Kristy Haight

In the early 1900s it became evident that much of the unused land in Southern Utah would be great farming land if only there was adequate water with which to irrigate. On June 17, 1902 Congress passed the Reclamation Act to allow for irrigation projects in which arid land could be reclaimed for use.[1] In 1908 the New Castle Reclamation Company was formed to provide the water necessary to make New Castle, Utah a prosperous farming community. Many prominent men in Utah history were involved with the project, although mostly as stock owners, including David O. McKay, George W. Middleton, J. X. Gardner and N. T. Porter.

The New Castle Reclamation Company was formed with the consolidation of the New Castle Farm Company and the New Castle Reclamation Company in Dec. 1909. The object of the business was to acquire and dispose of water and water rights by building reservoirs, canals, bridges, and anything else necessary to make New Castle a successful place to live. New Castle was planned out to be a city similar to Salt Lake City in size, with everything associated with a big city, from hotels to railroads.[2]

In 1911 construction began on the Grass Valley Creek Dam which was also called the Newcastle Irrigation Company Dam. The storage capacity of this reservoir was 26,650 acre feet. A drain canal 6,500 feet long was constructed upstream through the central portion of the reservoir=s basin and a 4,135 foot long tunnel was built through the mountain to Pinto Creek.[3] To deliver water to the dam and the tunnel, a 3.5 mile feeder canal with a capacity of 100 feet of water was constructed on Pine Valley Creek. Overall, the strategy of the New Castle project was to transfer water from the drainage of the Santa Clara River and other Pine Valley canyon streams, where there was little usable farming land, to the Grass Valley Reservoir where it was stored before it went through the tunnel and on down to irrigate New Castle and the surrounding areas.

The reservoir was completed with some difficulty due to a few setbacks such as saboteurs destroying parts of the pipeline. This was most likely due to farmers trying to acquire more water for their lands.

Although the project was finished the whole endeavor ultimately failed. The most crucial and unsolvable problem was the lack of water. The reservoir was built on a volcanic formation and would only hold enough water in the wetter years because otherwise the water would seep right out through the ground. Without irrigation water the land was vacated and the land was not able to be settled as planned. A substantial amount of water reached New Castle in but three years: 1919, 1920, and 1928.

The demise of the New Castle Reclamation Project also can be attributed to many lengthy law suits over water rights and insufficient funds and backing for this extensive venture. The New Castle Reclamation Company disbanded with the investors and members in debt and many financially ruined because of this project.

The New Castle Reclamation Project is one that will be of interest to a variety of people. At a personal level, the descendents of those who were involved and who had invested in the project will find of interest the dealings of their relatives. Many people were involved in investing money, moving to New Castle, and actually working on the project.

The second level in whom this project is beneficial is to those who are interested in Utah history or the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Although the project was not sponsored by the Church there were many church members and leaders involved through investments and stocks in the company. Iron County was affected by lack of water as a whole and there were areas nearby New Castle that the reservoir was to also aid. If the New Castle Reclamation Project had been successful it is likely that Iron County would have a larger population due to more farmers and settlers in the area.

In a broader view, this project is of interest to those interested in reclamation projects as a whole. The United States government passed the first Reclamation Act in 1902 and there have been multiple reclamation projects throughout the western states. The New Castle Reclamation Project was most likely one of the first projects of this kind and the reasons for its failure would be advantageous and influential in future projects.

This project was suggested by Janet Seegmiller of Special Collections in the SUU Gerald R. Sherratt Library. A few years ago the library received the donation of much of the paperwork, invoices, bankbooks, and correspondence associated with the New Castle Reclamation Project from the descendents of one of the men involved. For the past few years these documents have been sitting down in Special Collections with little work at a time being done on it. This year people started working on it full force and I came into the project with about three-quarters of the information organized.

The original plan for the New Castle Reclamation Project was that I would spend about four hours a week for four weeks preserving documents in Mylar Elvelopes and doing research related to the project. It turned out that the supplies did not arrive when they were expected so I started work on the project by doing research. I began by going through editions of the Iron County Recorder, a weekly newspaper, in which I looked for any information relating to the New Castle Reclamation project, including businesses and people involved. Because I was reading through publications dating back to the early 1900s I had to scan through them on microfilm. I covered the period of January 1908 to December 1912 and was successful in my search for a description of the New Castle area of development but was unable to find any information on the actual reclamation project. Perhaps if I had continued a little bit farther I would have found some more relevant information.

Although I did not find what I was looking for in my investigation I found it quite interesting to read through the microfilm. The Iron County Recorder was a very informal paper in which the big news stories on the front page were more often than not about a girl with a broken arm who had attempted to climb over a fence or the birth of a new child. The paper recorded all of the local social events, school events, and church events. It was also very interesting to read about President T. Roosevelt being shot, the Titanic sinking, and the election and inauguration of President Wilson from the point of view of a small town paper in southern Utah. These pieces of national news could be found on the front page next to the local, daily items.

Although it was quite fascinating to read the Iron County Recorder in search of information relating to my project and examine other events in history, it was also fairly tiring. The newspapers were on microfilm which had captured how old and crumbly the newspapers were when they were filmed; in some spots the papers were even held together with tape. Due to the age and to the font used on the newspapers it was difficult to read through some editions. It was also hard to read the papers because they were on a machine screen and I could not adjust it to examine them more comfortably.

When I had made my way through several years worth of newspapers the supplies arrived and I started working with the actual papers and documents of the New Castle Reclamation Project. I helped to preserve the documents by placing them in Mylar Elvelopes. Someone had already gone through the information in order to organize it but I did help to put the final touches on the organization of some papers found in odd spots as I went through them.

In addition to preserving papers I also read through them in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the New Castle Reclamation. Because the majority of the documents were legal documents, stock certificates, and checks for bills I could easily figure out who was involved with the project. The difficult part was figuring out how everything went together and fitting together stray pieces of information in a coherent order. The New Castle Reclamation Project had many financial troubles and due to this they repeatedly changed the name of their company. Changes like this that were not specifically noted are things that I had to piece together to make sure I was still reading about the same project. It was also difficult at times to understand what some of the information was referring to because in letters of correspondence the writer and the receiver knew what they were discussing so they did not bother to explain.

With the information that I found and compiled I then wrote a paper summarizing the New Castle Reclamation Project. A copy of this paper will be kept with the project so that others researching will be able to have a brief overview on what the project was and entailed. My paper can also be found at the beginning of this document.

As I started work on my project the plan was to spend two hours every Tuesday and Thursday at the library researching and preserving documents for four weeks. This would have given me a total of twelve hours. In addition, though, I had also planned to write a paper, summarizing what reclamation and the New Castle project involved.

In reality, I spent a grand total of sixteen and half hours on the New Castle Reclamation Project, not including the time I spent writing my overview of the project. For seven hours and fifteen minutes I spent my time scanning microfilm of the Iron County Recorder. I only covered the years 1908 to 1912 because it was tiring work and I wanted to spend some time working with the actual documents from the project. I was also ready for a change because it was somewhat disappointing to not be able to discover a major find detailing what the New Castle Reclamation Project was.

I spent four and a half hours going through the boxes of papers. There are almost twenty boxes containing information about the New Castle Reclamation Project and I did not even make it through half of the documents or boxes. I placed the loose papers in Mylar Elvelopes and searched for anything that would fill in the gaps of what I knew about the reclamation project.

I spent the last of my sixteen and a half hours researching what I could about New Castle and reclamation projects in general. These four hours and forty-five minutes were actually intermingled between my reading microfilm and searching through boxes. I was looking to write an overview of the project so I looked up the project, men connected to the project, and reclamation projects in general.

To research the New Castle Reclamation Project I used microfilm of the Iron County Recorder from the years 1908 to 1912. The microfilm can be found on the main floor of the Gerald R. Sherratt Library and used on the machines in the copy center on the same floor.

I used the internet to research reclamation projects. The most useful website I found can be viewed at <http://www.usbr.gov/history/borhist.htm> which is the government website for the Bureau of Reclamation.

The documents from the New Castle Reclamation Project can be found in Special Collections in the basement of the Gerald R. Sherratt Library.

The New Castle Reclamation Project is currently not related to any other service-learning projects that I know of. However, this project is one that could be expanded into other service learning projects. There are still numerous papers that have not yet been put in Mylar Elvelopes to be preserved. A more thorough outline could be written up or there could be biographies written of the people involved in the project. Another idea is that a website could made about the New Castle Reclamation Project which would be very informational and useful.

By doing the New Castle Reclamation Project as my service-learning project I not only learned about the history of the project but also about how to use diverse resources. The object of the New Castle Reclamation Company, the construction of the reservoir, pipe, and tunnel, and reclamation projects in general make for fascinating reading. I=ve never given much thought to reclamation so this project allowed me the chance to learn about it. I also learned more about what life and farming was like in southern Utah in the early 1900s.

I think the best part of this project, though, was piecing together the past. There is still quite a bit of information missing that would be rather helpful in better understanding the project but there is enough information that it can be fit together coherently. I really enjoyed figuring out how things went together and being able to read the actual documents. I love history but it usually comes straight from the books, not hands on experience. The New Castle Reclamation Project gave me the opportunity to try to piece history together myself. Instead of being told how things happened I had to figure it out for myself. It was a really neat experience to discover how the developers planned to use reclamation to develop New Castle into a large city and how their plans ultimately failed.

As I delved into the New Castle Reclamation Project I became more and more intrigued. I wanted to learn more about the people involved and why their plans failed. I ended up spending more time on my service-learning project than I had planned but I think it was well worth the time I put into it.

One of the things that has been beneficial about this project was the opportunity to use a variety of resources. I learned to use microfilm to search through old newspapers and I learned how to properly handle and preserve documents. I took what I learned in these areas and applied them to write a paper, with the aid of books and the internet. These skills of compiling and writing information will be valuable tools for me to use in the future.

Anderson, Bart. ANew Castle Reclamation Project (Grass Valley Tunnel).@ 9 Oct. 1991. Copy in SUU Special Collections.

AThe Bureau of Reclamation: A Brief History.@ 28 Oct. 2002. <http://www.usbr.gov/history/borhist.htm> (2 Dec. 2002).

Jones, York F. and Evelyn K. Jones. Lehi Williard Jones, 1854-1947. Salt Lake City, UT: Wookruff Printing Company, 1972.

ANew Castle Land Company@ Advertisement. Copy in SUU Special Collections and attached to this document.

Seegmiller, Janet Burton. A History Of Iron County. Utah State Historical Society, Iron County Commission, 1998.

^[1] AThe Bureau of Reclamation: A Brief History.@ 28 Oct. 2002. <http://www.usbr.gov/history/borhist.htm> (2 Dec. 2002).

^[2] York F. and Evelyn K. Jones. Lehi Williard Jones, 1854-1947. (Salt Lake City, UT: Wookruff Printing Company, 1972), 150-152.

^[3] Janet Burton Seegmiller. A History Of Iron County. (Utah State Historical Society, Iron County Commission, 1998).