The news that H2O Today: Our Global Water Story, a Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition, is taking up an eight-month residency at the Greeley History Museum next month got only a brief mention in the local paper this week.

Water, however, is a huge story for the state’s history, and it happens to run especially deep through Greeley.

The town’s namesake, New York newspaper editor Horace Greeley, invested in and promoted the Union Colony of Colorado on the site of the town that would bear his name. The Union Colony, founded in 1869, harnessed modern, innovative ditch system to turn the South Platte River into the lifeblood of the plains’ farmland.

Moreover, the colony blazed a trail in moving water across Colorado, the historical measure of which is impossible to underestimate.

By April 1870, the Union Colorado had 144 families along with national attention, thanks to Horace Greeley telling Americans to “Go west, young man.”

H20 Today will be at the Greeley History Museum from Sept. 2 to May 20, the Greeley Tribune reported:

Items related to the Greeley Ice and Storage Company, as well as a water clock for Union Colony Ditch No. 3, will be on display. Visitors will also have the opportunity to use an example treadle pump. “H2O Today” is part of the Smithsonian’s Think Water Initiative to raise awareness that water is a critical resource to life. According to a release from the city, the exhibit is sponsored locally by the Cache la Poudre River National Heritage Area and the Poudre Heritage Alliance.

As a significant historical sidenote, Horace Greeley sent his agriculture reporter Nathan Meeker to Colorado, to oversee his investment. Meeker wasn’t up to the task, but politics being what they were, he landed a job as the Indian agent for western Colorado.

Meeker tried to force the Utes into agriculture and away from their hunting and gathering, but the backlash was the Meeker Massacre. The result of that was the removal of Utes from much of their western Colorado land. Meeker is the namesake of the county where he and 11 others died.

I wrote more extensively about Meeker, the massacre and the aftermath in my old job at the Denver Post five years ago. You can read it here.