Senior Water Rights — Four Mile Ditch, Priorities to 1890

Water here is held by the Hidden Valley Ranch association rather than by any individual parcel, through 2.08 shares of the Four Mile Ditch Association. Colorado allocates water by prior appropriation — first in time, first in right — and the Four Mile Ditch priorities run back to 1890, which places them among the senior rights on the drainage. In a dry year, senior rights are the ones that still deliver while junior rights get curtailed.

How Colorado Water Law Actually Works

Colorado does not follow riparian law. Owning land along a stream does not entitle you to its water. Instead the state uses prior appropriation, usually summarised as first in time, first in right. Whoever first put water to beneficial use holds the earliest priority date, and in a shortage the State Engineer curtails junior rights — the newer ones — so that senior rights can be filled in full.

The practical consequence is stark. In a drought year, two neighbouring ranches with identical acreage can have completely different outcomes: the one with an 1890s priority irrigates, and the one with a 1970s priority gets a call from the division engineer telling it to shut the headgate. The land looks the same in a photograph. It is not the same asset.

The Four Mile Ditch

Water is diverted from Four Mile Creek, roughly two miles inside the San Juan National Forest and carried through the Four Mile Ditch. The ditch association holds four adjudicated priorities:

An 1890 priority is genuinely senior on this drainage — the kind of date that keeps delivering in the years when nothing junior does. Hidden Valley Ranch holds 2.08 shares of that association, equating to 3.885 CFS.

The Storage Right

Separately, the ranch holds a storage right of 985 acre-feet, adjudicated in 1994–95. Once the water is stored in the lake it belongs to Hidden Valley Ranch outright — it does not have to be released downstream.

That is the number worth sitting with. Projected domestic demand across the whole ranch at full build-out is approximately 23 acre-feet a year — so the volume the ranch can hold in the lake is more than forty times what all thirty-five homes are expected to use in a year. In practice, very little of the stored water gets drawn down at all.

The ranch also holds what is recorded as a well right. In practice it is not a well: it is the right to draw water out of the lake through a pipeline.

Why This Cannot Simply Be Acquired Later

Most Colorado basins — including the San Juan — are effectively fully appropriated. There is no meaningful new water to claim. Changing an existing right to a new use or location requires a water court proceeding, takes years, costs real money, and is frequently opposed by other users. Seniority that is already decreed and already attached to an established ditch is something ownership gives you access to, and nothing else does.

It is why the water column tends to be the first line a sophisticated buyer looks at, and why it has a page of its own here.

The Ponds

Beyond the lake, there are two irrigation ponds within the ranch. This property is connected to one of them, so the landscaping is irrigated with pond water rather than drinking water — a small detail that matters a great deal across a dry mountain summer.

Getting the Documentation

The Hidden Valley Ranch association holds all water right and legal documentation. It is not held by the listing office, and a buyer requests it through the association.

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This page explains Colorado water law in general terms so that a buyer can ask better questions, and summarises figures provided by the association. It is not legal advice, and nothing here substitutes for review of the decrees and the state records by a Colorado water attorney.