Spillway & Dam

In addition to being a multi-use recreation area, Standley Lake is also a water-storage facility, and is the drinking water supply for Westminster, Northglenn, and Thornton. With 1,063-acres of surface area, Standley Lake is Westminster’s largest body of water. It is also the Denver metropolitan area’s third largest reservoir.

While the public has access to the parkland and recreational use of the lake, the water rights are jointly owned by the cities of Westminster, Thornton, Northglenn and the Farmers Reservoir and Irrigation Company (FRICO). The dam, which is one mile long, is private FRICO property and not accessible to the public.

There is a wealth of history surrounding Standley Lake that dates back over one hundred years. When the first Europeans settled in Westminster in the early 1860s, the area now occupied by Standley Lake was occupied by undeveloped prairie land bisected by an unnamed stream. Around 1870, John S. Kinnear filed a homestead claim on part of the land, secured the rights to water from Coal Creek and began to construct a ditch and reservoir for irrigation purposes. The adjacent area to the east was owned by the Colorado Central and then Union Pacific Railroad which constructed a line from Golden to Boulder just east of the developing reservoir. Situated in the center of where Standley Lake is found today, Kinnear Reservoir was soon the largest body of water in the countryside northwest of Denver.

Prior to the formation of FRICO, New Jersey native Milton Smith lived in Denver where he worked as an attorney. Nebraska native O. J. Standley also resided in Denver and served as vice president of Chicago Title and Trust. Given their backgrounds and place of residence (they continued living in Denver for years after launching FRICO) it is clear that Croke, Standley and Smith pursued the development of irrigation projects not as farmers but as entrepreneurs and investors. For some time, Standley had been seeking a site to build a water storage reservoir north of the city, initially settling upon Barr Lake near Brighton as an option. However, Croke and Standley decided instead to greatly enlarge and improve Kinnear Reservoir. To accomplish this project and invest in farmlands north of the city, the men created the Denver Reservoir and Irrigation Company and moved forward with planning (the Denver Company operated in tandem with FRICO). From that time on, O. J. Standley served as the company’s president, and the effort’s most dedicated advocate and manager.

Construction began in 1908 and continued into early 1910 with a massive earth moving effort. Chicago hydraulic and irrigation engineer William H. Rosecrans prepared the design for the entire project. Awarded the general contract, the Kenefick Construction Company of Kansas City brought its men and equipment to the site on the Colorado and Southern Railroad, which also hauled and dumped the massive amount of dirt required to raise the dam wall. Excavation and earth moving were accomplished using large steam shovels and dragline dredges. A construction camp of wood frame buildings rose at the foot of the dam.

By early 1910, the Denver Reservoir and Irrigation Company had expanded to hold more than 200,000 acres of agricultural land across several irrigation districts north of Denver, with options placed on thousands more. It also held a developing system of irrigation canals and reservoirs, and acquired the rights to more than 400,000 acre-feet of water on the plains and in the mountains above. Between 1909 and 1912, Thomas Croke served in the Colorado state senate. Although a member of the agriculture and irrigation committee, he was unable to forestall financial problems that soon beset the Standley Lake project. With rapid expansion, by 1910 the Denver Reservoir and Irrigation Company had taken on so many ambitious efforts in such a short period of time that it found itself overextended and short on funds to finish several of its projects.

When work finally resumed in the spring of 1911, the general contract for Standley Lake remained in the hands of the Kenefick Construction Company, whose owner William Kenefick helped secure the funding from the French bank. The contract called for the earthwork to be completed by Oct. 1 and the concrete work by the first of December. Under tremendous pressure, Kenefick increased the scale and pace of its effort. Hundreds of laborers were brought from Denver each day to work on the site. Excavators and trains moved at a remarkable pace, setting records in the heavy construction industry. At the same time the dam was being finished, all of the canals, embankments and laterals had to be prepared to meet the same deadline.