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Welcome
to Point of Interest Road
Signs! A
collection of photos of road and trail signs. Click
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The
Riverton Project
Location
of sign - Rest area west of Jeffrey City on U.S. 287
in Wyoming.
Photo
taken May 2008
Text
of sign:
Portions
of the High Plains were not settled until the early 20th century because
water was needed for irrigation. Responding to
pressure
for Western settlement, Congress created the Reclamation Service in
1902. It's purpose was to develop water
resources
making possible cultivation of what was considered desert wasteland.
One effort was the Riverton Project. Located
in
the Wind River Basin it was undertaken by the Bureau of Reclamation in 1920.
The
Midvale Irrigation District of the Riverton Project involves 73,000 acres,
three dams - Bull Lake Dam to the south and
Diversion
Dam and Pilot Butte Dam to the east, 100 miles of canals and 300 miles of
laterals. Diversion Dam, completed in 1923,
diverts
water from the Wind River to the Wyoming Canal. It is noteworthy as the
first dam in the nation with a road incorporated
into
its structure and the first to contain a fish ladder.
Historian
T.A. Larson describes the Riverton irrigation project as "a perennial
object lesson in the formidable difficulties inherent
in
large-scale reclamation projects in the West." Initially posing
financial and engineering problems, it came to involve legal and
political
issues. During the rise of Native American self determination the
Arapaho and Shoshone tribes exercised their right to
Wind
River water, granted by an 1868 treaty. Court battles were fought over
water used to irrigate land opened to homesteading
by
Congress in 1905. The struggle highlights the importance of water to
the West.
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