at the time we began working the Skyline over, and the Skyline is about three and a half miles. And by working it over and by putting men on the dike to watch that the flow didn't get away--we run that ditch level to the top, and men every so often walking along there. Of course every creek that came into the Skyline, we had to have an outlet to spill. And that was all wooden owlets so that you could carry that ditch plumb full and when it looked like it was dangerous, you'd have to take a board out and spill a little more over. But to keep that full all the time, so to get as much water as possible into Chambers Lake, we built that up. One or two years, we got eighteen thousand acre feet off through the Skyline alone. The Crosscut creek coming into there is a wonderful creek up above. It gave us an awful lot ofwater, and a 2-1/2 mile creek. Of course, we were shutting water off from the tunnel. See this is kind of reaching above the Rawahs. And when we get a full flow of the Skyline up there, we can cut water off of the Rawah ditch to the tunnel. Now as we own both of them, we get up to about two-hundred and seventy-five feet in the tunnel carry capacity, and that's our limit or our capacity. Then we can put some over in the Skyline. We can work them together now. But then we could fill the tunnel by making the Skyline so much better. So we were threatened by court orders of doing that you know. We've had problems. \HANSEN\- This was before the tunnel was under the legal control of Water Supply. \JOHNSON\- Yes, it was before we acquired the tunnel. \HANSEN\- So you went ahead and made that enlargement and then you got lots of difficulty from Tunnel. \JOHNSON\- Yes, but put us in a better position where we were able to buy that tunnel. \HANSEN\- That really brings us pretty much up to date as far as the acquisitions, although I can see there were some properties that came and went along that time. Let's talk about some of the major litigation, suits and things that are most memorable to you from the time you came on the board because I think that is something that I think is going to be important. We have referred to some of them already. What was the first one you really remember when you came on? \END OF TAPE 7, SIDE B\ \BEGINNING OF TAPE 8, SIDE A\ \HANSEN\-... some of the litigation, the law suits that have plagued this company from its earliest years, and specifically some of the ones that you remember most vividly from the time you came on the board. \JOHNSON\- Well, of course, one of the biggest things that--we hadn't got the Grand going too good, we didn't have the tunnel, we were having the Skyline pretty active and taking quite a lot of water. The thing that set us back about as much as anything was the State of Wyoming brought suit against us for taking too much of their part of the river. And then the people on the Colorado side of the Laramie River. There is something like twenty miles of Laramie River that meadowland users use a lot of that water before you get to the Wyoming side there, Wyoming border. The meadow land people brought that charge against us, taking too much water, and went into court on that. Some misunderstanding of the need of water, until the court put a limitation on us. We had bought the tunnel, and the court is coming and putting a limitation on us on the water. Well, they allowed the State of Colorado so much water, and they did not divide the amount of water between the twenty miles of meadowland users and then they went back into court. The courts decided that we were only entitled to half of that water. That was one of the most damaging things. We thought we were getting a lot of water out of that, and we were cut down to the 19,875 feet ofwater. Had the governors of Colorado and Wyoming in on the thing, and it was quite a remarkable thing. We came out shorted on that. Of course, that behooved us to look to something else for more water. And that put us into the process of improving the Grand Ditch more to get the water that we had lost there. So we were forced to do a lot of things. 53

54 I don't know that we've had any very damaging suits brought against us. There are just dozens of them, but I can't call to mind anything right now that would be of consequence enough that we would go into that. Each incident that happened created troubles that we've had. Of course, we've had--payments each year--we pay a considerable amount to an attorney. We've had a lot of threats with the Forest Service, the Park Service and various others, the different departments in the government. They're trying to come up with a lot of different things, so we were forced to have a an association. Now this association dates back to, oh I guess it would date back to Had a joining of an association of all of the water users in the Poudre sources, the horn, as they call it, east of here. And we've had very good luck. We got up to ninety-seven percent of all of them. The City of Ft. Collins, the City of Greeley, are all members ofthis association. This association, we assess each company according to the amount of decrees that we have out of the river, and the Water Supply happens to be the largest contributor to the association. But in this, what I'm trying to say is, in this association we have a legal department. We have the member of Fischer's office, and we meet every two months. And they take care of a lot of tax and legislation and has removed it from the individual ditches. It has been a great thing to help us out. But along with that, of course, we had problems, not so much with the government, as some of the land owners that used to be in the national park. There was an estate left in the national park that had a resort just below our system there, the Grand Ditch, that drawed us into several court hearings and several government projects because of they'd like to get us out of the park. But one of the biggest boosts we've had was when we formed this association. They then in turn take care of a lot of the things. Of course we have an attorneys of our own. This one has represented company ever since Moody's time, just before the turn of the century. But any one thing, right now I just don't recall any one thing we need to go into that would be of any consequence. There has been dozens of small things, but we've been able to cope with them. We've been bothered so many times offish and game, of taking water away from them. And Chambers Lake has been challenged several times. Chambers Lake here, we could go back, say, five years ago; we were told that Chambers Lake didn't have a spillway comparable to taking care of it. So the engineers in Denver came up with the fact that if we would have twelve foot of snow on twenty-five square miles above Chambers Lake, and at the same time we would get an eleven inch rain like they had up the Thompson, we'd have fifty-five thousand second feet of water flowing through Chambers Lake. If that was possible, when five-thousand second feet of water is flood stages down here at Ft. Collins, and fifty-five thousand up there. Nobody has ever known the fact that when you had eleven or twelve foot of snow that you never got twelve inches of rain because in the snow area rain doesn't happen; it's snow up there then. But this is what your engineers said we're going to have. And in order to take care of that we had to have a one-thousand feet of spillway in Chambers Lake. When those people down state, they tell you that you're going to have such and such a storm, why they're supposed to be in the know. So we did proceed at that time to make the thousand feet of spillway. And we have made the thousand feet of spillway. So if we ever get that kind of a storm, Ft. Collins is going to be floating down to Greeley. These are some of the hideous things we have to buck. A spillway so waters in the lake should be more than the lake's composites. Water would spill over a cement wall and hold the lake to a safe level and not break the lake dam. \HANSEN\- Well, this was just sort of hoisted upon you, and you know if you dare use it, you're going to create a disaster, right? \JOHNSON\- This is what they are predicting is going to happen. This is what we face with an awful lot of our operations. But that's an actuality that has transpired, and we have a spillway to take care of fifty-five thousand second feet of water, and five-thousand second feet of water is flood stages down here. Fifty-five thousand would put twenty feet of water down across all of this area here. So those are the elements that we have to work with. \HANSEN\- Let's kind of touch on a couple of points that are related to what you've just discussed. Are you insured for the possibility of a dam breaking? \JOHNSON\- Our big headache today is insurance. We have been fortunate enough that we have 54

55 carried up to eight million dollars worth of insurance. If we got a dam break, of course, like they did up in Idaho, it would have been a small amount, but it's been ample for what we thought was necessary. But now with several dam breaks, the Idaho and the one up in Estes Park, and all, the insurance people have been sued for beyond any reasonable amounts of money. And they are closing out on dam insurance. We are covered into December here, but after that we don't know what's going to happen. Right now the Colorado Water Congress is in the process of coming up with some kind of insurance in the State of Colorado. I was just looking over some bulletins here now. We have quite an interest. We are going to have to have a change in the laws. The reservoirs are the making of this country, now people want to build under the reservoirs. They're building under them all the time. Everybody wants to be under them. And the state laws are such that reservoirs are responsible for the people. They are going to have to have a change in the legislation if a person moves in under a dam, he should move in of his own risks. Not us, but all of the companies are threatened to not have insurance. And even your doctors today. You have doctors quitting business. One was in the news yesterday morning in Denver. We have two doctors here who have quit because they can't take the insurance rates that they have to pay. And Denver itself is having trouble. The state of Colorado is making their own insurance now. It's a problem we have. A man just down the road here in the automobile business, he cancelled his insurance. He had two million dollars. The other day he cancelled his insurance because the premiums were too great. They can't stand the premiums because there have been too many big allowances by the courts. The judgements have been allowed to get clear out of proportion. The juries and all have made too many millions of dollars worth of judgements against people, and it's breaking the insurance people. They're just going out of business. So the thing is very serious right now. \HANSEN\- Well, it sounds critical if you're going to be out of insurance by December. \JOHNSON\- Yes, I don't know what you're going to do. As I've told our attorney, I'm not going to jeopardize myself, and I don't know anybody else who is going to. Who's going to operate the system? \HANSEN\- That's right, who's going to want to serve on a board if they're personally liable for its problems? \JOHNSON\- It's very critical. \HANSEN\- Is this being lobbied? Is there legal representation in the legislature? \JOHNSON\- Yes, we have legal representation, and I've got the notice here, I was just reading where on the 22nd and the 23rd a meeting in Glenwood down here, and I think they have some news for us. But there's going to have to be some changes. It's going to have to come about. The thing is really bad. We have Eaton Ditch, we have Larimer and Weld, we have different companies with absolutely no insurance today. Now one thing has happened. This time of year we feel breathing space because we're down on the lakes storage. And we have some water that we generally have to get out of Horsetooth in the fall of the year and fill up our lakes. Well, they've been gracious enough to say that we can leave that there for the winter. So we feel safe for the winter not having any troubles, but we're going to have to have some help next spring. So it's very bad shape. \HANSEN\- So this is really a long-term problem unless you can get the legislature to come to your defense and... \JOHNSON\- Well, the legislature did get a bill through, and we're paying the lawyer that's been riding with it. Got a bill through where a million dollars was the limit of what they could sue for. Now a corporation like the City of Ft. Collins or the county commissioner, according to the law, have a limitation of how much you can sue them for. But not true of companies like this. But they are going to have to have some protection there. But there is no reason why they--i've been fifty years now with--and I would never build a home under a dam. But everybody else wants under the dam. Paying fifty to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a lot next to a lake just because they can sue a fellow if anything goes wrong. It's going to have to have some changes; it's got to come. \HANSEN\- Yes, definitely. Well, as you say, you're not going to have anybody to run the system if everyone involved in its management is going to be subject to this liability. \JOHNSON\- Yes, they are subject to the liability. I said to the attorney and the board, "I'll resign and 55

56 be a manager or something like that." "No, you can't do that, but you can be advisory. That's all you can be, just advisory." So that's how serious it is. It's terrible right now. But those are the problems, that's our worst problem we have right now. \HANSEN\- Now, you mentioned this association that was formed in the 1950s. Do you have another point you want to make? \JOHNSON\- Well, what I started to say was that we have our association now, and they are in the process, but we had this million dollar bill put through. Then the legislature thought they would get very helpful here about six months ago, and they would change that. And when they changed it, they didn't limit the amount that the board of directors would be responsible for. They left that all out and that left the thing wide open. Legislators made that mistake. \HANSEN\- So this million dollar limit would be imposed on whom then? \JOHNSON\- Just on the reservoir itself. But then your directors would be responsible. They're not named in that as not responsible. \HANSEN\- So you could go to your million against the company per se, but then you could go after the individual directors? \JOHNSON\- Yes, you could go after the individual directors on top of that. \HANSEN\- Well, if you've got that loophole that makes this worthless. \JOHNSON\- Yes, that's what it is. It took a long time before our attorneys came up with that. \HANSEN\- What's the biggest claim that has ever been paid out by Water Supply and Storage, or its insurance representatives? \JOHNSON\- Well, I think the only claim we paid out, the only one we've had, is this man who broke his neck up here on Long Pond. \HANSEN\- Vollmer? \JOHNSON\- Vollmer, yes. And that should not have been. We should have gone to court. He had no business in there at all. We have a contract with the property owners there, and they were supposed to be responsible for this. But, anyhow, they found a nook in their contract where the attorneys in Denver for, this Vollmer, working for him, they seen fit to get the homeowners association to get out of it by paying $250,000. That left the whole charge b~ck on us. We had insurance at the time. And our insurance people got scared and they said, well, we'd better pay off rather than having to go to court because Denver had had a fellow up on the Platt River who fell in and got injured, and they got seven million dollars for that. And then the fellow on the trampoline there at one of the schools, and they allowed five million on that: So they got scared. So they paid $275,000, our insurance people paid that. Now I think that's the only damage we've ever paid that's amounted to anything at all. \HANSEN\- And that was really kind of a lack of nerve on the insurance company. \JOHNSON\- Yes, I think it was. \HANSEN\- I think you were in the right on that. He shouldn't have... \JOHNSON\- I'm sure the man had no business there at all. I'm sure that we would have won, but they got scared when these other two suits came in. And then that was four years old, and, according to the law, if they would find that that was true, then you'd have to pay interest on all of that time too. So, they paid up, and, of course, that's affected the premiums. \HANSEN\- Sure, that's contributed to where you are now with that problem. \JOHNSON\- Yes, where we are now is just because of that and others that they have done. This thing is up in the air now. It's bad. \HANSEN\- Now, you talked about the association. I don't know how much we want to really go into this today because we can kind of finish this up next week I think. But whose idea was it to get all the different ditch companies and water companies together back in the 1950s to sort of cooperate on their...? \JOHNSON\- Well, I think heading that up, talking that--dugan Wilkinson--he was water commissioner. We met with the other board of directors about the problems, the attacks, the attempted attacks we had. We'd have a better voice if we did get together. And it just came up by conference between us. And at the time there was the threatening of legislation. And Dugan Wilkinson took the 56

57 ball. \HANSEN\- What kind of legislation? \JOHNSON\- Oh, at that time we had groups like your environmentalists. They were making some fusses, and they were trying to curtail our use of the water. They wanted to have so much flowing down the river all the time, and we were supposed to protect the fish and all of that. We ended courts of all kinds just because of that. But if we could all speak as one voice, and when we went to Denver as we went on decrees or whatever we wanted to do, it was something that interested everybody. Everybody that was in a ditch company of any kind, they had the same problems. Dugan Wilkinson was paid by the state, and had time, and he was a gracious enough guy that he did do a lot of leg work. We had others that would do some leg work and go to these different companies. We had a few, two or three meetings and getting together and by golly they formed a company and bylaws and all. And there were certain rules set up. We were assessed each year according to our decrees on the river. And then we are assessed throughout the summer for any extra costs. We were running up to twenty-five, some years many-thousand dollars that we got somebody down to Denver on legislation of most every kind. It's been very helpful. \HANSEN\- Does the association have a name? \JOHNSON\- Yes, the Poudre Water Users Association. \HANSEN\- Can you remember the year that it actually came into being? \JOHNSON\- I think Vivienne's got that. That dates back to in the fifties. It's considered the state over as very important. Ward Fischer has been our attorney. Bill Fischer and Bill Brown had taken quite a little time on it now. But we could get that date I think out of our files. I've been a member ever since they really started the organization. I've been at most all of the meetings. When we was in Arizona for a few winters, I'd miss out on some of the meetings in the wintertime. But they'd have their annual meeting, they'd put me back on the board. But that's very important. \HANSEN\- Where are the records of that association kept? \JOHNSON\- The records, we have a meeting in Eaton Colorado, the Larimer and Weld Irrigation Company's office. They meet here some. And the records are all kept there. Now our president is Bob Stevens living this side of Wellington. And all of your underground, you see, you have an underground water association using these pumps. In Larimer County, we have one in Weld County, they are all members. Greeley is a member. Ft. Collins is a member. And we're pretty well tied up. \HANSEN\- OK, I think that's probably a good stopping point for today. We've really got a lot. \END OF TAPE 8, SIDE A\ \START OF TAPE 9, SIDE A\ Today is October 24, I am at the Water Supply and Storage Company offices on East Mulberry talking with Harvey Johnson. \HANSEN\- OK, what I'd like to begin with today is some additional background on your family, the names of your brothers and sisters. I know your father was married twice, so you'd have some siblings who were offspring of the woman who was not your mother. So why don't we get that background taken care of. \JOHNSON\- Alright. Father had married--i can't remember her first name, but she was an Olsen--and the Olsen family had come to Illinois from Sweden. Father had two daughters, Helen and Bertha, were two little girls when father's wife died with pneumonia. At those times pneumonia was quite severe in the eastern countries. They didn't have penicillin to check it like we have now days. So he lost his wife. I remember Mother telling about it. Those little girls without a mother. And, of course, she was home at the Olsen home. She was a good grown-up girl there, but she just couldn't have them little girls without a mother, so she asked to take them in and take care of them. \HANSEN\- About how old was you mother at this point? \JOHNSON\- Mother at this point was sixteen years old. But she just had to take care of those little babies. And, of course, Father had to visit those babies anytime he had off. He was a farmer at that time. He became very attached to Mother the way she took care of those babies. And I believe Mother was 57

58 not more than seventeen when they were married. And I can remember, even when I was eighteen months old, I can remember losing Bertha. Bertha was a girl of sixteen years old when she had pneumonia. Helen was older. The older half-sister had married when she was eighteen years old. So Bertha passed away with pneumonia in Kansas when I was eighteen months old. Father was on the farm there. And to the family, Elmer, the older brother, was born; and following two years, Frank was born. Wesley, the third brother; Clarence,the fourth; Edwin is still living. Then I was the sixth son. \HANSEN\- You were number six then? \JOHNSON\- Six boys, in this family. And following me was my sister Mary. Then a sister Neddy. They are still living. Then a brother Ralph. These were born in Kansas. Father proceeded from Illinois and spent a year or two in Iowa after losing his first wife. All the Olsens and all of them had moved to New Sweden in Iowa. So the older brothers were born there. Then we were thirteen years in Kansas. Netty was born there, following Mary--Mary and Netty. Then Ralph was born in Kansas. When Ralph was twenty-two years old, he was driving a team of horses in the field right east of Ft. Collins, and was struck by lightning in And then Viola was born in Colorado. Viola is living in Yuma, Arizona, having raised a family. Ivan was the youngest brother. Ivan was injured, and complications set in and we lost Ivan in the neighborhood of'29. Ivan has two sons. His wife is still living. \HANSEN\- Now were Viola and Ivan born in Ft.Collins? \JOHNSON\- They were born on a farm right east of Ft. Collins. \HANSEN\- And how about Ralph? \JOHNSON\- Ralph was born in Kansas. \HANSEN\- OK, so just Viola and Ivan were born here? \JOHNSON\- Yes, the two of them were born in Colorado. Right, that's the family. \HANSEN\- OK. Let's talk about your first wife and how you came to meet her. What was her maiden name and first name and...? \JOHNSON\- Yes, well, this is a story of its own. Margaret Viola Capps was her name. She and her younger sister, Myra, came home from Sunday School with my two younger sisters to spend the day on the farm. And a good many days were spent on the farm. This must have been \HANSEN\- Now were they friends of Mary and Netty or...? \JOHNSON\- Yes, they were friends of Mary and Netty. And they spent a good many times riding horseback and playing over the farm and spending Sundays with my sisters. \HANSEN\- What did their parents do? Were they farmers also? \JOHNSON\- No, they lived in town, they were town people. \HANSEN\- OK, what did Mr. Capps do then? \JOHNSON\- He was mostly a chauffeur for different people. Years ago he had farmed in Oklahoma and then came to Missouri, on to Colorado. And they finally drifted to Pueblo, from Pueblo up here to Ft. Collins. And this Margaret, I became attached to her, corresponded with her until I married her. \HANSEN\- How old were you when your sisters brought these friends home for the first time? \JOHNSON\- I must have been around seventeen years old. \HANSEN\- And what was the age difference between Margaret and Myra? \JOHNSON\- Margaret had the same month as I had and the same age. We were almost twins. Myra was four years younger. Those corresponded pretty well with Mary and Netty. They all loved horses, and they loved outside recreation. I guess that was quite appealing to me because I was a farm boy. I guess you would say I became very attached to her because we saw things alike. She was the correspondence that I had after I went to Michigan, of course. I had kept company with several young ladies in my time, but nothing ever attracted me like Margaret did. Oddity of me, I guess. \HANSEN\- Well, some people just have that attraction for one another. OK, why don't you tell me about the children that you had with Margaret then? You were married what year again? \JOHNSON\- We were married in '17, in May in '17. \HANSEN\- What church were you married in? \JOHNSON\- We were married in the Christian Church Chapel. We were not members, but the 58

59 Christian pastor married us at the Christian Church in Ft. Collins. \HANSEN\- Do you remember the pastor's name? \JOHNSON\- Pastor Wise. My sister, Netty, and her husband, Avery, they both still living in California, went along with us. We didn't have a big wedding. We just had a ceremony and were married in the Christian Church in Ft. Collins. \HANSEN\- Where was that located? \JOHNSON\- That was directly east of the downtown Safeway. Now wait a minute, the Christian Church was in the 100 block east on Oak. \HANSEN\- So that building is not there anymore? \JOHNSON\- It was a stone building built from stones hauled out of Masonville up where Horsetooth now is, a beautiful building. \HANSEN\- Did they tear it down? \JOHNSON\- Yes, it was tom down. It is regrettable that they tore that old church down. \HANSEN\- I would think so. OK, you were married in May of Then when was your first child born? \JOHNSON\- It was just one year's time, Louise was born. \HANSEN\- Louise, that was your first child? \JOHNSON\- Louise was born, and Louise is here in town. Then in August of'20, Gordon was born. And in '23 Kenny was born. And Kenny, four years old, we lost him with meningitis. In 1929 John Lowell was born; John is Bud to us, John is No. I check pilot for United Air Lines after thirty years service. So he was on the high air most of his time since getting out of college. \HANSEN\- So he was your last child then? \JOHNSON\- He was the last child, yes. \HANSEN\- And Gordon went into the equipment business over in Greeley and then back to Ft. Collins. \JOHNSON\- Yes, equipment and manufacturing in Greeley. And he is director and active appraiser of loans with United Bank in Greeley. He has been with them for a good many years. Has two children. Bud has four children. And Louise has raised a beautiful family of four children. Louise has lost her husband, and she is now married to Bob Witzel. \HANSEN\- And what was her first husband's name? He was the fellow who helped you with the equipment business for a while, right? \JOHNSON\- Yes, Eugene Cathey. Leo Cathey is still here in town. But I have eleven grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. \HANSEN\- So you have four or five grandchildren from Louise? \JOHNSON\- Four from Louise \HANSEN\- Four from Louise. Two from Gordon. \JOHNSON\- Two from Gordon. \HANSEN\- And then what, four from Bud? \JOHNSON\- Four from Bud. So that's ten. Ten grandchildren. I was mixed up there because I've got six great-grandchildren. \HANSEN\- Let's go over that again then? Does Bud have four or five? \JOHNSON\- Bud has four. \HANSEN\- OK, is there any other information about your family background you would like to add? \JOHNSON\- Well, we lost the mother after forty-nine years, we lost Margaret. \HANSEN\- Let's see, when did Margaret die then, what year was that? \JOHNSON\- She died in April of'66. Forty nine years, and nobody knows what that is until you go through it. And Myra had lost her husband. That's Margaret's sister, Myra, came to help care for Margaret when she was ailing. And a year later I married her. \HANSEN\- Now what was Myra's first husbands name? \JOHNSON\- Myra's first husband's name was Tom Wade. \HANSEN\- And when did he die? \JOHNSON\- They had separated. I don't have any date on when they had separated, but she was a 59

60 widow when she came to take care of her sister. They were living in California. \HANSEN\- So then you married Myra in what 1967 or 68? \JOHNSON\- Yes, in December of'67. \HANSEN\- That's a wonderful coincidence that your dad married his wife's sister, and then you married your wife's sister. \JOHNSON\- Yes, well, it was an old back acquaintance of course. And she was part of the life that I had, and she is so much interested in the family. It was just so natural. \HANSEN\- Well, that's wonderful. \JOHNSON\- Yes, she has her family and I have my family, that was it. It's still part of my own life, it's part of one family, it's still a big family. Old fashioned people. \HANSEN\- Well, shall we go on to some of this other information here? I guess a lot of this you've gone ahead and corrected. Do you have your master list? \JOHNSON\- Yes, everything that I have I've corrected. I have a couple of articles here that I'm going to dig up dates on. But we'll do that pretty shortly. I have so much assignments that I have to divide my time a little bit. If it's correct for me to do that, I've gone through each page, and I've written in my correction. Then I checked off here that I had done that. So I know where I haven't finished and I'm going back to those. \HANSEN\- OK, I guess maybe then the best place to start would be where I first got a question, which is on page 82 of the transcript. Some of this material--! can go ahead and play the tape if you need to be reminded of what we're discussing here--it pertains to this agreement between three companies that are filing on the Poudre River water, and you indicated that perhaps this should not be included in the history, but since it is something... \JOHNSON\- Well, I have gone back on that itself and took out what I didn't think was proper for us to say anything about the river. And I pretty well changed that whole--you see there is so much the public wouldn't understand about the decrees, how you follow decrees. And the time of filing on it. To go into that would be a book of its own, so I have removed part of that and left the other part that I thought would be well understood by all people. \HANSEN\- OK, if it's something of legal significance to your company though, you might want to put it in and then restrict that part of the interview as far as public access is concerned. We can have two transcripts here. We can have one that's for public consumption, and one that's for really the company's own needs. \JOHNSON\- What did happen there would in no way affect the present decrees rights at all. It was in no way affecting that. It was merely affecting the fact that some people took little advantage of other people. And we shouldn't have that in publicity. And that's why I wanted to change that. But it didn't have any affect on what the conditions are today. We're here, we're going from here. \HANSEN\- Well, essentially, it was two companies sort of went and did something against Water Supply and Storage after the agreement had been that the three would act together? \JOHNSON\- A vocal agreement had been made. And two people seen fit to take the advantage. One person did themselves, and the second person said, "Well, if he's going to do it... "; he did it. And it's become a blessing thus far for the Water Supply and Storage because it had them to acquire better rights than what they were. \HANSEN\- So you're just a whole lot more careful, and you, in effect, had to go ahead and really make sure... \JOHNSON\- Yes, so that's what I didn't think we ought to... \HANSEN\- Well, as I said, it's OK to talk about this because we can remove or restrict anything later on. \JOHNSON\- Well, I think as I was home and gave it some long thinking, I thought I rechanged that to where it would be more presented to people, and no gain to what I was talking about there at all. But still stayed in my craw that advantage was taken of certain people. That's the reason that I had said what I did. Water Supply and Storage is in outstanding condition now because of having trans-mountain diversion water that's so outstanding. 60

61 \HANSEN\- Now did this occur when you were president, or was this way back? \JOHNSON\- On no, this is way back. This was way back in the turn of the century. \HANSEN\- Well, this would probably turn up in... \JOHNSON\- Attorney Kelley, in his later years, and I've referred it back in the corrections there, Attorney Kelley, was the attorney for the developing of the tunnel. \HANSEN\- Oh yes, well, I'm familiar with this. Is this William Kelley? \JOHNSON\- Yes, Bill Kelley. And in his later years he had conveyed to me this condition that went about. So I was just going on his word, and he was a true man. \HANSEN\- Yes, I spoke with him a little bit, I guess about six months before he died. I interviewed him in a nursing home over in Greeley. He was a very interesting man. \JOHNSON\- Great guy. Have some pages that's twelve inches long, handwritten of his, [letters] put away somewhere, two of them, while he was in the rest home. I treasure them very much. \HANSEN\- I've got [the transcripts of] a whole oral history project done with him that you might want to look at some time if you're curious. \JOHNSON\- He was a great water man. And he intensely studied. \HANSEN\- Well, he was the attorney for the Big Thompson project, so he was really in on that from the very beginning. \JOHNSON\- But he had a little bit of a pick at me in the early years because our company. In my time we were the company that took over the tunnel and the Red Feather Lakes and all that, and he thought I should not have done that. But then he still was one of my best friends and thought more of me later on than he did then. So I enjoyed the man much. \HANSEN\- I'll bring that by if I can remember it. I think I've got it in my office, which is a very extensive series of interviews, much as what we're doing. There was a man who did that, and then he invited me over--lee Norris was the man's name--he was an attorney. He did this series of interviews with Mr. Kelley and then invited me over one day because of my interest in Charles Lory. It was an interesting day. \JOHNSON\- He stopped in here and conversed with me quite a little bit when he was getting around. But his mark is all over the irrigating system throughout the state of Colorado. \HANSEN\- Oh, it sure is, he was an important man. \JOHNSON\- Very important, very common, very fine fellow. \HANSEN\- Well, let's see on page 86 and 87 I guess is the next point that really needs clarification. We were talking about the water flow. This would be No. 20 on the list. You were talking about an exchange agreement with Larimer and Weld. \JOHNSON\- Yes, I think I've written that out very good on the margin. \HANSEN\- OK, fine. No. 23, have you taken care of that? \JOHNSON\- No, I haven't. That's one that I was talking to Vivian about this morning. Portner and Sherman--I am just going to have to go check into that. That's one we were going to this morning because... Portner and Sherman, of course. Portner as a young fellow had built a reservoir south of town, and I think we've covered that end. \HANSEN\- Right, this is Roy Portner. \JOHNSON\- Yes, Roy Portner. They formed a company, and, seemingly, Sherman at one time was in the hardware business. Roy and him had an office together. And they had seen the workings of Chambers Lake. When I came on, our board members--this probably you won't want to go in as the records, I don't care at all--but our board members were pretty disgusted whenever you said Partner-Sherman. As Chambers Lake acquired some section and a half--underneath Chambers Lake as it is now--when they expanded and got ready to build the lake back up, the dike there is on private ground. \HANSEN\- Excuse me just a second Mr. Johnson, I want to turn the tape. \END OF TAPE 9, SIDE A\ \START OF TAPE 9, SIDE B\ \HANSEN\- OK. \JOHNSON\- Water Supply and Storage had acquired this ground to build the dike on, to get the dirt. 61

62 There were no objections from the Forest Service to do all that work. So there were some homesteads there that they had purchased. Well, of course, the whole lake is not under the Forest Service. That part is, but the bulk of the western part of the reservoir is inside of the Forest Service. When the Water Supply and Storage were formed, and they got into a position to rebuild Chambers Lake, they built it a good distance east of the old lake. They weren't too particular in those days--just at their property line. It was a sizable job to build Chambers Lake with horses; consisted of months and months of hard work with horses and shovels. And they built some good cabins. They built about five good cabins. They built a horse barn. They built an office out of logs. And they finished building Chambers Lake. \HANSEN\- Now when would this be? \JOHNSON\- This was in the fall of 1904 after the flood of 1904 when they started. They were some seven or eight years building. \HANSEN\- So they, in effect, just moved the lake to a completely different location? \JOHNSON\- They moved the dam to a different location, but it covered so much more ground, and so much higher. The old dam was only some logs across, and the water spilled over. They just held so much back. And these scars and some old logs are still up there where they dug into the ground; they're still up there. You can see them when the lake is down. That's the one that went out in 1901 I believe it was. The scars are still there, and I've seen them a good many times. But this new Chambers Lake dam was in another territory, and a long, big dam. It's fifty foot high. \HANSEN\- Let's take a look at this map that I have of Chambers Lake. [Hansen points to location]. And this, I imagine, is the new one. Where would the old one have been located? \JOHNSON\- The old one was back, see this is the outlet here. The old one was back two-hundred and fifty feet west of that. They just put a log in there. And these creeks come in--would be just below where these creeks come into Chambers as now in existence there. \HANSEN\- OK, so Joe Wright Creek and... \JOHNSON\- Yes, Trap Creek wasn't in, Joe Wright Creek was into that. Trap Creek was below that. But it was between where the Joe Wright Creek comes in and where Trap Creek comes in, where the old dam was. But they built these cabins down in here. \HANSEN\- What direction would that be...? \JOHNSON\- It would be to the south and the east. The outlet is here right to the east and to the southeast of the cabins. And then they built an office and a headgate house on that side. The log cabins are still there. Anyway, what I was coming up to was that Portner and Sherman had found out that some of those cabins that Water Supply and Storage had built were off of their property. So Portner and Sherman through maneuvering, acquired that property and acquired the cabins Chambers Lake had built. \HANSEN\- So they found out it was off Water Supply and Storage Company property while Water Supply and Storage Company had constructed the buildings assuming that they owned that land. \JOHNSON\- They did. They weren't very careful. So they acquired that. They seen the building of that, so they were speculative. And they had east of there, some miles, another draw where they could build a little dam and build Barns Meadow. And as years went on they built Peterson Lake--Portner and Sherman built Peterson Lake. They called themselves the Chambers Lake Company. They built Hour Glass, they built Comanche. Those four lakes as they became depressed and all, they sold to the City of Greeley. Greeley owns them now. But this has been their strict business, developing these small lakes... They formed the Water Company (I'll think of the water company). They rented this water out as they developed these little lakes. They never acted as a company to deliver to the farmers like Chambers Lake did. \HANSEN\- Would that be the Larimer-Poudre? \JOHNSON\- Mountain and Plains. The Larimer-Poudre is another company out of Greeley. But Mountain and Plains is what they called their... yes, you'll find Mountain and Plains in there. And that's the company they built. Now that's what they consisted of. They own several little spots around there now. They've been dividing it up. They own several little spots of Forest Service that they've acquired 62

63 from homesteaders and the like up there. That was their holdings. They sold this to Greeley for a hundred and eighty thousand dollars, and took bonds on Greeley on them. Sherman told me this before he passed away because I had quite a little correspondence with them. And I got along fine with them. But this is their mountain history. \HANSEN\- So how did their ownership of these cabins affect your operations then? \JOHNSON\- It in no way affects the operations, but here they are with those cabins next to us and the fishermen and then they are leasing them out, so you can see how our board members were very bitter. \HANSEN\- It had in effect been stolen away at a time when the company... \JOHNSON\- Coming to them and saying "Here, let's do some dealing... " They had a habit of doing those things. And I'm not a bit ashamed to say it because this is not the type of business that our company was endeavoring to do. They were building storage for farmers down here, and they were delivering water to them. They were the company. They borrowed money as a company. They did it as a company. They had something behind them. These other people were what we called scalpers. \HANSEN\- Well, it sounds like it. \JOHNSON\- Well, absolutely, we called them that, scalpers, but good people. That's their business. \HANSEN\- They were nice guys but they were... \JOHNSON\- Look out in dealing with them. \HANSEN\- OK, this point 24 on this list, have you addressed that about Ed Baker? \JOHNSON\- No, I haven't fully corrected this. Now here is what I have been arriving at. In '82 there was a rough survey and a filing. '82 wasn't a complete survey. A complete survey--and Ed Baker, when he was seventeen years old--told me about this; he was president, he told it to me--that he carried the stick for the surveyor. \HANSEN\- OK, now Ed Baker, though, he was born in \JOHNSON\- Yes, but what I say, [is] the final survey, when he's talking about that, he had nothing to do with this That was a rough survey for filing. But the final survey was later than the turn of the century because they were all these years finishing the survey and filing. But they had their points and all; then they could start digging. But as time went on, the final survey, they finally wound up to get the grade and everything--and I have read the grades here. The first six miles has got a flow of six foot to the mile. The upper seven and some miles has got a flow of seven feet ofthe total amount of that. It's all in the survey. That's the final survey, and that's the final ditch that followed that. When they made the final completing of the ditch, they followed that survey that was made. It seems to me like it was in 1904 when the final survey. Now Ed Baker was on this board [in 1936.] Now how we can correct that? \HANSEN\- Yes, well, that's fine, that's all we really needed to clarify. Did he tell you who made that first rough survey? \JOHNSON\- Ed had told me, but it was too far ahead of me to have any connection of anybody that I had any knowledge of. So I would not know. But Ed did tell me because the year that Ed was president and following that, Ed used to come into my office right along until he passed away. We were very good friends. He was very much interested in the community. He's got a son here now. \HANSEN\- That's who I called. I called Dick. He's a next door neighbor of mine. \JOHNSON\- Oh is he? Quite a guy. \HANSEN\- Oh, he's great. \JOHNSON\- He's got a lot of history. And, yes, his dad was president of this company in And I really forced him on as president because he was a fellow you could depend upon. And I enjoyed Ed. But we had three or four [board members] in Weld County. Bob Weikert was the head of it. Wanted him off because Weld County wanted to control this system. There has been some angling here all the years way back against the... Weld County would like to take this down there, but the constitution of it is that it would stay hete in Larimer County. Here is the court house here [is] where all the decrees are at headquarters. So we've kept it here. But this was the fight at that time. So they outvoted Ed Baker in '37. \HANSEN\- Now, specifically, what water was being disputed here? Was this the Grand River Ditch or 63

64 the whole system, or what? \JOHNSON\- No, it was the control of the Water Supply and Storage. \HANSEN\- Oh, the company itself? \JOHNSON\- The company itself had a division in it. \HANSEN\- So in effect they wanted to make all of the filings recorded in Weld rather than Larimer County? \JOHNSON\- Yes, they wanted it all down there. They could control everything there. But as I had told them different times, your water commissioner is up here, and your headgate is up here, and the courthouse is up here, which all the filings are in. It would be an awful mistake to have it away from that because before I came on, the state engineer and the water commissioner had bore down on me to get in contact with those water people. They were out of contact with them. They weren't getting their proper amounts of water when they were due. But this fight was still going on after I came in here. And they put Ed Baker off of the board, one of the best men we had because they wanted to take the control down there. But we finally blocked it because of the headquarters should be here by the courthouse, by the headgates, by the commissioners, water commissioners and all. It belonged here. So we have blocked it so far. \HANSEN\- Where do most of the stockholders have their farms? \JOHNSON\- Most of the stockholders are in Weld County because you only go four miles east of here until you get to Weld County. And the good farms are down there. And seventy-five percent of the water is used down there. But that's Fort Collins trade territory. So we've gotten along fine after we finally had to have a showdown with certain people. \HANSEN\- Well, when was this really resolved once and for all would you say? \JOHNSON\- Well, it wasn't completely resolved until after Weikert had become authorized pretty bad. He was president. Until he became incapacitated to get up here and all. When he dropped out of it, we began to settle down pretty good because we got Ralph McMurray appointed president up here. \HANSEN\- Ralph McMurray? \JOHNSON\- Yes, McMurray was voted president up here. \HANSEN\- When would that be? \JOHNSON\- Oh, let's see, that would have to be in about '40 I guess, And, of course, I had been taking quite a little active part and Ralph had no desire to tie himself down. And, of course, I was his flunky. I had to do all the dirty work and everything. We had full control up here then. And since that we've had no hitches although we had a fellow two years ago; Fisher was telling me about having an annual meeting here, and one of the old farmers said, "You got no business having an office on an expensive land like this, sell that and come down and rent a cheap office down there." So, you know, you've still got a little of that in the background. But that's something you expect. Ward Fisher was telling me they were drilling on him, have him here at his annual meeting, see. Didn't say that to me, but said it to him. So this is in the background. \HANSEN\- OK. That's important information. Let's see, I guess the most important additional thing is on No. 27 with regard to the use of the Laramie Tunnel water. It's on page 109 of the manuscript. I guess it's mainly exactly how this exchange took place. I had some trouble because I'm not really familiar with all of the individual ditches and reservoirs, etc. \JOHNSON\- Yes, it's complicated. Let's see, what is this. In the later one? \HANSEN\- Yes, it would be in the later one. \JOHNSON\- Let's see just what it says. \HANSEN\- It's that last paragraph where they brought some of the Laramie Tunnel, I presume, water on the Highline Ditch out to the Rattlesnake Tunnel. \JOHNSON\- Oh yes, we rented water. Let's see... \HANSEN\- This was about 1928, right, before you were on the board? \JOHNSON\- I think what I say there [involves] Water Supply and Storage Company exchange of water with Larimer and Weld Irrigation Company Water Supply has some four reservoirs that lie below the gravity of the Larimer County canals, while Larimer and Weld Counties have reservoirs above Water 64

65 Supply canal. Those waters have a poor and hard way of delivering those waters to their distributing canal. But those waters can be delivered to Water Supply distributing system easily, so those waters are exchanged as needed--does that make sense to you? \HANSEN\- OK, when you're saying to Water Supply and Storage, do you mean the... \JOHNSON\- Pierce Lateral, it was Water Supply and Storage. \HANSEN\- OK. \JOHNSON\- To their system. \HANSEN\- OK, to the Water Supply and Storage system. \JOHNSON\- Yes, took it to the system. And that way they could take care of their system by giving it to Pierce would release other water. Would that be...? \HANSEN\- Yes, I think that clarifies it, those written corrections that you have there. \JOHNSON\ That was the whole thought back of that, and not being running around with it every day. Our language is not quite as simple probably as it should be, but when we talk about exchanging water or running it back and forth in different places, why, it's just a policy with us. \HANSEN\- You see, I know you understand it, and I know most of the people associated with your company now understand it, but.... \JOHNSON\- You see the system is such that ifwe are right short of water, North Poudre has had some water in No.6 Reservoir that they couldn't get into their system. But it's above our system. So in the summertime why they'd say they had some extra water, maybe we'd borrow that water. It's down below their headgates. So we could run that down to certain people below and take their water up above by moving them back and forth into our system. Deliver it to some other lateral. So this is just such a common thing we're doing all the time that we don't think anything about explaining, we imagine everybody should know what we're talking about. \HANSEN\- What we want is for somebody to pick this up in twenty years... \JOHNSON\- Yes, that's right. They wouldn't understand, they haven't been into it. Well, that's the whole story. \HANSEN\- OK, well, I think that clarifies that point. And then on page ll3 where you're talking about the various parties involved in the Jackson Ditch Agreement. I had a little bit of confusion there about.... \JOHNSON\- Yes, I think I tried to explain that. \HANSEN\- That's another one you've provided written comments on? \JOHNSON\- Yes, I did. \HANSEN\- Well, let's not go over those if you've already done this. Once you're all finished I'll read through it and see if I understand what you've said. Now the cribbing construction... Wait a minute, let's go to 122. You mention some kind of pipe, and I missed a word on the tape with that. Did you catch that? \JOHNSON\- Yes, I did catch that. It's corrugated steel pipe. I've got it in here. \HANSEN\- And then on page 131 talking about the Long Draw Reservoir and how that was such a frustrating experience for you at first because of the inadequacies of that facility after it was built. It really didn't do a whole lot. But you did have the rebuilding of it in Did you go on to explain how that rebuilding improved it or what it provided? \JOHNSON\- Well, we completely rebuilt all of the old dike and all. And that caused air locks because of the feeder pipe going up and down. And we completely removed that and put all new headgates. \HANSEN\- With those improvements now, is Long Draw pretty useful to the system? \JOHNSON\- Very useful, one of the finest things we have. It's our outstanding reservoir of the whole thing. It's higher up, distributed to everybody, everything. We can do anything with its water. It's the finest thing that ever happened to the Water Supply and Storage. \HANSEN\- That's great. And it was of virtually no use before you... \JOHNSON\- The Long Draw was no use. Only used it just a few times because you put water in, you could scarcely get it out. And I think I explained here about the airlock. So now it's eleven thousand acre feet. Of course ten thousand four hundred is available water because we're leaving six hundred feet in there for the game and fish. 65

66 Another quite interesting phase, I don't know that we've covered in there. When we seen fit that we had to get some more water and we had a filing on that amount of water over there in the Colorado River, and it was there. We were unable to use it because we didn't have storage for it at the times that snow melted. Finally after four years of talking to the board that I should get something done, they said, "Well, let's go do it." So we hired Wrights Engineering out of Denver to do the engineering, and they came up with a project to build the reservoir on top of the Joe Wright--a completely new reservoir on top of the old Long Draw. And it was a million and three-hundred and fifty thousand dollar project. And I checked around [and], the best bonding we could get to borrow that was seven to ten percent. Seven percent [people] wasn't too reliable people. And that, over a period of years, you'd pay for it twice. Through some of my connections, I don't remember now, one man that I knew out of Denver, the Bureau of Reclamation, had said that there is a new bill put through in Washington whereby they appropriated a good amount of money to a water facility bill to encourage development ofwater for agricultural [use.] And after checking into it, contacting our legislators, senators and congressmen who we had here--[allott] and the man on the western slope. When I contacted them, they said... \HANSEN\- That's Wayne Aspinall? \JOHNSON\- Aspinall, right. They said, "Let's get some of that money in Colorado." And I checked into it, and it was interest free. So with the help of our congressmen and senators, we got a loan of a million and three hundred thousand dollars for fifty years, interest free. \HANSEN\- So when did you obtain this money? About what year? \JOHNSON\- About '71. \HANSEN\- And this enabled you to go ahead and build Long Draw? \JOHNSON\- Do that. And our engineer, Ken Wright, had the efficiency and ability to contact the wild life, and the wild life said if we would leave six-hundred feet in the bottom of that to keep the fish alive all the time, they figured out there would be enough recreation there that they gave us a grant of three-hundred and sixty thousand dollars. So we built the Long Draw Reservoir as it now is. One of the finest reservoirs in the state of Colorado, bar none, with the understanding, of course, we would have to have the core of engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation, to supervise the construction of the dam, which was the very finest thing that could happen because it's properly constructed. We built the reservoir and built a sixty camp site there for the fishermen and stayed within our expenditures. The only debt we have is an indebtedness without any interest, and we're making our payments. \HANSEN\- So that really was a wonderful situation for you. \JOHNSON\- What a wonderful thing that happened. And Joe Wright was built by the city, and I was on the committee that built that. It has half the capacity and cost ten million dollars. We had a fine constructor. We had a fine engineer; Ken Wright has done a fine job of engineering, and we've got a monument to efficiency in Long Draw Reservoir. It was done at the right time. \END OF TAPE9, SIDE B\ \START OF TAPE 10, SIDE A\ \JOHNSON\- That alone increased our amount of available water by something like ten thousand acre feet a year. \HANSEN\- That much of an increase? \JOHNSON\- Yes. \HANSEN\- That's substantial. As a city boy, when you started talking about that cribbing construction, I wasn't quite able to follow the process. I am a city boy. And the description that you have of the cribbing construction on page 132, I had a little bit of trouble in following exactly what that looks like, what was above there? You mentioned cutting four foot logs. \JOHNSON\- Yes, I think I pretty well covered that in here, but let's get that what we call cribbing. They build a box affair. They took logs four feet one way, four feet across, four feet down, four feet under the bottom and four feet up. Put those four feet together... \HANSEN\- Can you draw me a picture? \JOHNSON\- There would be a four foot log here, four foot log here, they would be hewed together here, four foot log here, four foot log on all sides, hewed together in each comer, one log after another 66

67 one, go on down, you got about an eight inch log, you go several hundred feet like that one box of logs added to each other. \HANSEN\- So these are all put in the bottom of the ditch? \JOHNSON\- No, these let water flow through the center of it. This is a box. Water would flow through the center. \HANSEN\- There would be a hole in one of the logs, or is that...? \JOHNSON\- This is just a framework of logs this way, laying in the ditch like this, water came through here, and if you had enough of these to go all the way. It's a siphon or making a pipe out of wood. It's just a pipe four foot square. They take a lot of water until they rot and gaps in between, water would flow in between. But that's the best they had at that time. They could take an ax and go out in the timber and cut those. They could do those things. They didn't have corrugated metal then. \HANSEN\- Right, so it was in effect just a square wooden box through which the water would flow and leak. \JOHNSON\- Can you imagine the work that went into that? \HANSEN\- Oh, the labor involved, without power equipment either. \JOHNSON\- All ax, or crosscut saw. One man on each end pulling it back and forth. I've worked a good many of them. This log would go up here, and they would cut it on an angle, and cut this on an angle, and the two of them would go together. And made their own box. Yes, box, is the best description. \HANSEN\- OK, well I understand then. Just a couple of other things toward the end here. You talked about that badger piece of equipment. Now, when you mentioned treads, was that like a tank, like tank treads or...? \JOHNSON\- No, it's on a track, run on tracks. \HANSEN\- Would it be like a tank? \JOHNSON\- Yes, like the track on a tank, or caterpillar. \HANSEN\- OK, that does it for me. And then on page 135 we're talking about this dispute involving the state of Wyoming and Colorado over Laramie River water, and there is a suit discussed. And I wasn't quite certain as to \\(hether this was a suit instituted by the Colorado meadow land users, or whether it was people in the state of Wyoming who were initiating the litigation. \JOHNSON\- It was Wyoming that brought the suit. Because, you see, they weren't paying any attention to the farmers and ranchers, but they appealed to their state because not only the state of Colorado meadows, the state of Wyoming had a lot of meadows there too. And they got together and appealed to their state, and their state brought the action against the state of Colorado. \HANSEN\- OK, so there were no Colorado people objecting to loosing some of this water? \JOHNSON\- Oh, they would object, but we weren't paying any attention. They joined hands with the Wyoming people, then got the state of Wyoming to come against us. \HANSEN\- Well, then did those Colorado people wind up with anything if they were siding with Wyoming? \JOHNSON\- Yes, well, what happened there was, yes, Wyoming and them, they promised to protect the meadowland users. They were in that same class. They were cattlemen. And they were all one unit as far as they were concerned. They were protecting the cattlemen in Colorado and the cattlemen in Wyoming. They are the ones they were protecting. They were the ranchers, they were the fellows who grew the hay for cattle, wanted the water. And these were the cattle men. And they had a strong association. They stick together in different states. You had a cattlemen's association in Colorado--I used to belong to them--and a cattlemen's association in Wyoming. But they were all one. They went to legislation together as one. \HANSEN\- So in effect, Wyoming filed the suit, but they were going to take care of these Colorado meadowlands, water users, once the judgement had been rendered? \JOHNSON\- They were really cattlemen is what they were. They had power because they had a strong association. \HANSEN\- OK. And then the other thing that I needed clarified was on page 137, and it pertained to 67

68 that Chambers spillway that they made you build and how this was going to really create a flood situation. \JOHNSON\- Well, let's see, I put that down here... \HANSEN\- Did you clarify that in writing too? \JOHNSON\- Yes I did. What number was that? \HANSEN\- Page \JOHNSON\- The spillway, I put in here the spillway, the purpose is the water should be more than the lake would hold. Water above that is spilled over a cement wall and returned to the river. \HANSEN\- Well, now, is that spillway really going to do any good? I guess that was the point. \JOHNSON\- Yes, well, the spillway would keep the reservoir from breaking. But if that water was there, of course, it would all come down here, that amount that they talked about. But the spillway is there. And the reservoir would take so much. But instead of that going over the top of the reservoir bank, it would go out this spillway. This is a lower spillway made of cement that can't wash, see. It would go out there rather than going over the top and save the reservoir. But it wouldn't save the flood, it would save the reservoir. \HANSEN\- OK, it would spill out into the spillway and it would still come down and wash out Ft. Collins if that amount of water was possible. \JOHNSON\- Yes, but you would still have the dam. \HANSEN\- OK, I understand. \JOHNSON\- It's a safety feature. \HANSEN\- Oh, it's a great safety feature. \JOHNSON\- It cost us a hundred thousand dollars, but it's there. Yes, it's a safety feature. \HANSEN\- One thing that got lost, and we'll just finish up, and I think most of the other points you probably covered in your own corrections, but something that did get left out because of a faulty tape was that description of you as a boy when your family moved to the Jack Rigdon farm. And, unfortunately, that first five minutes of the tape just got lost, and that's where you talked about working with your father and using a two-row cultivator and raising sugar beets, and then that wonderful anecdote about you hauling water and using the money to buy a little wagon. Could we start where your family moves to the Rigdon farm, and then tell me a little bit about what you raised, what the water situation was like, and then that anecdote? \JOHNSON\- Yes, well, we moved to the Rigdon farm. Of course this irrigation was new as all, but that home there had a good sweet water well for drinking. But we irrigated from water rights, decrees for out of the river. My anecdote of that at that time was that as a snoopy boy--they were constructing, the railroad ran five or six hundred feet from the house--the Colorado and Southern Railroad. They were installing a beet dump, or a place where they received the beets and dumped them into cars. And it was an upright construction. And they were working several men in that that first summer. And, of course, a snoopy boy was over there seeing what they were doing. And the big foreman said, "Hey kid, why don't you get us some drinking water. We've got a bunch of men here, and we don't have any drinking water. Can you get us some?" So I hightailed it home and told Mother, and she got two one-gallon buckets; of course, they were clean buckets. We used to get syrup in those buckets. We always had some of them around. And she punched some holes in the lids, I can remembers that so well, so that the fresh air would get in. And I took one in each hand and went across the field, and the boys had drinking water. They would drink out of the buckets; I had a tin cup. And the old foreman said, "Hey kid, can you just keep us in water all the time we're working here, and I'll give you seventy-five cents a day." So I carried water to them. The first week there I got a paycheck. And I was the envy of all of my brothers and sisters. But I bought a little red wagon so I wouldn't have to carry those gallon buckets from then on, so I hauled them in that little red wagon. \HANSEN\- How long of a time...? \JOHNSON\- Probably three week's of work. \HANSEN\- That's pretty good, seventy-five cents a day. 68

69 \JOHNSON\- Yes, but Mother seen that I didn't waste one dollar. She did allow me to get the wagon, but I also had to buy a bunch of clothes. And then we were taught to share in our care of the house and groceries too. If we had money to spare we'd take care of everything. \HANSEN\- Tell me a little bit about how you worked that Rigdon farm then. You mentioned earlier that you had... \JOHNSON\- Yes, at that time the sugar beets were--early stages of the sugar beets. They run the factory a little bit the year before, but they didn't have very big acreage of beets. At that time, they were getting a full acreage of beets. Dad had twenty-five acres of sugar beets. And then at that time alfalfa was a great crop, and they raised oats and hay. All the work on the farm was done with horses, of course, all the power we had was horses. And alfalfa and oats were the food that the working horses had. And everybody milked a few cows, and they needed some oats for the cows and alfalfa. So we raised alfalfa, and some winter wheat was growing on the actual farms. They used to say maybe twenty-five percent of that would be wheat, twenty-five percent alfalfa, and the others could be various other crops. Growed a little com. Com was not much of a crop at that time here because we didn't have the hybrids. It was a small ear of com. And we didn't have the early developing corns we have today. So the acreage of com wasn't too much. Everybody had some hogs, and they raised com for the hogs of course and barley. Barley was just coming into usage. The experiment station at college up here had come up with a\likened\barley. Likened barley was a very well developing barley that fitted the western states very well. It was a good developing barley. And it was a hard grain. It had to be ground. Each and every farmer might have a grinder that they would do some grinding of their own for the hogs and the like. But that was the crops pretty much grown at that time. \HANSEN\- And you said you were kind of short of water there for irrigating, though, right? \JOHNSON\- Yes, the water that they had was water that come down the river, and the river would have plenty of water during the snow melting time. And as a rule, the last part of June the snow melt in the mountains would begin to taper down pretty low, so from the last part of June on through the rest of the season, we were very limited in water because it was not available. There was no storage for the farms there at that time. Storage came later, but there has never been too much storage for any of the water on the south side of the river here until Horsetooth came in. I don't know but only two or three small lakes on the south side. The storage has been on the north side because the good agricultural ground is more or less north and east of Ft. Collins. Always has been. And they never had started any storage to amount to anything on the south side until Fossil Creek was started in later years. But it was far enough down that you didn't get much benefit out of Fossil Creek. And Larimer County, most of that water went down to the Greeley, Weld County, down to Greeley. \HANSEN\- Now this Fossil Creek, was that on this Rigdon property at all? \JOHNSON\- No, it had nothing to do with that. Rigdon property had no water rights other than out of the river itself. \HANSEN\- You mentioned that even though you were a little fellow at this time, you were working with your dad and helping cultivate this land, right? \JOHNSON\- Yes, at that time, [they were] just starting in the sugar beets, and they had some little cultivators that they used for vegetation and used for com. They had used cultivators for com, so they had changed those cultivators, and they were a shaft with two wheels, more like a cart. And then the cultivator was fastened underneath those. And they were diverted over to a two-row cultivator for two rows of beets. And there was no riding capacity in them, but a man would have to follow with handles on the back, and he would guide that down the row of beets, so that they didn't cut out any beets, but cut the weeds out. And they had to have a horse to pull that. This horse to pull that was to get between the two rows of beets and not step on the beets. I was at the age that I was put on top of that horse day after day after day to ride that horse down between those two rows of beets. And Dad walked along behind guiding that cultivator. And, of course, in the middle of the afternoon, I would get sleepy, and the horse would wonder a little bit. And Dad had an arrangement that a line coming from the horse up there, coming back down to where he could get ahold of it and slap me on the legs to wake me up. 69