- Reclamation
- Projects & Facilities
- Projects
- Okanogan Project
Okanogan Project
State: Washington
Region: Pacific Northwest
Related Documents
Okanogan Project History (57 KB)
Related Facilities
Related Links
Salmon Lake Dam
Concully Dam
Salmon Creek Diversion Dam
Concully Lake/Concully Reservoir
Lake Chelan National Recreation Area
Weather Conditions (NOAA)
Precipitation
Okanogan River at Malott, Washington (USGS)
Columbia River Snowpack Summary
Mountain Snowpack Maps for Columbia Basin
Palmer Drought Index Map
Explanation of Palmer Drought Severity Index (Text)
Salmon Creek near Conconully, Washington (USGS)
Okanogan River
Conconully Dam
Salmon Lake Dam
Salmon Creek Diversion Dam
Spring and Summer (NRCS)
General
Project facilities include Conconully Dam and Reservoir, Salmon Lake Dam and Conconully Lake, Salmon Creek Diversion Dam, and canals and laterals to serve some 5,000 acres of irrigable lands along the Okanogan River in the vicinity of Okanogan, Washington.
History
In 1886, the lands west of the Okanogan River were separated from the Colville Indian Reservation and thrown open to settlement. Settlers soon began to arrive and commenced irrigating forage crops for winter stock feed. In 1897, because of the popularity of irrigation and the increasing demand for water from Salmon Creek, or Salmon River as it was shown on early maps, the Conconully Reservoir Company was organized to manage storage of some 1,500 acre-feet of water in Salmon Lake. By 1902, about 1,500 acres of land with water-right appropriations of 57 cubic feet per second from the Salmon River had been developed.
Construction
Conconully Dam was built during 1907-1910, increased in height in 1920, and a new spillway completed in 1969; Salmon Lake Dam, 1919-1921; Salmon Creek Diversion Dam, 1906; North Fork Salmon Creek Diversion Dam, originally completed in 1920, but rebuilt in 1948; Main, High Line, and Low Line Canals, 1911-1917; Shell Rock Point Pumping Plant, 1977-1978. Full development of the project depended on reliable irrigation facilities. Although apples always have been the principal crop, other fruits, hay, and forage crops also are grown. Both Conconully Reservoir and Conconully Lake are located in an area of steep-sided hills that have open forests of coniferous and deciduous trees. Conconully Reservoir is the smaller of the two reservoirs in the area; it has 5 miles of shoreline. Four roads provide good access. There are three campgrounds but the reservoir area is used predominantly by picnickers. The reservoir offers good fishing for trout and perch. Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission administers recreation at Conconully Reservoir. Conconully Lake has 8 miles of shoreline and is served by one access road. There are two campgrounds on the lake, and two concessions provide lodging and rental boats. There is excellent trout fishing. Some of the upper reservoir area lies within the boundaries of the Okanogan National Forest which administers recreation for that portion. Recreation administration of the remaining reservoir area is by the Okanogan Irrigation District. For specific information on Conconully Reservoir click on the name below. http://www.recreation.gov/detail.cfm?ID=1213 http://www.recreation.gov/detail.cfm?ID=945 Isolated from markets, money and progress, but eager to join the rest of the irrigated West, Reclamation`s Okanogan Project brought the twentieth century to north central Washington state. The persistence of some 200 irrigators along the Okanogan River directed engineers to a spot described by historian Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., as the `last outpost of frontier life` in the American West. In the years prior to Reclamation`s arrival and the subsequent completion of a connecting railroad line, as fellow Washingtonians in Seattle and Spokane traveled paved streets in motor cars and trolleys, remote Okanogan still relied on stagecoaches and stern-wheeled riverboats coming up the Columbia River for supplies and contact with the outside world. Logic should have led Reclamation toward the promising Yakima region southwest of Okanogan County as the first authorized project in Washington. However, residents of Okanogan County mastered bluster and perseverance and lobbied Reclamation to build in an area which could support only a few cash crops, and did not have a connecting railroad line to outside markets. In the summer of 1910, Reclamation`s engineers felt a sense of accomplishment after completing their first hydraulic-fill earth dam on the Okanogan Project. All the local irrigators could feel was anticipation, as their county would soon be blanketed with apple orchards bearing, in the words of one grower, `fruit prolific and luscious.` Okanogan residents, tempted by a vision of prospective wealth dangling from the branches of their saplings, ignored the wisdom of the English poet Robert Browning: `Where the apple reddens/Never Pry/Lest we lose our Edens.` Eden briefly came to Okanogan County, but overestimation, bad luck and the elements conspired to take the luster off the growers` hopes. Situated in one of the continental United States` most secluded regions, the population center and county seat, the town of Okanogan, is a little over 200 miles east of Seattle. Shielded behind the Okanogan, Wenatchee and Cascade Mountain ranges, the county is cut-off by these natural barriers from the east-west traffic routes crossing the state. Okanogan County is dotted with a series of broken mountain ranges descending into rolling valleys. Project boundaries are the Okanogan River to the East, a series of foothills on the West, the town of Okanogan on the Southwestern extremity, and the town of Riverside on the north edge. Within project lands, there are 20 miles of main canals and 43 miles of laterals to serve 5,038 irrigable acres along the Okanogan River. The project lands rise from the Okanogan River on an eroded form of land known as benches. The benchlands extend back three miles from the riverbank to the foothills. The sandy, loose soil on the lower benchland along the river is called by locals as `The Flat.` The dirt on the upper benches is a rich volcanic ash underlaid with gravel, and unlike the soil along the river, will grow several different crops. The summers are hot and sunny, and in some years, unforgiving. Annual precipitation of 11.8 inches, plus a growing season of 168 days from May to September, provides favorable conditions for raising apples. These elements in combination set the stage for a century-and-a-half of quiet drama.(1) For centuries, north central Washington was home to a myriad of tribes, including the Northern and Southern Okanogan. Before Anglo-European migration crossed their lands, the area`s tribes were semi-nomadic, surviving by fishing and berry picking in the spring and summer and deer hunting in the fall. Relations among the regional bands were peaceful, as each tribe fought only to defend themselves from non-Okanogan attackers. In July 1811, whites made their first appearance in the Okanogan River Valley in search of beaver to satisfy the increasing demand for pelts. The `Oakinackken` (one of 50 early spellings of the tribe`s name and pronounced Oh-kaw-nogan) co-existed with the wandering newcomers until the late 1840s when the fur trade had gone out of fashion. A small gold find at Fraser River in British Columbia lured a few individuals to pass through the county along the Cariboo Trail. In 1886, another rush of gold seekers roamed through the county, but most of those fortune hunters left when the rush petered out, as homesteading was not in their characters.(2) Presumed to be the first white settler, Hiram Francis `Okanogan` Smith, settled near Lake Osoyoos along the Canadian border. Besides his mining and ranching interests, Smith is remembered for planting the first apple trees in the area. In the winter of 1861, Smith transported 1,200 young apple trees to his ranch. Smith also dug the region`s first irrigation ditch to water his young orchard. By the end of the 1860s, 24 acres of apples and eight acres of peaches, pears and grapes were growing on his property. Throughout the 1860s and 1870s, Smith, and the area`s sole saloon keeper, John Utz, appear to be the only white settlers in what later became Okanogan County. In the early 1870s, to encourage white settlement, the Federal government confined 4,200 Indians to a reservation running east from the Columbia River to the Pend Oreille River and from the U.S-Canadian border south to the Spokane River. Expressing the newcomers` viewpoint were men like Thomas H. Brentz, delegate to Congress from Washington Territory, who justified the government`s reduction of the reservation saying: `There is so much wealth here and so few Indians to use it.` However, into the 1880s, the region remained sparsely populated as one new arrival from the East described the county holding `only 30 white men and three white women in an area larger than Massachusetts.` Over the next 15 years, in a confusing series of shifts, government agencies rearranged the borders of the reservation. In 1886, the lands west of the Okanogan River were detached from the Colville Indian Reservation and advertised in the East for settlement. The numerous Eastern Washington tribes had the option to obtain allotments to farm west of the Okanogan River or move to the Colville reservation on the river's east bank.(3) West of the river, between 1886 and 1888, Dr. Joseph I. Pogue, and a horticulturalist, H.C. Richardson, dug four miles of ditch to deliver water from Salmon Creek to three different ranches. The duo fancied themselves potential fruit producers and realized that a little over 11 inches of rainfall a year made irrigation necessary for their nursery stock. As of 1893, Pogue`s fruit trees covered 60 acres, and the orchard was successful enough to encourage a small ripple of settlers to consider raising apples. An interested few came and planted forage crops for winter stock feed. In an attempt to foster interest in irrigation, an Okanogan newspaper editor, S.T. Sterling, began to promote an elaborate irrigation system storing Salmon Creek water in two local lakes (Green and Brown) then transporting it by ditches and flumes to apple orchards north of the town of Omak. In 1897, an increasing demand for water from Salmon Creek sparked the creation of the Conconully Reservoir Company. The company managed the storage of almost 1,500 acre-feet of water in Salmon Lake. Other associations and individuals also began to dig. By 1908, fifteen ditches irrigated 1,423 acres along Salmon Creek and neighboring Spring Coulee and Pogue Flat.(4) In 1902, the news reached north central Washington that President Theodore Roosevelt approved the Newlands Act. The birth of the Reclamation Service inspired Sterling to craft a slight exaggeration on behalf of his neighbors. In a letter to the newly formed U.S.R.S., Sterling stated `50,000 to 75,000 acres of arid land` along the Okanogan River was waiting to be reclaimed by an `inexpensive reservoir.` Attached to the letter was a petition signed by 200 residents calling themselves the Okanogan County Improvement Club, also requesting the new Reclamation Service to come out and survey the land. That invitation opened the last frontier in the West to domestication.(5) On March 3, 1903, Chief Engineer of the Reclamation Service Frederick H. Newell, directed Seattle engineer T. A. Noble to go to Okanogan and research the feasibility of beginning the project. Noble completed his report in April 1903, and concluded Reclamation should begin a project utilizing the waters of Salmon Creek and nearby Johnson Creek combining a storage facility constructed at one of five potential sites. Those sites were Conconully and Salmon Lakes, the Scotch Coulee, and Green and Brown Lakes. Throughout 1903-04, Charles E. Hewitt surveyed the entire county for the ideal damsite. Hewitt`s report of October 23, 1904, to Noble, and Supervising Engineer H.N. Savage, recommended canceling the project. Hewitt believed the drawbacks of dam building on Salmon Creek included a prohibitive estimated construction cost of $45 per acre and inflated shipping rates for materials. Each of the five proposed was 50 miles from a rail line and accessible by boat for only three months out of the year.(6) This setback swung the persistent settlers back into action. They sought the support of Congressman Wesley L. Jones of Yakima, who helped draft the Newlands Act of 1902. Local representatives went to Washington, D.C. to meet with Secretary of Interior Ethan A. Hitchcock to convince him to reconsider Reclamation`s decision. Their arguments swayed Hitchcock, and he launched another round of investigations and reports. The revised plan proposed `the storage of 12,000 acre-feet of water in Conconully Reservoir and 4,300 acre-feet in Salmon Lake Reservoir; the water from Conconully Reservoir to follow the channel of Salmon Creek to a diversion point some three miles above the town of Okanogan.`(7) On December 2, 1905, Hitchcock authorized expenditure of up to $500,000 to build the Okanogan project. The cost of the plan included construction of the dam, necessary buildings, telephone lines, purchase of water rights, and a maintenance contract for 10 years. Assessment against 8,645 acres covered by the project would be $420,179, at a cost per acre of $48.60. The Okanogan Water Users Association, representing some 10,000 acres along the Okanogan River, formed immediately following Hitchcock`s decision.(8) If patience and determination are necessary in raising apples, those same qualities came in handy in the growers` campaign to convince Reclamation to trek out to Okanogan County and raise Washington state`s first federally built dam. From an engineering and commercial viewpoint, a better location to build would have been the Yakima Valley some 190 miles southwest of Okanogan, where the railroads and population were both thriving. Still, in keeping with Reclamation`s quest to reclaim all the arid West, Okanogan`s growers were given a second hearing. Their persistence won them the authorization race with their larger neighbor, as Hitchcock sanctioned Yakima ten days after Okanogan, on Dec. 12, 1905. In early April 1906, construction began on the worker`s camp, located at the foot of Pogue Mountain on vacant public land. The camp was near the proposed main canal and laterals and a spring on Pogue property. Entirely comprised of wood framed structures, the camp consisted of a project engineer`s house, office building, bunkhouse, stable and a mess house measuring 18 by 60 feet. All construction from campsite to dam was completed by `force account` through small contracts with local contractors. Project engineers made the decision to use force account labor after they felt bids to construct a storage works and main canal were too high.(9) By mid-April, 7,206 acres of Okanogan County were designated as project lands. Nearly all the pre-existing water rights and ditches now belonged to the project. Work at the dam site began in mid-August 1906, with the clearing of 460 acres of partly wooded meadow by contract labor to prepare the land for the main canal and laterals. Later in 1906, the first element of the Okanogan Project, the Salmon Creek Diversion Dam, was finished 12 miles downstream from the proposed Conconully Dam. The diversion dam is six feet high and 140 feet across at the crest. The dam diverts the Salmon Creek releases to the Main Canal, which is two miles long and has a capacity of 100 cfs. This canal divides at a `Y` into the Six mile long High Line and the four mile long Low Line Canals. Salmon Creek has a 300-cubic-foot-per-second overflow capacity.(10) Preparatory work on the Conconully Dam commenced in March 1907. The dam`s design featured a core wall of sheet piling covered with rock and earth next to a spillway and an outlet tunnel. In the middle of May, excavation revealed the foundation`s soil was too loose to support an 80-foot high earth dam. Construction halted and a new round of surveys began farther up the canyon in search of a better location. On June 8, the Project Engineer, Christian Andersen, and a three man Board of Engineers approved moving the dam to a new site 3,000 feet north of the original excavation. The new location reduced the dam`s storage capacity from 16,000 to 13,000 acre feet, but relocation was necessary for the project`s longterm stability.(11) Conconully Dam was the first project in Reclamation`s short history to be built by hydraulic methods. Construction Engineer Lars Bergsvik previously worked in hydraulic mining before he oversaw the Okanogan Project. His expertise would guide other engineers and laborers since Reclamation lacked standard plans of their own to follow. The granite and soil of nearby Peacock Mountain provided the dam`s material. A little more than a thousand feet west of the dam, two rock pits alongside the mountain were cleared with the help of blasting powder. The pits were used alternately; one a starting point for sluicing rock and earth to the damsite, and the other a holding area for rocks too large to be carried by water down a steel-lined flume. A team of workmen broke the larger rocks with sledgehammers before the material went down the flume.(12) Darting over hills and around trees for almost three-and-a-half miles, the flume carried water from the North and West Forks of Salmon Creek to gravel pits on Peacock Mountain south of the town of Conconully. The fast moving water sluiced 349,455 cubic yards of dirt and rock from the pits through 3,000 feet of flume to the damsite. Ninety-six foot high trestles, resembling a towering spider web or an amusement park roller coaster, supported the flume. The flume construction proceeded in three stages during 1907, 1908 and 1910. The finished structure followed a sloping downhill grade of four to three percent. The man-made channels carried 25 cubic feet per second (cfs) of water, and the largest rocks carried down the four percent grade flumes weighed about 250 pounds. At the end of their ride at the damsite, a shower of rock, dirt and water tumbled from the flumes to form the embankment. At the damsite, side gates swung across the flume every 16 feet, discharging the entire flow of water and material. Two gates near the dam opened simultaneously (according to the amount of water carried by the supply flume) usually turning out at the first opening or gate, releasing coarse material on the outside slopes to form a levee. The other two gates discharged on the inside, carrying finer material toward the center of the dam, manufacturing a pond between the two levees. In 1909, engineers ordered the placement of a puddle core to compensate for the lack of fine material at the rock pits. Conconully Dam`s puddle core is a water-tight core made of silt and very fine sand stratified in thin layers. Much of the silt and sand was dredged from the bottom of Salmon Creek.(13) As a transfusion of earth formed the dam above ground, workmen below were drilling 394 feet through a hill on the east end of the works sculpting a tunnel. Hand drills were used on the seamy granite to create a tunnel for irrigation flow. Excavation began in July 1907 and concluded six months later. For the next three years, the previously perpetual tranquility of Okanogan County was disturbed by the sounds of blasting powder smashing rock and the running jumble of earth and rock shooting down the flumes.(14) In the second year of construction, 1908, the wear and tear of thousands of cubic yards of dirt and rock coursing through the main flume was noticeable. Five times during the first season the No. 10 mild steel plates had to be replaced after taking a beating from the rocks. Eventually, the flume was redesigned so the wear was redistributed more evenly. The seasons annually hindered construction, as the cold and snowy winters halted sluicing, and lack of precipitation in summer saw little flow to move material quickly through the flumes.(15) Riding along the trestles across several ravines and draws, the silt, sand and rock pile eventually grew into a dam crest 1,025 feet long. After workmen dressed the slopes of the dam into neat lines, the finished structure stood 70 feet high. Work concluded in late June-early July of 1910. Between 1907 and 1910, the dam`s diversion weir, main canals and laterals were also completed.(16) Work on all projects progressed steadily except for two interruptions. On the night of January 27-28, 1907, camp headquarters caught fire and destroyed the assistant`s quarters and many office files, maps, profiles and vouchers. The fire burned plans for a distribution system that resulted in month`s delay while the plans were re-drawn. In late July 1909, laborers and pitmen called the first general strike in Okanogan County history. In an average construction season, a shift employed 17 men clearing the pit and tending the flumes. Pay for these men ranged from $2.25 to $2.75 for an 8-hour day. Strikers demanded an increase of 50 cents a day and cookies once a week. The three day strike ended when the workers settled for a 25-cent pay raise. Management acceded to labor`s demand on the cookies bargaining point.(17) Despite the setbacks, on May 4, 1909, the first irrigation water flowed to 2,000 acres in the southern part of the project. As operations wound down in June-July, 1910, the finished product stood 70 feet high and contained 359,000 cubic yards of fill. Construction was also way over the original estimate of $500,000, as the project`s remoteness and demanding climate pushed the final cost up to $1,513,287.(18) In many areas, once Reclamation completed a reservoir, benefits could be seen almost immediately in nearby irrigated fields. Okanogan`s apple producers practiced patience, as they grew potatoes, onion and beans between their rows of saplings. Growers faced a wait of up to seven years before their apple trees would bear fruit. In the intervening time, the partnership between local growers and Reclamation would remain close.
Plan
Water is stored in Conconully Lake, a natural lake in which additional storage was developed by the construction of Salmon Lake Dam and a feeder canal diverting water from Salmon Creek, and in Conconully Reservoir, formed by the construction of Conconully Dam on Salmon Creek. Both reservoirs are near the town of Conconully, about 17 miles northwest of Okanogan. Water released from the reservoirs is conveyed through the channel of Salmon Creek for about 12 miles to the diversion dam and main canal heading. Two pumping plants provide a supplemental water supply during water-short years. Shell Rock Point Pumping Plant lifts water from the Okanogan River, and Duck Lake Pumping Plant lifts water from Duck Lake. Salmon Lake Dam is an earthfill structure 54 feet high, and has a volume of 195,000 cubic yards. The total active reservoir capacity of Conconully Lake is 15,700 acre-feet (active 10,500 acre-feet). The spillway is a siphon type with a capacity of 400 cubic feet per second. The outlet works is a conduit controlled by two gates. A small diversion headwords structure on Salmon Creek diverts the flow into the reservoir through a short feeder canal. In July 1998, a reservoir operating restriction to elevation 2314 feet was imposed on Conconully Lake as an interim risk reduction measure pending structural modifications to address seismic safety concerns. This reduces the active reservoir capacity to 7,400 acre-feet. Conconully Dam is a hydraulic earthfill structure that when completed in 1910, was 70 feet high, and contained 359,000 cubic yards of fill. In 1920, the dam was raised 2.5 feet. Total capacity of the reservoir is 13,000 acre-feet (active 13,000 acre-feet). During 1968-69, the crest of the dam was repaired with new embankment materials and riprap. The old open-chute concrete spillway that had an inadequate capacity of 6,000 cubic feet per second was replaced with a concrete-baffled apron spillway that has a capacity of 11,580 cubic feet per second. About 12 miles downstream from Conconully Dam is the concrete diversion weir, 6 feet high, and 140 feet across the crest, with a 300 cubic-foot-per-second overflow capacity. The dam diverts Salmon Creek releases to the Main Canal, which is 2 miles long and has a capacity of 100 cubic feet per second which conveys water to the High Line and Low Line Canals. The Shell Rock Point Pumping Plant was built on the Okanogan River in 1977-1978 to replace two smaller pumping plants. The new plant has four pumps, each with a capacity of 8.3 cubic feet per second against a total head of 620 feet that discharge into the High Line Canal. Each drive motor is rated at 800 horsepower. Operation and maintenance of the irrigation system was assumed by the Okanogan Irrigation District on December 31, 1928.
Contact
Contact
Title: Field Office ManagerOrganization: Ephrata Field Office
Address: 32 C Street, NW
City: Ephrata, WA 98823-1636
Fax: 509-754-0239
Phone: 509-754-0261
Contact
Title: Public Affairs OfficerOrganization: Pacific Northwest Regional Office
Address: 1150 N Curtis Road, Suite 100
City: Boise, ID 83706-1234
Fax: 208-378-5019
Phone: 208-378-5020
Contact
Title: Public Affairs OfficerOrganization: Commissioner`s Office
Address: 1849 C Street NW
City: Washington, DC 20240
Fax: 202-513-0575
Phone: 202-513-0305