Drive up Rim Drive past Hillcrest Golf Club on any afternoon this August and the course still reads green against the mesa, tee to green, while half the yards on the way there have gone the color of straw. If you live near Hillcrest or out toward Dalton Ranch in the Animas Valley, you have probably noticed the same thing and wondered whether the club just has a bigger budget, better sprinklers, or friends at city hall.
None of those. The real answer is a water rights structure that predates this drought by more than a century, paired with a set of resident rules that took effect this spring and are still very much in force. Understanding the difference tells you something true about how this particular pocket of Durango actually works, day to day, underneath the curb appeal.
The rule every homeowner here is already living with
On April 10, 2026, the City of Durango declared a Stage 1 Water Shortage after a record-low snowpack, early runoff, and a dry, warm spring left the watershed short. The restriction is specific: outdoor landscape irrigation is limited to three days a week, and only between 7 p.m. and 9 a.m. Odd-numbered addresses water Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Even-numbered addresses water Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. Wednesdays, nobody waters, full stop.
The reason the city went after lawns specifically is arithmetic. Irrigation accounts for roughly 70 percent of Durango's total water usage, according to the city's own conservation department, which makes residential turf the single largest lever available for a 20 percent demand reduction. If you have been rationing your own hose time since spring, that is why.
| Water source | Schedule this summer | |
|---|---|---|
| Durango homes under Stage 1 | Treated municipal water | 3 days a week, 7 p.m. to 9 a.m., no watering Wednesdays |
| Hillcrest Golf Club | Raw water the city is contractually obligated to deliver | Adjusted voluntarily alongside city parks, not bound to the residential calendar |
Why the fairways don't follow the same clock
Here is the part that actually explains the color difference. Durango's own conservation FAQ states plainly that the city must contractually provide raw water to Hillcrest Golf Course. Raw water is untreated water pulled directly from the river system, separate from the treated municipal supply that fills your kitchen tap and, under Stage 1, your sprinkler heads three nights a week. Hillcrest's irrigation draws on that older, contracted allocation, which is why the course was never legally subject to the same on-off schedule your street is.
That allocation exists because Durango holds senior water rights on the Animas and Florida Rivers dating back to the 1870s, among the most secure in the entire Colorado River drainage, with direct flow rights to 5.76 million gallons a day from the Florida and 15.7 million gallons a day absolute from the Animas. Those rights were locked in long before anyone was debating watering windows for suburban lawns, and the golf course sits downstream of that history.
That does not mean Hillcrest has ignored the drought. General Manager and Director of Golf Michael McCloskey told the Durango Herald in April that the club has been coordinating directly with the city's Public Works and Parks and Recreation departments to scale back voluntarily, even without a legal mandate to do so.
"We'll play our cards the same as they're trying to play their cards with the parks department."
What that's actually meant so far this year
McCloskey pointed back to 2018, the last serious drought year, as the club's working reference point. That summer, fairways were watered once or twice a week instead of daily and roughs went closer to once every two weeks, enough that the turf visibly yellowed even as play continued uninterrupted. He was candid that he did not have exact figures on this year's reductions in hand when asked, only that the posture matches what the city itself is doing on its own parkland.
What that means for anyone living near the course is a specific kind of reassurance. The green you see from your window this month is not the club pretending the drought does not exist. It is a 150-year-old water contract doing what it was built to do, layered under a management team that is voluntarily cutting anyway. Neither the club nor city ordinance guarantees a certain shade of green through September. It has simply held up so far.
The two-week countdown on the patio
While the water story plays out slowly, there is a much shorter clock running at Dalton Ranch. Alcé, the clubhouse's Italian-inspired restaurant overlooking the Animas Valley and the Hermosa Cliffs, hosts live local music on its patio every Thursday and Sunday night from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Labor Day falls on September 7 this year, which puts the season at roughly its last two Thursday and Sunday slots as of late August.
The patio sits less than 15 minutes from downtown Durango and about 20 minutes from Purgatory, close enough that it functions as a genuine weeknight option rather than a special-occasion drive. If you have been meaning to catch the Thursday sunset set before summer folds into fall, the window is closing faster than it feels like it should.
The other season turning over at Hillcrest
Hillcrest is working through its own set of changes this year, separate from the water story. Longtime superintendent Will Herz, who held the job for 30 years, retired this spring, handing the agronomy side of the course to Kaelen Waters, a Durango local who studied golf course maintenance at Colorado State University and had previously worked as a superintendent at TPC Colorado in Berthoud and led course construction as superintendent at Raindance National Golf Club in Windsor. McCloskey publicly credited Herz for decades of shaping the course, and PGA professional Brett Wolf noted the club logged more than 45,000 rounds in 2025, a number he expects to hold as the new normal rather than a one-off high.
For anyone using the club day to day rather than just admiring it from the road, the practical hours matter more than the round count. The Hillcrest Grille runs Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and the Lower Snack Bar keeps slightly longer hours, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. the same days, both useful to know before you plan a lunch stop after nine holes. The club's indoor simulator, loaded with 34 courses, is also worth filing away now. It is a winter fixture, but with golf season narrowing toward fall, it is the option that keeps the routine going once the fairways themselves go dormant for real.
None of this is really about golf. It is about the fact that living in this stretch of Durango means your week is shaped by systems most residents never think to ask about: a water contract older than the interstate highway system, a patio music series with a hard end date, a staffing change on a maintenance crew that keeps the view outside your window looking the way it does. The neighborhood is not just the houses. It is the schedule underneath them.
If you are curious what any of this means for a specific property in the Dalton Ranch or Hillcrest area, or you just want a straight answer about how the current drought stage affects a home you already own, Jeremiah Aukerman knows this corner of Durango well enough to give you one. Reach out anytime for a free home valuation or just to talk through what you are seeing on your own street.
