Coastal Origins
The story starts with trout tied to the Pacific edge: cold streams, estuaries, and connected river systems.
Deep Time Atlas
Every cutthroat trout is a map of old water.
Coast
Columbia
Snake
Lahontan
Bonneville
Rockies
Ancestral cutthroat begin on the Pacific side, moving through cold coastal streams and river corridors.
Moving Inland
Over generations, ancestral cutthroat move inland through connected river corridors, spreading farther into the West.
Ice Age Water
Glaciers reshape the map. Ice dams, pluvial lakes, and temporary drainage connections create new routes and barriers.
Floods and Broken Basins
Catastrophic floods and changing headwaters rearrange the landscape, opening some pathways and closing others.
Isolation
As water recedes and basins separate, trout become isolated in the Columbia, Snake, Lahontan, Bonneville, Colorado, Rio Grande, Arkansas, and other systems.
Modern Lineages
Those isolated waters become the modern cutthroat story: Westslope, Yellowstone, Lahontan, Bonneville, Greenback, Yellowfin, Rio Grande, and many more.
Prototype
Cutthroat Atlas
Explore Colorado native trout history, public hydrography, and recovery context through curated watershed layers.
Loading reference layers...
Historic Native
Current Likely
Recovery Status
Showing the species most likely associated with each stream historically.
Data Philosophy
Cutthroat Atlas separates stream geometry, trout metadata, and watershed history into distinct layers. A stream or lake may appear in the public water network without automatically being treated as native trout habitat. Human-modified features such as canals, tunnels, reservoirs, and transbasin diversions will be handled separately from natural watershed layers when the data supports that distinction.
Data Status
This prototype uses USGS NHD named flowlines as the primary reference geometry, with OpenStreetMap used as a supplemental reference where public NHD geometry is incomplete, unnamed, or visually discontinuous. Trout history, species presence, and recovery status are prototype-level metadata and will be refined with public agency, academic, museum, and conservation sources.
Data Sources
Cutthroat Atlas separates public reference geometry from interpreted trout metadata. The current prototype combines USGS NHD named flowlines, OpenStreetMap supplemental geometry, and project metadata records that document source confidence, geometry status, recovery context, and areas needing verification.
Prototype Scope
The current map focuses on the Cache la Poudre / Sheep Creek recovery context area. It is intended to demonstrate the workflow for combining public hydrography, watershed context, and cautious trout metadata before expanding to additional Colorado basins.
Planned Layers
Future layers may include USGS hydrography comparisons, interpreted watershed-review geometry, historic native range, current likely species, recovery and restoration status, public access context, and landowner-managed access opportunities where appropriate.