Riverton Unit

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Riverton Unit History (86 KB)

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Construction

Pilot Butte Dam is 10 miles below Wind River Diversion Dam. Pilot Butte is a barrier across a natural depression to the right of the Wyoming Canal. Three embankments form the dam. The main earth and rockfill embankment is 51 feet high with a 1,300-foot long crest. The two supplemental earth and rockfill dikes stand 25 feet high and their combined crests span 4,600 feet. The dam`s spillway is a concrete, overflow type with a crest length of 100 feet. The spillway converges into a 741-foot long trapezoidal chute, carrying a capacity of 500 cfs. The outlet works is a semicircular concrete conduit, 13.5 feet by 9 feet, near the center of the main embankment. Three slide gates, each 4.8 feet by 6 feet, control the flow through the dam. The conduit provides a maximum diversion of 1,000 cfs into Pilot Canal. About 204,000 cubic yards of fill formed the three embankments. A wasteway from Pilot Canal regulates 31,600 acre-feet of water held by the Pilot Butte Reservoir. Found about 1,200 feet downstream from the dam, the wasteway features a control works at the canal and a short reach of earth channel. The channel discharges through a flume into the spillway chute, and water returns through the chute to the Wind River. After four years of construction, the reservoir first held water in December 1926.(25) Work on the Pilot Butte Power Plant lasted from 1923 until 1925. Water from the Wyoming Canal to the Pilot Butte Reservoir dropped 105 feet in elevation, turning the plant`s turbines. The plant ran two generating units with a total capacity of 1,600 kilowatts. First deliveries from the plant powered the electric draglines that cleared the canals and laterals. The plant later joined an interconnected system that included Reclamation`s Shoshone and Kendrick Projects and other electric companies in southeast Wyoming, Nebraska, and northern Colorado. At its peak, transmission facilities consisted of 85.5 miles of 34.5 kilovolt line, three miles of 2.3 kilovolt line, and four substations.(26) Often times a sidelight to construction of the other dams, work continued at its own pace on the Wyoming Canal. Crews completed the canal`s first section, a 9.2-mile stretch from the diversion dam to the power plant, in 1924. The initial capacity of the first section is 2,200 cfs. Water first flowed through a subsequent 7.5-mile leg in 1926. The second section`s initial capacity is 1,750 cfs. Four inch reinforced concrete lined 16.7 miles of the first two sections. Besides excavating the canal, laborers dug 212 miles of various sized ditches, disrupting 6.6 million cubic yards of material in the process.(27) There were many obstacles to vanquish during construction. Machinery continually skirmished with the hard soil to chisel out canals. In 1921, heavy spring run-off in June blocked transportation of men across the Wind River from the diversion dam camp. By the next year, a labor shortage during August and September slowed work on the Pilot Butte Dam and Reservoir. A cement shortage in October, bad roads, cold, and truck breakdowns in November, and delays in receiving canal diagrams, concluded a troubled year. In the summer of 1923, nature provided another roadblock. A prolonged rain storm, from July 21 to July 28, swept away a thousand cubic yards of material from the canal. On the afternoon of July 24, two inches of rain fell in thirty minutes at the Wind River Diversion Dam. The storm washed out rail lines and roads leading from Riverton and knocked out telephones.(28) Reclamation employed force account labor to excavate the canal and construct the dams. The time of the year and availability of men determined the rate of pay. Wages ranged from a peak of $4.50 a day in January and February, to $3.60 a day after June 30. The Government struggled finding all kinds of workers, but required carpenters above any other type of laborer. Reclamation`s willingness to pay carpenters $7.24 a day reflected their importance. Reclamation kept an average of 200 workers in the field during 1923, with as many as 330 men during September 1924. Reclamation engineer James Munn described the laborer`s camp as `well constructed, but not expensive looking.` Workers called their home `Shack Town.` No doctor lived at the site, but the camp maintained good sanitary conditions. Workers hauled garbage daily, pumped their water from deep wells and disposed of sewage in septic tanks.(29) From an engineering standpoint, Reclamation made great strides after six years in Riverton. Washington, however, decided the project fell short in other categories. On a 1925 tour of Reclamation ventures in the upper Great Plains, Interior Secretary Hubert Work and Reclamation Commissioner Elwood Mead halted further construction of the canal system. In Riverton on June 23, the pair concluded `it was folly` to proceed until the project attracted more settlers. They stated Riverton would never reach financial stability while private interests held 10,000 out of 15,000 acres of the First Division. Secretary Work chastised these absentee owners, `for whose benefit the Government had spent millions.` Work claimed `there was no justification for spending still more millions in building other units where identical conditions prevail.`(30) Sporadic work on the Second Division lateral system was the only construction between 1925 and 1939. Persistent promotion of Riverton in federally-distributed literature, and the demoralizing effects of the Depression finally awakened interest in the First and Second Divisions. To provide for that day when settlers would come in great numbers, the project needed to extend the canal system, and create a supplemental storage facility above Wind River Diversion Dam. After a decade of construction inactivity, a 1935 Reclamation investigation led to an appropriation of $1 million from the Emergency Relief Act to fund Bull Lake Dam. S.J. Groves and Sons Co. of Minneapolis won the contract to build the dam with a bid of $653,397.50. The firm went to work on March 28, 1936, agreeing to finish the job in 700 calendar days. Delays in receiving materials and the weather forced a 120-day contract extension. Driven by common laborers earning a dollar an hour, progress that first year started slowly. Work accelerated during the spring and summer months before a cold December halted construction for 1936.(31) Bull Lake Dam straddles Bull Lake Creek, 2.5 miles above the creek`s junction with the Wind River. According to Shoshone beliefs, Bull Lake is a `home of monsters,` where spirits changed men into Water Buffalo. Reclamation reported no calamities or transformations during construction of Bull Lake Dam. The dam is in a glacial moraine at the outlet end of the lake, impounding water above the lake`s original level. Three horizontal curves on the dam`s axis take advantage of the surrounding rock formation, permitting maximum storage with a minimum of material. More than 648,000 cubic yards of rolled earth and 162,000 cubic yards of riprap and rockfill formed the dam. Standing 81 feet high, Bull Lake Dam is 3,456 feet long at a crest elevation of 5,813 feet. Early in construction, workers selected rocks more than five inches in diameter for future use in the rockfill and riprap sections. Stones larger than five inches littered the site, so crews fashioned a 14-foot long trommel from steel rails to pick up the big rocks. The material traveled to the embankment in loading trucks and buggies. The vehicles dumped the rock at the dam site for bulldozers and a dragline to level its surface.(32) Bull Lake Dam`s spillway is 100 feet wide and 470 feet long with a maximum capacity of 11,000 cfs. Three 11-foot by 29-foot automatic radial gates control the spillway`s flow. The outlet works features two conduits, approximately eight feet in diameter, operated by two 5-foot by 5-foot slide gates. The outlet`s maximum capacity is 4,500 cfs. First storage at the dam came in May 1938, and Reclamation completed construction by July 22 that year. Bull Lake cost a little more than a million dollars.(33) To preserve Riverton`s facilities, Reclamation asked the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to help them tackle the greatest natural threat to the project`s progress, erosion. Beginning in May 1941, enrollees on loan from the Alcova Project camp spent the next year planting 50,000 tree cuttings. The young trees, running along Five Mile Creek in the middle of the project, prevented rising silt. Besides rip-rapping and laying gravel and brush to fight erosion, CCC forces placed approximately a hundred abandoned cars filled with rock along the banks of the creek. Their efforts helped, as the 1940s brought settlers and stability to the First and Second Divisions. Now, Reclamation turned its attention to the lands they avoided for two decades -- the 49,000 acre Third Division.(34) Actual construction began on the main canal in January 1920. Construction of the Wind River Diversion Dam was started in July 1921 and was completed in 1923. In 1925, water was delivered to project lands. Further construction was carried out in the 1930`s and following the end of World War II. The construction period for Bull Lake Dam was during 1936-1938. Coincidental with construction of canals and laterals to serve new lands in recent years, major work in draining land already irrigated has been carried out. The unit is being modified to include relief to water users, construction, betterment of works, land rehabilitation, water conservation, fish and wildlife conservation and development, flood control, and silt control on the entire unit. Unit modifications consist mainly of addition of sediment excluders at the Wyoming Canal headworks, repair of Wind River Diversion Dam, lining for main canals, lining and pipe for laterals, drains, and fish and wildlife facilities. Principal crops are alfalfa, beans, alfalfa seed, sugar beets, barley, oats, wheat, sunflower seeds, and potatoes. Bull Lake Reservoir offers boating and good trout fishing. Ocean Lake, an offstream reservoir located in the center of the irrigated lands about 15 miles northwest of Riverton, is not a storage reservoir, but was created as a result of operation of the unit. Pilot Butte Reservoir, about 10 miles below Wind River Diversion Dam, is also a popular recreation area. For specific information about any of these recreation sites, click on the name below. http://www.recreation.gov/detail.cfm?ID=1245 http://www.recreation.gov/detail.cfm?ID=1247 Bull Lake, with an active capacity of 151,737 acre-feet has greatly reduced flooding on Bull Lake Creek and contributes to the abatement of floods on the Wind River. Total damages reduced by Bull Lake Reservoir since construction has totaled $2.6 million as of 1998. In the late summer of 1928, George C. Kreutzer, the Bureau of Reclamation`s director of economics left the Interior Department building in Washington, D.C. for the wilds of Wyoming. In his four years as economics director, Kreutzer visited every section of the irrigated West. Like most of his assignments, this one came directly from his friend and boss, Reclamation Commissioner Elwood Mead. In Wyoming, Kreutzer would canvass the scattering of settlers eking out a living off alfalfa and forage on the Riverton Project. Kreutzer approached his assignment with apprehension, as Riverton carried the reputation as one of Reclamation`s trouble spots. Through the cutting wind, and over the hard ground of west-central Wyoming, the bureaucrat made his way in a Government Model T, speaking with all 16 project homesteaders. Back in Washington that November, Kreutzer presented his findings in a memo to Secretary Mead. He reported none of the structures on the project were `suitable to house a family,` apologizing he could not further illustrate the hardships he found with photographs of barns as `there weren`t any to take.`(1) An irrigation project without any farm buildings is one of many incongruities littered throughout the history of the Riverton Project. When first dreamed of at the turn-of-the-century, no one ever considered the difficulties of irrigating Riverton. Engineers working for the state of Wyoming, and later Reclamation, believed they could irrigate from 100,000 to 200,000 acres along the Wind River. The Federal Government assigned the United States Reclamation Service (USRS) the task of supplying water to a handful of irrigators in the early 1920s. For the USRS, the twenties were a decade of inertia sandwiched between the classic dams built in the century`s early years and the New Deal-post World War II construction bonanza of the 1930s to 1970s. The growth of the Riverton Project (as Reclamation called the Unit from 1918 to 1970), staggers across those eras. After decades of bad luck and wrong choices, by the 1990s, a little more than 70,000 acres received water. As years went by, the Project became more of a salvage operation than an efficient irrigation enterprise. If words could aptly describe what the elements have done to a physical landmark over countless centuries, it would be the Wind River. For millennia, gusts cut patches of rough sandstone and shale escarpments out of the gently sloping alluvial valleys formed by the river`s tributaries. Various sized rocks jut along the banks, covered by clumps of sagebrush, while a few sturdy trees clustered around the only available source of water. The Wind River Basin is a crescent-shaped valley about 130 miles long and 70 miles wide. The Wind River Mountains form the project`s west and southwest border, while the Owl Creek and Copper Mountains tower over the Project`s northern edge. The headwaters of the Wind River rise on the northeastern slope of the Wind River Mountains. Flowing southeast to south of the town of Riverton, the stream unites with the Popo Agie (pronounced Poposia) River before creating the Big Horn River. Before a drought cycle in the mid-1970s, Wind River`s estimated average annual runoff was 897,900 acre-feet. With an average elevation of 4,700 to 5,500 feet, the irrigable lands are mostly sandy. A few inches beneath the top soil, heavy clay underlaid by sandstone and shallow decomposed shale allows no drainage and waterlogs easily. Also working against growers is the high alkali content of the Wind River. The sodium carried by the water prevents the maturation of many crops.(2) In Western Wyoming, there is more value in what man takes from under the ground than what he plants above ground. This is oil and uranium country, and conditions favor certain sturdy crops. Months of inclement weather bookend a few weeks of summer warmth. Bright, cloud-free days that encourage rapid growth, characterize Wind River`s summers. Farmers along the Wind River have an average of 140 days to work with between the last killing frosts of May and September`s first cold snap. The average annual temperature is 44.5 F, but the thermometer can plummet as low as -42 F in the winter and top out 101 F in the summer. Precipitation totals a little more than nine inches annually.(3) The Unit derives its water supply from the Wind River and its tributaries. The Bull Lake Dam can hold up to 152,000 acre-feet in Bull Lake Reservoir. Water released from Bull Lake Reservoir flows through Bull Lake Creek on to the Wind River, augmenting the flow of that stream. Pilot Butte Dam holds supplemental storage in the Pilot Butte Reservoir. The 31,600 acre feet capacity reservoir receives water diverted by the Wind River Diversion Dam. The 62.4-mile Wyoming Canal runs from the diversion dam, stops at the Pilot Butte Reservoir, and on to the Unit`s distribution systems. The 38-mile long Pilot Canal flows easterly from Pilot Butte Reservoir to service acreage south of the Wyoming Canal. Pilot Butte Powerplant, once sat at the drop from the Wyoming Canal to Pilot Butte Reservoir, but high operation costs and penstock problems closed the plant in June 1973.(4) Before its incorporation into the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin program in 1970, Reclamation divided project lands into three segments, or divisions. The First Division reached from Wind River Diversion Dam to Pilot Butte Reservoir. The Second Division extended eastward seven miles from Pilot Butte Reservoir, and the Third Division, headed north and east for 46 miles. Much of the settlement of the First and Second Divisions occurred between 1926 and 1939, while the Federal Government bought back much of the Third Division during the 1960s. The Midvale Irrigation District currently operates and maintains the Riverton Unit.(5) Bands of Eastern Shoshone roamed western Wyoming since roughly 1500 A.D. Over the next two centuries, the Eastern Shoshone hunted buffalo and mountain sheep with little outside interference. Among other tribes in the Wind River Basin they developed a reputation as a `militaristic, buffalo-hunting people.` The Shoshone quickly benefitted from later contacts with the Spanish, the mixture of French and native peoples known as Metis, and Anglo-Americans. Their success in spiriting away horses from each group bolstered the Shoshone`s regional dominance.(6) Two French fur trapping brothers claimed to be the first Europeans to see the Wind River Basin. In 1743, the Verendrye brothers got as far as the present location of Sheridan, Wyoming. More than a century passed before the United States established the region`s first permanent outside presence. In 1863, the Government signed a `treaty of friendship` with the Shoshone that allowed for white commerce and settlement across 45 million acres of Shoshone territory. By July 1868, the Federal Government solidified their control over the indigenous peoples of the region. A treaty between the United States and the Shoshone created a reservation later known as Wind River. In signing the agreement, the Shoshone gave up their nomadic nature to farm three million acres in west-central Wyoming. The following year, at Lander, the U.S. Army erected Camp Augur to protect the Shoshone and whites against Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho attack.(7) The progress of irrigation followed separate paths once the Shoshone went on the reservation. A few white settlers commenced the earliest irrigation development in the 1860s as ranching developed along the Little Wind and Popo Agie Rivers. Indian irrigation began with the digging of the Crooked Creek ditch in 1871, and continued through the 1890s. Development was sporadic until 1905. That year, the United States Indian Service (USIS) supervised the construction of five irrigation units.(8) Three revisions to the 1868 treaty sliced away at the Shoshone`s three million acre home over the next four decades. On September 26, 1872, the tribe`s leader, Washakie, agreed to relinquish 601,120 acres on the reservation`s south end to the Federal Government. Despite the imposed limits of their new home, the Shoshone thrived in their confinement. They fished, gathered, and hunted buffalo until the animal disappeared in the late 1880s. Their dominion did not last, as the Government sought to reach a compromise with another tribe at the Shoshone`s expense. Since the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, the Northern Arapaho roamed northern Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming, attacking miners, settlers, and other tribes along the way. In 1878, the Indian Service transferred the Northern Arapahos by military escort to the Shoshone Reservation. The Government promised the Shoshone the arrangement was only `temporary.` Once in Wyoming, the Northern Arapaho refused to move. Seeking a compromise, the Government awarded the Arapahos half the Shoshone domain. Over time, the Shoshone occupied allotments in the west and northwest sections of the reservation, while the Arapaho clustered in the east and southeast regions.(9) In 1896, both tribes agreed to relinquish 64,000 acres from the reservation`s northeast corner for $60,000 from the United States. On March 3, 1905, Congress took an additional slice with the ratification of the McLaughlin Agreement. Named for Indian Inspector Major James McLaughlin, the Agreement determined the reservation held `excess` lands of more than 1.4 million acres. The Federal government would offer this `excess` through sale to white settlers. The Government applied the proceeds to a per capita payment of $50 to each Indian that developed and extend the reservation`s irrigation system. The money also created a school district and a welfare and improvement fund.(10) Investigation of the reservation`s value for white settlement was in the works for nine months before ratification of the McLaughlin Agreement. In 1904, Goyne Drummond, a civil engineer and deputy U.S. mineral surveyor conducted a `reconnaissance` of the ceded lands. Drummond claimed the rolling land drained well, adding `very little of it will be injured by seepage water.` Drummond surveyed a narrow strip of land from the Big Wind River to Muddy Creek, offering only an approximation of the total irrigable land on the reservation in his report. Two years later, Drummond was among the 1,600 people granted a homestead in Riverton. Later settlement proved that Drummond overestimated the soil quality of irrigable lands, but he was not alone in his optimism. In 1906, the Wyoming State Engineers Office devised a complex irrigation plan to water 265,000 acres along the Wind River.(11) To turn these concepts into reality, the Wind River Basin needed people. The Government scheduled one of the last big land-rushes in the history of the Wild West for August 15, 1906. A Denver newspaper opined, `Not since the Oklahoma rush has there been so much interest manifested in the opening of a reservation.` Arriving by wagons, buckboards, horseback, and on foot, nearly ten thousand people gathered at the reservation`s border. Rapidly, a collection of tents and shacks rose, housing newcomers set to claim every plot as quickly as it could be measured. Under the Homestead Laws, land sold at $1.50 an acre in the first two years after the Riverton opening, and for $1.25 per acre over the next three years. Five years after the land rush remaining unsold lands went at public auction for a $1 per acre. After eight years, the Secretary of the Interior had the right to sell any further remaining acreage to the highest bidder. The plots wanted by squatters were closest to where the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad announced they were extending their line after the opening. One entryman, Arwed Holmberg, desired such a plot, `because the railroad ran through it, and if I couldn`t make a living off it, I could catch a freight out.`(12) During the first few weeks of life, the town of Riverton was in a place somewhere between civilization and anarchy. A few of the farsighted realized if the town was going to survive, it would have to find water. On September 24, the state granted a permit allowing the Wyoming Central Irrigation Company, (WCIC), the opportunity to build a canal system in the ceded area. Years before the Government opened the reservation, the WCIC, (led by president and table salt magnate Joy Morton and Wyoming`s Secretary of State, Fenimore Chatterton) planned to dig two large canals. From the Wind River, the ditches measured 35 and 40 miles long. The company intended to sell perpetual water rights at $20 to $38 an acre, the price varying with terms of payment. By early autumn, Riverton`s land-rush slowed to a trot. In September, 300 more people filed homestead papers, with another 200 more arriving before winter sent in. These late comers held acreage without having to promise to take water from the WCIC. The situation forced the company to postpone building the two canals. Another private group took the initiative, and started excavation on a canal in October 1906. Work progressed through a mild winter, as a fine wind-blown dust, not snow, covered settlers' shacks and tents. The canal opened in time for the first spring planting the following year, serving 12,000 near town. The final cost of completing the town`s first aqueduct totaled $75,000.(13) Unable to convince enough settlers to sign repayment contracts, the WCIC gradually lost interest in building the two canals. In 1910, the state allowed the WCIC to conduct business under a new name. Company engineers resurveyed the area, reporting that much of the land was unirrigable. After the reading the new survey, the state canceled all rights held by the WCIC. Two years later, the WCIC`s land rights returned to the state. By 1918, all rights and permits belonged to Reclamation.(14) Prodded by the Wyoming delegation to Congress, the Federal Government went forward with developing Wind River. On May 18, 1916, Congress provided $5,000 for preliminary surveys and development. The Government earmarked almost half toward investigation of reservation lands. The examination included a topography study of two proposed canals, the Wyoming and Pilot, and a soil survey. The following year, an additional $5,000 supported a more detailed study led by Reclamation Engineer C.T. Pease. Pease`s report came out in 1918, refuting key points made by Drummond and the Wyoming Engineers Office. He saved his most damaging conclusions for the end of the document: `seepage may be expected to occur over a large part of the irrigable area` and `a comprehensive drainage system will be necessary to maintain the irrigability of the lands.` The report estimated a cost of $15 an acre to complete the drainage system. Pease recommended Reclamation would be better off to avoid some 18,930 acres until they first built drainage facilities. Despite the risks identified in the Pease Report, on May 25, 1918, Congress provided $100,000 for continuation of investigations and to begin construction.(15) Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane authorized the project on June 19, 1918, under the terms of the Indian Appropriation Act for the fiscal year 1919. The Indian Appropriation Act guaranteed funding of $3,650,000 for construction and development from July 1918 to June 30, 1926. On September 27, 1918, Secretary Lane withdrew from public entry a large portion of the Wind River Reservation ceded by the Shoshones and Arapahos under the 1905 McLaughlin agreement. Reclamation made the withdrawal under laws reserving the lands for the Riverton project. Eventually, the Government claimed some 332,000 acres. The Act of June 5, 1920 placed the project under the jurisdiction of the United States Reclamation Service. The legislation fixed Reclamation with the responsibility for everything at Riverton, including project expenditures. A subsequent act passed by Congress on March 4, 1921, returned developed portions of the Project to Indian Service control, placing the undeveloped portions under the USRS`s domain. The Government paid the tribes $1.50 an acre for some 100,000 acres.(16) In the midst of this land trading, one certainty made his way to Riverton. In August 1918, the USRS selected Harold D. Comstock as project manager. In his first month on the job, Comstock proposed to Reclamation`s Chief Engineer Franklin E. Weymouth naming the project, Fremont. The name highlighted the project`s location in Fremont County and memorialized the man `intimately connected with the opening up of the arid West,` John C. Fremont. Commissioner Arthur P. Davis agreed to the suggestion a month later. A collection of Riverton residents got wind of the government`s plans, and appealed to Davis to name the project after their town. In another month`s time, the Commissioner reconsidered for the Riverton Project. Naming the project was a minor controversy compared to the dilemmas Comstock dealt with over the next 26 years. Years later, a Casper, Wyoming newspaper described Comstock as: `Practical, quick to make judgments, backed by years of similar experience, devoid of lack of faith in the reclamation service and its loyal men to do what must be done, Comstock is building his own monument.` Leaving this kind of adoration behind must have been hard, but Comstock departed Riverton to become the first Director of Region 6 in Billings, Montana in 1944.(17) A small force of Federal surveyors and construction men assembled in Riverton in August 1918 to conduct surveys and begin preliminary construction. Early activity revolved around completion of a large warehouse at Riverton, establishing a Project office in the town`s Masonic Temple, and hooking up 42 miles of telephone line. Simultaneously, the United States Bureau of Soils classified the quality of project lands. Work also started on the Pavillion laborers camp, some 30 miles from Riverton. Home base for the canal diggers, the Pavillion camp later included residences, office, warehouse, and a maintenance shop.(18) In 1965, University of Wyoming professor T.A. Larson reflected on the Federal development of Riverton. He wrote, `Congress frowned on new reclamation starts,` with the USRS` mission during the 1920s consisting of `salvaging old projects.` Once in Wyoming, the Reclamation Service found that the deeper their involvement in Riverton, the harder it was to please anybody.(19) `The population (of Riverton) is mixed with Indians, half breeds and old timers, many of whom have little faith in the modern development of agricultural lands in this section,` observed Miles Cannon, field Reclamation commissioner, in the summer of 1923.(20) `A useless endeavor to reclaim sage-brush land that lies at an altitude of 5000` prohibiting the successful growing of almost everything but alfalfa hay,` grumbled F.W. Smith, a Lenore, Wyoming general store owner in a 1924 letter to Interior Secretary Hubert Work.(21) `If settlement is to be unaided . . . this development will be slow and the returns to the Government disappointing. The successful settlement and development of the land is therefore the most serious problem connected with this project,` warned Reclamation Commissioner Elwood Mead in 1925.(22) Buried under crescendo of criticism, it is hard to believe that Reclamation first tackled Riverton with guarded confidence. Seven men and two draglines made their way north from the Rio Grande Project in New Mexico to Wyoming in the last days of 1919. The last 37 miles of their journey from Riverton to the construction camp crossed snow-covered roads in temperatures of 40 below zero. Draglines first etched the Wyoming Canal out of the frozen ground on January 20, 1920. Unaccustomed to Wyoming winters, the machines` gasoline engines often did not start in the cold. Operators experimented with different methods of keeping the motors warm when not in use. Crews eventually settled on coal-burning laundry stoves as the safest, cheapest way to keep the engines warm and the machinery running.(23) The draglines digging the Wyoming Canal had a 18-month head start on the Wind River Diversion Dam. Located 34 miles northwest of Riverton, work on the dam began in July 1921. The 37-foot high structure is the point of diversion for all Project water. The dam features a concrete gravity, ogee spillway section, 651 feet in length, with a capacity of 40,000 cubic feet per second (cfs). On Wind River`s north end is a logway, sluiceway, and the 2,200 cfs diversion works. A rolled earth embankment, 1,656 feet long, sits beside the southwest end of the concrete section. Draglines removed 7 to 15 feet of sandy loam, cobblestones, gravel, and river sand. To reach the solid rock foundation, workers and machines tore through shale and soft brown sandstone along the headworks and a `tough bluish` sandstone under the spillway and sluiceway. The Project gathered its concrete aggregate from the river gravel at the site. Men and teams hauled cement from Riverton to a 3,000-sack capacity cement house overlooking the dam site. Half-yard side-dump steel cars and wheelbarrows delivered the concrete to form the lower headworks, sluiceway, logway and weir. Reclamation used oversized cobbles as plum rock to economize on concrete and reduce the dam`s volume. In winter, placement of concrete seldom started earlier than 9:30 a.m. Laborers avoided pouring the weir`s crest in the late afternoon. Approximately 63,000 cubic yards of excavated material and 18,000 cubic yards of plain and reinforced concrete formed the dam and diversion works. By agreement with the Wyoming Highway Commission, Reclamation constructed bridge piers as an integral part of the weir. Across these piers, state road crews paved an 8-span steel highway bridge. Two years of work at Wind River Diversion Dam concluded in May 1923 at a cost of less than $500,000.(24) http://www.recreation.gov/detail.cfm?ID=1243

Plan

The unit receives its water supply from the Wind River and its tributaries. The principal storage is provided by Bull Lake Reservoir on Bull Lake Creek. Supplemental storage is provided by Pilot Butte Reservoir, an offstream reservoir supplied with water diverted from Wind River by the Wind River Diversion Dam. Water released from Bull Lake Reservoir flows through Bull Lake Creek to the Wind River where it augments the natural flow of that stream. Water for unit lands is delivered through the Wyoming Canal, which leads from Wind River Diversion Dam to Pilot Butte Reservoir and beyond to the distribution system. Pilot Canal flows in a generally easterly direction from Pilot Butte Reservoir, servicing lands lying south of those supplied by the Wyoming Canal. Bull Lake Dam is a modified homogeneous earthfill dam 81 feet high and containing 820,000 cubic yards of material. The spillway is a concrete chute 100 feet wide, controlled by three automatic radial gates. The capacity of the spillway is 11,000 cubic feet per second. The capacity of the outlet works is 4,000 cubic feet per second. Bull Lake Dam creates a reservoir of 152,000 acre feet. Pilot Butte Reservoir is located 10 miles below Wind River Diversion Dam. It is formed by three earthfill embankments constituting Pilot Butte Dam. The main embankment is 63.6 feet high and has a volume of 135,000 cubic yards. To complete the reservoir, two other embankments were required, one 25 feet high containing 51,000 cubic yards of material, and the other 12 feet high containing 19,000 cubic yards of material. The reservoir has an active capacity of 31,600 acre-feet. Located 32 miles northwest of Riverton, Wyoming, Wind River Diversion Dam is a concrete gravity structure with an embankment wing, a hydraulic height of 19 feet, and a concrete volume of 17,200 cubic yards. The spillway is a concrete ogee weir with a capacity of 40,000 cubic feet per second. The diversion dam serves as the headworks to the Wyoming Canal with a capacity of 2,200 cubic feet per second. The Pilot Butte Powerplant is located at the drop from the Wyoming Canal to Pilot Butte Reservoir. The plant has two generating units which operate under a maximum head of 105 feet with a total capacity of 1,600 kilowatts. The plant was shut down on June 15, 1973, because of high operation and maintenance costs and penstock problems. The penstock was replaced, and the units were placed back in service in June 1990. Power was distributed over 76 miles of transmission lines. There are two main canals in the unit. Wyoming Canal is 62.4 miles long and has a capacity of 1,800 cubic feet per second. Pilot Canal is 38.2 miles long with a capacity of 1,000 cubic feet per second. About 74 :percent of the total length of these two canals is lined. A total of 300 miles, 125 miles of lined canal and 85 miles of pipeline, make up the system of laterals. The drainage system extends 644 miles, of which 382 miles are closed pipelines. The unit is operated and maintained by the Midvale Irrigation District.

Contact

Title: Facility Manager
Organization: Big Horn Basin Field Office
Address: #4 Reclamation Road
City: Cody, WY 82414
Phone: 307-527-6256-(ext.-260)

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Title: Public Affairs Officer
Organization: Great Plains Region
Address: 2021 4th Avenue North
City: Billings, MT 59101
Fax: 406-247-7604
Phone: 406-247-7610

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