The Changing Yampa

For hundreds of years before the first settlers arrived in the valley, the Yampatika Utes used the beauty and resources of the Yampa Valley for summer hunting, and in the early 1800s trappers entered the area and called it The Big Bend for its westward turn there. For thousands of years, the Yampa River meandered across the valley floor and flooded this spot, but after the railroad was built in 1909 on the river’s south bank and Steamboat Springs grew on its north bank, both the river and the community underwent many changes. To protect railroads, bridges, houses, and hotels, people armored the banks with large boulders known as rip rap, old cars, concrete blocks, railroad ties, and other debris to prevent erosion and infrastructure damage, artificially confining the channel and disconnecting it from its floodplain, which led to the loss of riparian habitat and natural channel migration. Conserving land along the riparian corridor above and below town has helped mitigate impacts from development along the river’s banks. The Yampa’s water remains essential for agriculture, including cattle and hay production, for industry such as cooling coal-fired power plants and extracting coal and gravel, for municipal storage and use in homes and businesses, for recreation including boating, fishing, and snowmaking at ski areas, and for environmental needs in the Yampa Basin, which supports seventeen state threatened and proposed endangered species. The railroad also changed land use in the Yampa Valley by making it easier to ship livestock and crops, which increased irrigated agriculture, and flood irrigation, though less efficient than sprinkler irrigation, has continued to recharge groundwater aquifers, create wetlands, and support late summer return flows when the river needs them most.

Steamboat Springs, Colorado · United States