Montgomery Reservoir lies high in Colorado's

Mosquito Range The Mosquito Range (elevation approximately 14,000 ft) is a high mountain range in the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado in the United States. The peaks of the range form a ridge running north–south for roughly 40 mi (64 km) fr ...

near Hoosier Pass a few miles north of

Alma, Colorado Alma is a Statutory Town in Park County, Colorado, United States. The town population was 296 at the 2020 United States Census. Alma is located West and South of the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Front Range ...

. The reservoir sits at an altitude of . It is owned by Colorado Springs Utilities and delivers water to

Colorado Springs, Colorado Colorado Springs is a home rule municipality in, and the county seat of, El Paso County, Colorado, United States. It is the largest city in El Paso County, with a population of 478,961 at the 2020 United States Census, a 15.02% increase since ...

for municipal use. Built in 1957, the reservoir stores water from the

Middle Fork South Platte River The Middle Fork South Platte River is a tributary of the South Platte River, approximately long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed March 25, 2011 located in central Colora ...

and from a tunnel that brings water from the Blue River on the west side of the

continental divide A continental divide is a drainage divide on a continent such that the drainage basin on one side of the divide feeds into one ocean or sea, and the basin on the other side either feeds into a different ocean or sea, or else is endorheic, not ...

Transbasin diversion

Most of the water entering the reservoir comes through the Hoosier Tunnel which collects water from the Blue River watershed on the west side of the continental divide and conveys it to the east side, an instance of a transbasin diversion. Because the reservoir lies near the top of the headwaters of the

, the watershed above the dam is rather small — only in size, so its

catchment basin A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, the ...

is limited. Thus the chief source of the lake's water is the Hoosier Tunnel. The reservoir is drained by the Blue River Pipeline, a long pipeline that flows by gravity to the Colorado Springs Utilities-owned North and South Catamount reservoirs on the slopes of Pikes Peak. From there, the water is treated and delivered to municipal water customers in Colorado Springs.

Dam

Montgomery Dam is a rockfill structure. It is approximately long and high. When it was built, the dam was sealed with an asphalt concrete facing.

References

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Montgomery Reservoir Montgomery Reservoir lies high in Colorado's Mosquito Range near Hoosier Pass a few miles north of Alma, Colorado. The reservoir sits at an altitude of . It is owned by Colorado Springs Utilities and delivers water to Colorado Springs, Colorado f ...

Bodies of water of Park County, Colorado United States local public utility dams Interbasin transfer