Community-engaged decision-making and management mark a change in philosophy and practice of shared-resource governance. Moving from national to local scales of agency coordination and public engagement requires equivalent change in the scale of useful social science data. Upon recognizing landowners and resource users as allies in policy implementation, success relies on how well diverse groups can understand one another and work together. Unfortunately, managers often have a fragmented understanding of the interests, voices, and lives of the public they serve. We outline an early scoping means for engaging and organizing local voices to prepare decision-making teams. To provide a foundation for decentralized water resource planning, we used a cultural studies lens to conduct and analyze 313 in-depth stakeholder interviews on the Yellowstone River. This essay chronicles this approach and reflects benefits and challenges, and why it may appeal to other decentralized planning efforts.