The Carbon Canal is an irrigation canal in the central portion of Utah, United States. The canal was constructed by the Carbon Canal Company between 1907 and 1909 to provide water to agricultural fields west and south of the Price River.
Description The Carbon Canal is a 28-mile long canal containing lined and unlined (i.e., earthen) sections. It begins at a weir on the Price River near the Spring Glen turn-off on U.S. Highway 6 and extends through Carbonville and the community of Price into Emery County to a point northeast of Elmo. It contains numerous flumes that carry the canal over rolling terrain.
History From the beginning of Euro-American settlement in Carbon County, the Price River was one of a few perennial freshwater sources on which pioneers could rely. The river’s drainage was first permanently settled by Mormon pioneers in the late 1870s at Spring Glen. Within three years, other small settlements appeared at Carbonville, Price, Wellington, and Helper. With the exception of Helper, which was established to support trains making the climb over Soldier Summit, these communities depended on agriculture for basic subsistence. Thus, their dependence on freshwater sources—particularly the Price River—for more than culinary water was strong and deep. Crop production on the dry uplands was limited by a lack of facilities to carry water from the river. The first settlers reportedly carried water from the river in wooden barrels and tanks to their fields.Johnson, Jane Lyman. 1994. “Price” in Utah History Encyclopedia, Allan Kent Powell, editor, pg. 444. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City. This lasted until the settlers dug a series of small ditches to convey irrigation water to their fields.
The ditches proved generally sufficient to serve the needs of the limited settler population until 1883, when the Denver & Rio Grande Western (D&RGW) Railroad was completed through Utah. The railroad passed through the Price River communities on its way north through Spanish Fork Canyon and on to the Wasatch Front. The completion of the railroad transformed the communities from isolated farm towns to a booming railroad region almost overnight. The arrival of the railroad coincided with the discovery of vast coal reserves in the area, and within a few years, the communities of the Price River bustled with hundreds of miners, railroad men, and entrepreneurs, forever changing the sleepy Mormon bergs into Utah’s mecca of ethnic and religious diversity.
The arrival of the railroad and mining industries saw a concurrent increase in the general settler population of the area as the economy grew sufficiently to allow for a community of supporting commercial enterprises. Most settlers not directly involved in the mining and railroading industries as laborers at least supplemented their household economy with agricultural pursuits if not relying entirely upon them. As the population grew and the demand for irrigation water increased, early ditches reached the limits of their capacity. It soon became clear to area farmers that a more extensive system was needed.
The first large-scale effort to develop an irrigation system occurred in the late 1880s, when the newly formed Price Water Company completed what became known as the Price Canal. The canal, which was fed by a diversion on the Price River near the Spring Glen turn-off on SR-6, was completed in 1888. The canal—still in use today—carries water east and north of the Price River, skirting the northern and eastern parts of the Price community and ending several miles east of Wellington.
Initial construction As the new century of the 1900s dawned, area farmers had reached a tipping point—either acquire more water or forever limit agricultural production. By 1906, several representatives of the community joined together to incorporate the Carbon Canal Company (known over the years by other names). In August of that year, the company, represented by R. W. Crocket, applied to the State of Utah for water rights on the Price River for the purpose of constructing a canal that would carry irrigation water to lands west and south of Price and lands south of Wellington and the river.Application to Appropriate Water, # 91-3. 1906. Copy on file at the Carbon Canal Company, Price. The water right was granted on August 30, 1906 and received final approval in March 1907.
The Certificate of Water Rights allocated 125 cubic feet per second (cfs) of Price River water to the Carbon Canal Company. According to the certificate, the diverting works on the river were to comprise “a concrete diversion dam … and a canal measuring 149,737 ft. long, 5 to 18 ft. wide on top, 4 to 12 ft. wide in the bottom, having an effective depth from 2 to 6 ft.”Certificate of Appropriation of Water. 1932. Certificate #2080. Utah State Engineer, Salt Lake City. The length of the canal would carry it through the southern part of Carbon County and into the now-abandoned northern Emery County town of Victor. The diversion dam was to be located roughly 4 miles north of Price. The water right granted to the Carbon Canal Company provided for agricultural water use through the system between April 1 and September 30 each year “to irrigate 7,973.46 acres of land…” The certificate also allowed the company to divert up to 25 cfs from October 1 and March 31 each year for “domestic and culinary purposes” as well as the winter watering of domestic livestock.
Work on the Carbon Canal began shortly after the granting of the water right. By January 1908, the Emery County Progress newspaper reported that work on the canal was “well under way” by the firm of Snow, Waterman and Williams of Spanish Fork, Utah.Emery County Progress. 1908. “Work on Big Canal Under Way.” January 25. The newspaper noted that numerous construction camps had been established along the proposed route of the canal and 100 men and 60 livestock teams were on-site. Lumber and cement were reportedly being brought in by rail to Helper and then transported to the work sites, presumably by wagon teams or truck teams. No other information could be found regarding the initial construction of the canal. The canal was completed in 1909 and included six wooden flumes—Gordon Creek, Garley Wash, Pinnacle Wash, Drunkard’s Wash, Miller Creek, and Olsen’s Wash—and a 280-foot tunnel.Watt, Ronald G. 1997. A History of Carbon County. Utah Centennial County History Series. Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City, pg. 79. The flume at Olsen’s Wash was later replaced with an undershoot.
Expanding the irrigation network Farmers in the area then constructed a network of smaller ditches to carry water from the canal to their agricultural lands, including fields south of the Price River. The completion of the canal, with its weir upstream of the community of Price and its lack of diversions south of Wellington, finally provided a relatively reliable supply of irrigation water to farmlands south of the Price River. The irrigation water supply to Wellington was supplemented by water from the Price Canal, a 5.5-mile extension of which was completed into Wellington the same year as the completion of the Carbon Canal and irrigated lands north of the river. Because the Price Canal had many diversions and water users along its route to Wellington, the water supply was often lower than anticipated—upstream users having used more water than their allocated water right.
The first major effort to impound water on the Price River drainage had started in 1896 with the forming of the Mammoth Reservoir Company. The company was specifically organized to develop water storage facilities in the mountains northwest of Price, at the site of present-day Scofield Reservoir.Stene, Eric A. 1995. Scofield Project. Bureau of Reclamation. Retrieved online April 17, 2017 at: https://www.usbr.gov/projects/index.php?id=424 Shortly thereafter, several farmers in Sanpete County acquired the reservoir company’s water rights to allow them to divert water to their lands. In 1902, they sold their water rights to the Irrigated Lands Company, which began construction of the Mammoth Dam in 1907. In 1911, the Irrigated Lands Company reorganized as Price River Irrigation Company. On June 25, 1917, the partially completed dam collapsed, releasing 11,000 acre-feet of water downstream and causing an estimated $1 million in flood damage throughout the drainage. Shortly thereafter, the Price River Irrigation Company abandoned the project altogether. Still needing water storage in the region, the Price River Water Conservation District (PRWCD) formed in 1921. The PRWCD oversaw the construction of the Scofield Dam between 1925 and 1926, funding it through a bonding effort. The PRWCD contracted with a number of ditch companies to deliver reservoir water through their canals.
Reconstructing the flumes As the Carbon Canal continued to provide irrigation water to southern Carbon County and northern Emery County, the canal structure began to degrade from the use. Lacking deep financial reserves, the canal company applied for a loan from the state land board (part of the present-day Department of Natural Resources) to complete much needed repairs. In 1926, the land board authorized a loan of $20,000 to the canal company, with $5,000 of the funding to be used to replace the wooden sidehill flume at Drunkard’s Wash (i.e., Drunkard’s Creek) with a concrete-lined canal resting on newly placed earthen fill.News Advocate. 1926a. “Work on Carbon Canal Company Ditch Under Way.” September 16. Additional work to be conducted under the loan included “tearing out the sluice gate at what is known as Sand wash” and replacing it with a series of dykes and iron pipes. Work at the flume commenced in September 1926, after the end of the irrigation season.
One caveat of the loan from the state land board was that all work conducted with the funding had to be overseen by the Utah State Engineer, George M. Bacon, and according to his repair plan. It appears, however, that such oversight and adherence to a plan not of their making did not sit well with the board of the canal company, despite their signing off on the requirement in the loan agreement. Within a few days of starting the repair work at Drunkard’s Wash, the canal company (known at that time as the Carbon County Land and Water Company), sent a telegraph message to the state engineer’s office protesting the plan of repair outlined by Bacon and stating that they would not allow any further expenditure of loan funds on the work until such time as they had been granted a meeting with the state land board to discuss their objections to the repair plans.Salt Lake Telegram. 1926a. “Canal Repairs Held Up for Agreement.” September 17.
The dispute between the canal company, the state land board, and the state engineer roiled for nearly two months, as the canal company proceeded with repairs according to their own plans—ignoring those of the state engineer—and the state engineer condemning the work.News Advocate. 1926b. “Labor on Carbon Canal Condemned by State Engineer.” November 4. State Engineer Bacon contended the work done by the canal company violated the terms of the loan agreement and jeopardized the ability of the canal to provide irrigators with reliable water in the upcoming irrigation season. The dispute went so far as to result in Bacon withholding “the last payroll for work done” until the state land board had resolved the issue and provided him with written direction to approve the expenditure. The land board appears to have attempted to resolve the dispute by asking Bacon to adopt the canal company’s repair plan over the one he himself had developed, but Bacon had declined, presumably due to specific engineering concerns though Bacon himself would note that the work at Drunkard’s Wash “looks like a first class job.”