Lake Scott State Park
Lake Scott State Park is the site of a ruined Taos Pueblo. The Taos arrived in western Kansas in 1664. After having escaped the Spanish colonial rule in New Mexico. They formed an alliance with a group of Plains Apache. The Taos Indians built the protective pueblos and an irrigation system from a nearby spring to water their crops. The settlement, known as El Cuartelejo, was occupied for 20 years before the builders returned to their home territory. The pueblo was reoccupied in 1696 by a group of Picuri Indians. The Picuris were compelled to retreat to their homelands in colonial New Mexico ten years later.
San Gabriel River (California)
Although the Southern California climate is well suited to most types of agriculture, the seasonality of rainfall made it almost impossible to grow crops without irrigation. After the founding of Mission San Gabriel, the Spanish built and gradually expanded a system of "zanjas" (canals) and reservoirs to irrigate crops, power mills, and water livestock. The earliest historic record of a water diversion for the mission appears around 1773. Irrigation systems were also built on some of the Mexican ranchos, such as in 1842 when Don Luis Arenas, owner of the Rancho Azusa, constructed a "zanja" from the mouth of San Gabriel River to his homestead, a distance of about one mile (1.6 km). This would later be expanded in to the Azusa Ditch, one of the more important canals of the region.