(Photo from the Pearl Spencer collection courtesy
of Bill Budd)
These pictures show the dredgeboat used to dig the canal.
The Uinta County Irrigation Company built a canal on Muddy
out of Cottonwood beginning about 1911. Agents from the project were
sent to central and eastern Kansas that summer where the farmers
were suffering from a severe drought. According to Opal
Ray, one of those agents told her father, Ira C. Hakes, of the wonderful
opportunity he would have on this land project where the wter was plentiful
and wheat and oats grew as high as a man's shoulder, even showing pictures
to prove his claim. Opal's family, Frank
Shipley and many others decided to invest in this opportunity. They
built houses, fenced their land, and planted crops.
The claims were gradually abandoned when it was learned the
canal didn't provide sufficient water for irrigating and most of the homesteaders
left. Some of the houses were moved into town.
The Canal Project
article from The Sublette County Journal
History of Green River Supply Canal
by Jonita Sommers
(Photo from the Pearl Spencer collection courtesy
of Bill Budd)
(Photo from the Pearl Spencer collection courtesy
of Bill Budd)
