As trappers, miners, and settlers moved west into an arid region, they found that most land required irrigation and that eastern riparian rules limiting stream use to adjoining landowners were impractical. Early miners developed a custom that protected the first person to use stream water for a placer claim against later users, and this practice expanded beyond mining and became law as territories and states were organized. Under the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation, water is allocated according to beneficial use and chronological priority, independent of land ownership, so a municipality or industry may hold the right to a certain quantity of water far from its source. In Colorado, a water right is a right to use water, acquired by appropriation through diverting it from its source and applying it to a beneficial purpose; no one owns the water itself, the oldest rights prevail in shortages, changes in use must not injure other users on the same stream, and rights are lost if they are not continually used. The ranch fields west of the highway were part of a ranch established in 1868 with some of the valley's most senior rights, nearly 1,900 acre-feet of water. In 1986 those rights were sold to Western Water Rights LLP, which leased water back for irrigation, and in 2008 they were sold again to the Pueblo West Metropolitan District for municipal supply. The change from agricultural to municipal use ended irrigation on the property, and initial efforts to restore native vegetation failed, leaving land that may remain dust and invasive weeds for decades while water that once grew hay and supported cottonwoods is now delivered to homes, businesses, factories, lawns, and parks.