Buying Land in Crowley County, Colorado

Buy-and-dry: how Crowley County became Colorado's cautionary tale on farm water

In 1891, the Colorado Canal began delivering Arkansas River water to more than 50,000 acres of farmland around Ordway, supporting sugar beets, cantaloupes, and cattle grazing for decades. Starting in the 1970s and accelerating through the 1980s, farmers began selling their canal water shares -- while keeping the now-unirrigated land -- to speculators and, ultimately, to growing Front Range cities, principally Aurora, with Pueblo and Colorado Springs also drawing on the broader Twin Lakes system. By the late 1990s, as irrigated acreage collapsed, local businesses closed and poverty rose sharply. Today, only a small fraction of the historically irrigated land along the Colorado Canal -- roughly 2,500 of the original 50,000-plus acres -- remains in production; the rest is largely bare ground, blowing dust, invasive weeds, and enough tumbleweed accumulation to periodically close stretches of local highway.

For a land buyer, the practical lesson is direct: never assume a Crowley County parcel's historical description as 'irrigated farmland' reflects its current water status. A large share of the county's farmland has had its water rights permanently severed and sold elsewhere, and the dried-up condition of the land is often visibly obvious but should still be confirmed against the Colorado Division of Water Resources' records for the specific parcel and any associated ditch or canal company, not assumed from soil type or field boundaries alone. Two struggling state correctional facilities became a significant part of the local economy as agriculture declined -- worth knowing as general county economic context, distinct from any specific parcel's feasibility.

A new 2027 state law directly responds to what happened here

Colorado's legislature passed, and Governor Jared Polis signed in June 2026, House Bill 26-1340 -- a new law, taking effect January 1, 2027, that for the first time makes the entity removing irrigation water from farmland responsible for properly revegetating or reclaiming it. Under the law, a water-rights owner transferring agricultural irrigation water to another use must either revegetate the formerly irrigated land with native plant cover or convert it to dryland farming with real erosion-control and weed-management practices. Colorado water courts must appoint a neutral third-party expert to inspect the land annually and report on progress, and courts can limit how much of the transferred water the new owner may actually use, or require a reclamation bond, if the work falls short.

This law exists largely because of Crowley County's documented history -- lawmakers and rural water advocates pointed directly to this county's dust, weeds, and economic decline as the case for requiring revegetation going forward. It does not undo the drying that already happened here before 2027, and it doesn't apply retroactively to land already dried decades ago. But if you're evaluating a parcel that still carries active irrigation water rights, this law is a genuinely new and favorable protection against a future buy-and-dry sale leaving neighboring or successor land in the same degraded condition seen elsewhere in the county -- worth understanding as part of the water-rights picture for any irrigated Crowley County parcel going forward.

Real zoning, and a documented cannabis boom-and-bust in Ordway

Crowley County allowed marijuana cultivation starting in 2016 as an economic-diversification move, but the industry didn't take off locally until around the pandemic; by 2021, cheap land and low licensing costs drew cultivators to the Maverick Lane industrial area in and around Ordway, and the town briefly became one of Colorado's largest cannabis-producing areas, with dozens of registered grow operations at its peak. The county's Planning & Zoning department imposed a six-month moratorium on new use-by-review applications to rezone agricultural or residential land to commercial for cultivation starting in April 2021 -- real evidence that zoning changes here go through genuine, monitored review. The boom largely reversed by the mid-2020s amid a broader statewide cannabis-market downturn, leaving vacant warehouses and half-finished buildings in the Maverick Lane area. If you're evaluating industrial or commercial-zoned land tied to that boom, confirm its current zoning use and any lingering licensing or use-permit status directly with the county rather than assuming the market conditions from a few years ago still hold.