Free tool
Ditch Finder
Type a Colorado address and see the nearest ditch and reservoir structures DitchBook has verified and published, ranked by straight-line distance.
The address you type is sent by your browser directly to the U.S. Census Bureau's public geocoder — DitchBook has no server, and never sees it.
This tool searches the … of DitchBook's … published structures that currently have mapped coordinates — representing … of the … matched Colorado ditch and reservoir companies (a matched company can still be missing here if its own structures happen to lack digitized coordinates). That's a small fraction of the ditches and reservoirs actually in Colorado, so a missing result does not mean no ditch exists near that property — it means DitchBook hasn't verified and published one there yet.
Distances are straight-line ("as the crow flies"), not measured along the ditch, a road, or a property line. This tool is informational only — not a legal determination, a title search, or a survey. Before relying on it for a purchase or closing, read buying land with a ditch and see how DitchBook is built.
Results
Loading the published structures list…
| Structure | WDID | Company | Distance |
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How this works
Type an address and this tool asks the U.S. Census Bureau's free public geocoder to turn it into a latitude and longitude, then measures the straight-line distance from that point to every DWR structure DitchBook has verified and published. It draws on the same verified match set as the map and company pages, but a different selection from it: the map plots one representative pin per company, while Ditch Finder searches every individually mapped structure — … of them. It returns the nearest 15 within 25 miles, closest first.
What "verified and published" means
A structure only appears here if DitchBook has matched it to a specific ditch or reservoir company at the tier-1 standard described on the methods page — the state's own DWR record has to name that company, never a fuzzy guess — and the state's structure record for it carries a digitized latitude/longitude. As of this build, that's … of … published structures, representing … of the … matched companies; the remainder have no digitized coordinates in the state's data, so they can't be placed on a map or ranked by distance even though the match itself is real.
What a missing result means — and doesn't
Colorado has far more ditches and reservoirs than DitchBook has verified so far. If nothing turns up near an address, that's a statement about DitchBook's coverage, not about the property — it does not mean no ditch or water right exists nearby. See buying land with a ditch for what to actually check before a purchase or closing: a title search and the county's own records, not this tool.
Straight-line distance, not ditch distance
The distance shown is the straight-line (great-circle) distance between the address and the structure's mapped point — not the distance along the ditch itself, a road, or a property boundary, and not a statement about which parcels the ditch actually serves. Two properties the same straight-line distance from a headgate can have very different relationships to it.
Nothing you type is sent to DitchBook
DitchBook is a static site with no server of its own. The address you enter is sent directly from your browser to the Census Bureau's public geocoding service to be converted to a coordinate; DitchBook never receives it, logs it, or stores it anywhere.