Standley Lake

In addition to being a multi-use recreation area, Standley Lake is a water storage facility and 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 and the Denver metropolitan area's third-largest reservoir.

The history of the lake started centuries ago when Europeans settled in Westminster in the early 1860s. The area was undeveloped prairie land bisected by an unnamed stream. Around 1870, John S. Kinnear filed a homestead claim on part of the land, secured rights to the water from Coal Creek, and began constructing a ditch and reservoir for irrigation purposes. The Colorado Central owned the adjacent area to the east and then Union Pacific Railroad, which built a line from Golden to Boulder just east of the developing reservoir. Situated in the center of where Standley Lake is today, Kinnear Reservoir was soon the largest body of water in the countryside northwest of Denver.

For some time, Nebraska native O.J. 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, with Thomas Croke, they decided instead to enlarge and improve Kinnear Reservoir significantly. 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. From then on, O. J. Standley was the president and the effort's 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.