In 1887, William Nottingham joined resources with two of his ranching neighbors, Peter Puder and Ernest Hurd, to form Nottingham & Company. The enterprise was devoted to developing and managing their widespread farming, ranching, ore hauling and timber interests. Peter Puder was born in 1854 in Steady Run Township, Keokuk County, Iowa and grew up on his family’s farm. The son of immigrants from Germany, he was the oldest of eight children in the family. By 1880, Peter was in his mid-twenties, still living with his parents and siblings, and working as a farm laborer. Five years later, he was residing in Eagle County, Colorado and working as a woodsman. In 1887, Puder became a partner in an effort to develop the Maid of Erin mining claim on Girard Mountain.
Around that same time, Peter Puder acquired a parcel of undeveloped ranch land adjacent to William Nottingham’s along the north bank of the Eagle River and entered into the business arrangement that formed Nottingham & Company. In early April 1889, Nottingham and Puder began excavating an irrigating ditch that would serve both of their properties. The ditch diverted water from the north bank of the Eagle River east of Puder’s property, near a bridge that spanned the river, and then ran toward the west and northwest through his lands and Nottingham’s as well. Just two to three feet wide, and one foot in depth, the small Nottingham & Puder Ditch was designed to carry three cubic feet of water per second. On 23 September 1890, the men filed a Ditch Statement with the Eagle County Clerk to secure their headgate and rights to the water. As with many early ditches, they may have improved their ditch over the following years by widening and deepening it to hold more water.
Although Nottingham, Puder and Hurd continued their business relationship into the 1890s, it devolved into a caustic, problematic arrangement that resulted in animosity between the three neighbors. And worse was to come. By 1893, the business had declined into financial trouble (possibly exacerbated by the silver crash that year) and the partners’ hopes failed to be realized. Accusations of mismanagement flew, and Peter Puder succumbed to the stress when he committed suicide in April 1896. Bitter disagreement and antagonism between the two remaining partners resulted in Nottingham’s death by gunfire in December of that same year. The trigger was pulled by Ernest Hurd in self defense.
With two of the three partners deceased within months of one another, the remaining assets of the company ended up in the hands of Hurd and Angeline Nottingham. In a dramatic final twist to the story, Angeline then married Hurd in 1899, creating a union of families that kept the company’s assets intact. Among those assets was the Nottingham & Puder Ditch.