Vallecito through the years
The Ute homeland, the New Deal dam that drowned the old ranches, and the lake people keep coming back to.
Every photo is of Vallecito or its immediate surroundings, freely licensed and credited · Photo credits
The Ute homeland: the “little valley”
Long before it was a reservoir, this was Nuche country: the homeland of the Weeminuche band of the Ute people, whose name the Weminuche Wilderness still carries. The Brunot Agreement of 1873 took the San Juans; today the Southern Ute Tribe holds a one-sixth interest in the Pine River Project that built Vallecito.
These portraits are of Ute and Southern Ute people of the era, not photographed at the lake.
Learn the living side of this story on Respect Vallecito — Ute water rights, the Good Neighbor ethic, and how to tread lightly on a place that's been home for millennia.
The dam & the New Deal
The lake is younger than the highway to it. In 1937 the New Deal authorized a Bureau of Reclamation dam on the Pine River; ground broke on May 14, 1938, and crews — including Depression-era labor — moved 3.7 million cubic yards of earth to raise a 162-foot dam, finishing in March 1941.
The reservoir drowned homesteads, hayfields and the old wagon road to store irrigation water for the Pine River Project; the late-summer drop you see today is that 1941 promise being kept. How the lake fills and falls
Old Vallecito & early families
After the Homestead Act, settlers drifted up the Pine River valley and built ranches where the creeks came together — the same bottomland that's now under the lake. Two of them are still on the map: John T. Graham and Thomas Wilson each have a creek named for the homestead they worked on the east side of today's reservoir. Cattle, hay, and hard winters; a one-room school; a chapel that began as gospel singing around a piano at Lost Creek Lodge in 1951.
The lake today: out on the water & the trail
Vallecito is a lake people use: pontoons and fishing boats off the marina, kayaks and paddleboards in the early calm, six Forest Service campgrounds in the pines, and trailheads at the north end that walk you straight into the Weminuche Wilderness — Colorado's largest, nearly half a million acres. What swims here: the fishing guide.
Plan it: things to do, the fishing guide, trails, and the lake map. Heading up? Check live conditions first.
Wild & scenic: the country around the lake
Step away from the water and the wild takes over fast. Elk and mule deer move through the aspen; black bears work the oak brush in fall (lock up the cooler); moose have returned to the willow bottoms; bald eagles winter over the lake and ospreys dive it all summer. The Weminuche even holds reintroduced lynx and Rocky Mountain bighorn.
More on the animals and how to share the country with them: the wildlife guide (bear-smart, moose distance, rattlesnakes lower down) and Respect Vallecito.
Wildflowers: the high-country bloom
From snowmelt through August the meadows above Vallecito put on one of Colorado's great wildflower shows. Lower down, the Colorado blue columbine — the state flower — nods in shady aspen glades alongside scarlet Indian paintbrush and purple lupine. Climb into the Weminuche's wet basins and you'll find mountain bluebells, elephant heads, marsh marigold, and, on the highest tundra, the sunflower-faced old-man-of-the-mountain. Peak bloom is usually mid-July, a couple of weeks later the higher you go.
Photos we need
Got an old Vallecito photo, a wildflower shot, or a lead on the 1938–41 dam-construction album at Fort Lewis College? Send it in; we credit every photographer by name.