PRAIRIE OASIS: LIFE ABOUNDS AT BRIGHTON’S BARR LAKE

here, so that’s what keeps us busy then. In April and May, we get a lot of school groups —a totally different kind of busy. From May through July, we are busy for boating, canoes and kayaks. And in the fall, the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies has their bird banding station and that keeps us busy.”

From Wallow To Reservoir

Like any spot along Colorado’s eastern plains, water defines Barr Lake, and it has from the beginning. It started as buffalo wallow, a wet springtime depression in the prairie that attracted natives and some animals. As settlers moved to the area, it became a stopping point for cowboys moving herds from Wyoming to Texas.

A dam built in 1886 turned the wallow into a reservoir and a larger dam built in 1909 completed that transition, flooding the old Oasis Reservoir and combining it with a smaller lake to the south, creating Barr Lake much as it is today, 1,950 acres of water about 35 feet deep when it’s full.

The water continued to define the lake as it grew this time for its quality —or lack of quality.

The lake is fed by canals that split off from the South Platte as it makes its way northeast to Nebraska. The headgate that fed the larger canals was just downstream from Denver’s stockyards and sewage treatment facility from 1930 onward, meaning the lake became a sewage lagoon. It wasn’t until a powerful June storm in 1965 flushed the South Platte, its canals and Barr Lake — and 1972’s Clean Water Act helped keep it clean.

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