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There continues to be great concern that microbial pollution by grazing livestock degrades water quality on multiple-use rangelands, threatening human and ecological health.� Given the importance of clean water on �these shared landscapes, there has been growing stakeholder interest in additional water quality research across a wide range of common resource use activities at a high sampling frequency. During the 2016 summer grazing-recreation season, we conducted a cross-sectional survey of microbial water quality conditions associated with livestock grazing, recreation, and residential use on three multiple-use watersheds in the central Sierra Nevada and southern Cascade ranges of California. These watersheds include federal public grazing lands, private irrigated pasturelands, public recreation sites, and residential areas. Our specific study objectives were to 1) quantify fecal indicator bacteria (FIB; fecal coliform and�E. coli) concentrations in surface waters; 2) compare results to water quality regulatory benchmarks, and 3) examine relationships between water quality, environmental conditions, and primary land use.� The relative percentage of FIB regulatory benchmark exceedances widely varied under individual regional and national water quality standards.� Relative to USEPA�s national�E. coli�FIB benchmarks � the most contemporary and relevant standards for this study � 80% of the 706 samples collected were below the recommended�criteria value of 100 cfu/100 mL.� FIB concentrations were significantly greater when water was turbid and when cattle were actively observed at sampling.� Recreation sites had the lowest mean FIB concentrations, followed by grazing and residential sites, respectively.� Our results suggest �livestock grazing, recreation, and provisioning of clean water can be compatible goals across these multiple-use landscapes.