Curecanti National Recreation Area (Pronounced (locally) or .) is a National Park Service unit located on the Gunnison River in western Colorado. Established in 1965, Curecanti National Recreation Area is responsible for developing and managing recreational facilities on three reservoirs, Blue Mesa Reservoir, Morrow Point Reservoir and Crystal Reservoir, constructed on the upper Gunnison River in the 1960s by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to better utilize the vital waters of the Colorado River and its major tributaries. A popular destination for boating and fishing, Curecanti offers visitors two marinas, traditional and group campgrounds, hiking trails, boat launches, and boat-in campsites. The state's premiere lake trout and Kokanee salmon fisheries, Curecanti is a popular destination for boating and fishing, and is also a popular area for ice-fishing in the winter months. Park history In 1922 seven western states, all of which contained some part of the Colorado River or its major tributaries, signed an agreement to regulate the use of the vital waters of the river system. Allotments were made and each state was guaranteed a certain amount of water annually. To facilitate this effort, the member states were divided into upper and lower groups, based on geography. Recognizing their total dependence on the upper group states, whose mountain snow melts contributed the most water to the river system, the states of the lower group, California, Nevada, and Arizona, began to build dams, such as the Hoover Dam, to create storage reservoirs on their parts of the river system. By the 1950s, the upper states, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming, obligated to send a set amount of water downstream regardless of seasonal fluctuations in water levels, also began to see the wisdom of creating a system of dams and reservoirs. To grant the four states the authority to begin this process, Congress passed the Colorado River Storage Act on April 11, 1956. An important legal milestone in the tortuous history of the western water law, the Act created the Colorado River Storage Project, and authorized four main projects, one of which was located on the Gunnison River in western Colorado, the fifth largest tributary of the Colorado River. This project, originally called the Curecanti Project, was tasked with building three dams on the upper reaches of the Gunnison, approximately 27 miles west of the city of Gunnison. Curecanti was named for a 19th-century Ute Indian sub-chief. The resulting reservoirs,