Montrose County is where our operations extend south. The valley sits under the San Juans to the south and the Uncompahgre Plateau to the west, and the city of Montrose is the largest town in the two counties we work.
One valley, two sources of water
Delta County is three valleys stacked against each other. Montrose is one — the Uncompahgre, running north from the city through Olathe and on down to Delta. Less variation in elevation and a more even season. What is not simple here is the water.
The Uncompahgre River starts as snowmelt high in the San Juans, at Lake Como above twelve thousand feet, and runs north past Ouray and Ridgway before it reaches this valley. Ridgway Reservoir holds a good deal of it back. That is the native water, and the San Juans standing south of Montrose are not the backdrop — they are the watershed.
It was never enough on its own. Which is why, between 1905 and 1909, the Bureau of Reclamation drove five and eight tenths miles of tunnel out of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison to bring a second river into this valley. The Gunnison Tunnel is still running and still operated by the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association — and the Uncompahgre carries the water back to the Gunnison at Delta anyway, downstream of where the tunnel borrowed it.
Practically, that means a lot of property here irrigates off ditch shares rather than off the tap — a pump, filtration, and a season that starts and ends when the ditch company says so rather than when the weather does.
Montrose is the commercial end of our work
It is the biggest town we serve, which means it has the most of what larger properties need: parking lots, common areas, HOA grounds, and buildings whose entrances have to be clear and safe before anybody gets there in the morning. Snow and ice management, commercial mowing, and irrigation on systems well past the size of a residential lot.
Olathe is the other half of it. Farm country, and sweet corn the town is known for a long way past this county.
The year here
Sprinkler startup in the spring, mowing through the summer, cleanups and blowouts in the fall. The Uncompahgre valley floor runs a slightly longer season than the high ground over in Delta County, which moves the dates but not the order.