What we know
Begun in 1889, when Monument people raised $30,000 to buy the land from David McShane for a lake to store water for irrigation, fishing and swimming; the legislature matched it with $30,000 in 1891, and McShane built the dam with 75 men and 40 teams, finishing in 1892. The state deeded the lake to the town in 1942, which Koch credits to W. E. Higby as lieutenant governor (Koch, S-0197, p. 40). Charles Allis, later of Greenland, 'helped build the Monument reservoir' (Allis family notes, S-0199). At the potato bake of Oct. 5, 1892, visitors besieged Contractor McShane with questions 'regarding Monument's large lake, which will form one of the attractions for the bake of 1893' (Rocky Mountain News, Oct. 6, 1892, S-0229). Edwards prints the newspaper accounts: active work began on July 6, 1892, Contractor David McShane turning the first furrow, with 75 men and 40 teams to follow; frost later stopped work with the puddle dam finished (Rocky Mountain News, July 7 and Aug. 29, 1892, and later, S-0233, p. 108); he dates the reservoir to 1893 (p. 27). See the Hanks and Doyle icehouses for the ice harvest.
Where it was
USGS GNIS feature 198958, Monument Lake Dam (S-0006).
Placed from a written description, such as a land section, a distance from a landmark or an old survey note.
Sources
- S-0006: USGS Geographic Names Information System, Colorado file, 2021-08-25 edition
- S-0016: Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection (coloradohistoricnewspapers.org)
- S-0197: Susan E. (Steppler) Koch, The Land Is In My Blood: The History of The Divide Country and Its Pioneers, complete with Driving Tour and Homestead Maps (self-published; copyright 2015, U.S. Copyright Office TXu 2-251-186; first printing 2008, second October 2015, this copy the third printing, fall 2018)
- S-0199: Larkspur Historical Society, the document store behind its "LHS Search Agent" (larkspurhistoricalsociety.org/resources/lhs-search-agents/): 362 files, about 810 MB, uploaded April–June 2026
- S-0229: Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection: the Monument Potato Bake, 1889-1917, sweep of 2026-10-14 (via S-0016)
- S-0233: Daniel W. Edwards, A Century of Railroading at Palmer Lake, 1871-1971 (Denver: the author, 2014; ISBN 978-1495478987)
Sources are named in the text above. Numbers such as S-0080 refer to our source list. Most newspaper quotations were read in the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection. Long quotations from recent books are shortened here.