COMMUNITY GROWTH, 1889-1917
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John R. Winder and John Henry Smith, held a meeting in Salt Lake City to arbitrate water problems associated with the Provo River. Smart informed those attending from Salt Lake County that there would stdl be water from the Provo River flowing into Utah Lake and that it would not be diminished because of their intended development of the Uinta lakes. Over the next several years Wasatch County farmers transformed the lakes into reservoirs. J.R. Murdock, who was sustained as the new stake president in 1906 fodowing Wdliam Smart's release and move to the Uinta Basin, organized the Provo Reservoir and Irrigation Company with representatives from Summit, Wasatch, and Utah counties, including bishops from the Wasatch Stake and leading businessmen who served on the board of directors. The company directed the construction work at the lakes and managed the reservoirs after they were completed.41 The company first built a road from the Steward Ranch on the Provo River to haul men and equipment to the lakes. Men could only work during the summer months when snow and ice were gone from the lakes and mountains. H. Caldwed Clegg recalled his work on the reservoirs: "The mosquitoes continued to present serious problems for us at the lakes. Some of us including John Day and myself sought a means of escaping from the insects. We proceeded to build ourselves a smad raft to float out onto the lake where we hoped we might be relieved from the insects. As we reached near the center of the lake, the raft overturned dumping us into the icy cold water. We had to swim to shore to put on dry clothes.... Our naked bodies provided perfect targets for the blood sucking insects."42
Strawberry Reservoir Following the removal of the Ute Indians from along the Wasatch Front to the Uintah Indian Reservation, Wasatch County farmers recognized that there was water available from the Strawberry River to irrigate their land in Heber Valley; but first they had to find a way to divert the water over the Wasatch Mountains. Late in the 1880s several county farmers successfully engineered and constructed a 1,000-foot tunnel through the crest of the Wasatch Mountains, thereby diverting water from the Strawberry River to
