+----------------------------++---------------+--------------+ | |Square miles of|Acres irrigable| | Districts. |irrigable land.| land. | | | | | +----------------------------+---------------+---------------+ |San Pete Valley | 31.2 | 20,000 | |Gunnison | 6.2 | 4,000 | |Sevier Valley above Gunnison| 54.7 | 35,000 | |Circle Valley | 6.3 | 4,000 | |Panguitch and above | 11 | 7,000 | | +---------------+---------------+ | Total | 109.4 | 70,000 | +----------------------------+---------------+---------------+ Nevertheless, I am persuaded that it will be practicable to extend the possibility of irrigation by an increase of water supply to a degree sufficient to irrigate every acre of the main valley of the Sevier which can be reached by canals, and which is also fit for cultivation. It is by the method of artificial reservoirs. There is probably no region in the world more admirably suited to the easy, cheap, and efficient application of this method than this very region drained by the Sevier River. The sources of this river are found at high altitudes, but these high places are not mountains in the ordinary sense, but great plateaus with broad summits. These table tops have vast numbers of large basins broad enough for great ponds, which are now drained by narrow gorges cut through volcanic sheets and leading down to lower levels. These gorges are in most cases narrow cañons, which, being once barred across, will dam the waters above them. I could not select a better example than the following: About 15 miles southwest of the town of Panguitch is a broad basin, the central part of which is occupied by a shallow lake, about 1¹⁄₄ miles long and nearly a mile wide, called Panguitch Lake. Its altitude is about 8,200 feet. It is completely surrounded with barriers, nowhere less than 100 feet in height, and finds its drainage through a narrow cleft on the northeast side. It receives the influx of two fine streams, which in May and June must carry heavy floods of water from the lofty rim and broad watershed of the Panguitch Plateau lying to the westward. Even in August their united flow must reach 50 feet per second. By throwing a dam 30 feet high and 50 or 60 feet long across the outlet between its walls of solid trachyte, a lake would be formed with an area of 6 or 7 square miles. There are many such basins upon the Panguitch Plateau, and it would be a low estimate to say that it would be possible, at comparatively small expense, to create 30 or 40 square miles of lake surface, with an average depth of 20 feet, upon that plateau alone. The precipitation upon its surface would be more than sufficient to fill these lakes every year.