Fountain Creek: Big Lessons from a Little River

June 19, 2024
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by JIM O’DONNELL

“Every stream in the American West deserves a biographer as affectionate, thorough, and lyrical as Jim O’Donnell.”

– BEN GOLDFARB, author of Crossings

From its headwaters high up Colorado’s legendary Pike’s Peak to suburban concrete-lined canals, Fountain Creek has endured nearly everything humans could do to a single watershed. It has been dammed, diverted, drained, poisoned, restored, exploited, ignored—and yet it has survived.

“Fountain Creek takes us on a fascinating tour of an abused and unassuming stream, fed by the effluent of cities and carrying with it centuries of human history. Jim O’Donnell reminds us that—even within earshot of the interstate’s roar—water still flows and wildness persists.”

—ZAK PODMORE, Life After Dead Pool

Journalist and archeologist Jim O’Donnell grew up exploring among the beavers and discarded beer bottles that have long populated Fountain Creek. Irreverent, deeply knowledgeable, and endlessly curious, O’Donnell guides us through the contradictions and complexities of one of the most heavily urbanized areas in one of the fastest-growing states in the nation.

“In his affecting, prismatic, and beautifully-wrought exploration of the past, present, and possible future of Fountain Creek, O’Donnell reminds us that we have a chance at healing the world at large, if only we look first to places closest to home.”

—AMY BRADY, Ice

This book is at once a reflection of our ever-changing relationship to the natural world and a challenge for each of us to reexamine the many ways we are connected to the world around us, to water, and to each other.

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“What might still flow through these damned-up and dried-out days of ours? Fountain Creek is lovingly navigated and tenderly told by O’Donnell and becomes a baptismal stream for the Anthropocene. This book swims.”

—TIM DEE, Four Fields