Bureau of Reclamation - Upper Colorado Basin

The Bureau of Reclamation has been in existence since 1902 when it was created by President Theodore Roosevelt to develop water projects that would store and transport water to the arid lands of the Western United States. By 1943, Reclamation had established an unsurpassed reputation for dam construction and had become the world’s largest producer of hydroelectric power. Reclamation's then Commissioner, Harry Bashore, who had worked for the agency since 1906, decided to establish regional offices to more directly manage the rapidly increasing region-based campaigns for accelerated river basin water, power, and flood-control developments. As a result, on September 9, 1943, six regional offices were established with a seventh soon to follow. Each office was strategically located to administer a jurisdiction drawn along river basin lines and to be supervised by a Regional Director who reported directly to the Commissioner’s Office in Washington, D.C. Each region, originally designated by a region number, eventually became named according to their general river basin-area jurisdictions. The Upper Colorado Region (Region 4) became headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah and initially included southwest Wyoming, Colorado west of the Continental Divide, the state of Utah, and small portions of Arizona and New Mexico. In 1988, with the closure of the regional office in Amarillo, Texas (formerly Region 5), the Upper Colorado Region then expanded to include New Mexico and Texas west of the Pecos River.