Disclaimer: Much of the history found in this article originated from an interview with Max Reese, the secretary of the Little Cottonwood Tanner Ditch Company. He has held this role since 1984 and has been on the Board of Directors since 1975. He was the water commissioner for the Little Cottonwood Canyon for 18 years. He was an Advanced Placement Biology teacher at American Fork High, was a researcher at the University of Utah and Becton Dickinson, and has his master’s degree from the U of U in Biology. He is also a lifelong East Murray resident.

While most would consider him an expert (or at least an irrigation aficionado), and historical details were corroborated with a secondary source, he is also this reporter’s father. 

If you’ve ever noticed a bit of running water alongside the road in a shallow furrow, or a concrete box with an odd wheel protruding from the top, and thought, “I wonder what that's all about?” This article is for you.

Early ditches and irrigation in Murray – a short history

The Mormon pioneers came into the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, and only one year later, by 1848, Brigham Young gave a mandate to a party of settlers to move south of the city to lowlands along the streams of the Little Cottonwood and Big Cottonwood creeks, using the creeks to provide easy irrigation for farming and good grasslands for grazing livestock. 

Each settler would take directly out of the creek and run it to their property, but as more and more people arrived, plots not adjacent to the creek would access water via a ditch, and so it passed from neighbor to neighbor, all utilizing the same ditch. 

“They understood the mechanics of irrigation,” Max Reese, secretary of the Little Cottonwood Tanner Ditch Company, said. “The most important thing is gravity.” Ditches were built on high paths, for example Vine Street is a high ditch path, taking advantage of gravity to run water to fields. 

In the old days, houses didn’t have green lawns with crisp corners. The lawn was green only in places low enough to receive flood irrigation. This all changed with the invention of pumps and sprinkler-watering. Now, houses on hills can have green lawns and crops planted on high ground can easily receive water. 

“It’s interesting to think about Idaho and their signature potato,” Reese mused. “Idaho is mostly rolling hills. If they had to take water out of the Snake River and get it to those crops using only gravity, they could never have grown potatoes at any volume, because you can’t flood irrigate over hills, this requires sprinkler irrigation.”

By 1904, the State of Utah got involved with irrigation and acknowledged the ditch companies that had already organized to control the ditches, like Little Cottonwood Tanner Ditch Company (LCTDC), and formally awarded them a water right. 

So, the State of Utah owns the water, but awards rights to ditch companies to use a percentage of the annual flow.

At the time of incorporation in 1904, there were five main ditch companies who irrigated out of Little Cottonwood Creek, LCTDC being one of them. In 1910, the Morris Decree determined how much each ditch company could use, as measured by cubic feet per second.

Originally the water rights were year-round and the ditches ran freely. Early ditches initially only used mountain-creek and spring-sourced water for irrigation. But when the cities needed additional water from creeks for culinary purposes, canals (with water sourced from Utah Lake and the Jordan River) were created to facilitate crop irrigation. Each year most ditches run mountain creek water when winter runoff is high, and in in the late summer months, switch to canal water. 

So, historically, ditches were created first, starting in 1848. Canals, in the 1930s. 

Benefits of ditch irrigation to Murray (and beyond)

Ditch irrigation may seem old fashioned to residents with postage stamps of grass watered using modern sprinklers, but if we quit running irrigation water, many of the places that residents currently enjoy would dry up.

“Think about the green and verdant places we like to recreate: like Wheeler Farm, Woodstock Park, Mick Riley, the canal trails, and Highland Lake. Along with the farms that utilize irrigation water, these are all places who use creek and canal water routed through the LCTDC ditches,” Reese said. 

“The places we like to spend time are adjacent to flowing water, where there are trees and its cooler. It’s meandering, aesthetic, and improves the quality of life. Not to mention, a water feature often increases a property’s value.”

Recycling Water

Little Cottonwood Creek originates a short distance south of the ski resort town of Alta and flows through Little Cottonwood Canyon until it reaches the valley. It travels north through Cottonwood Heights, Sandy, Midvale and Murray where it eventually empties into the Jordan River, and then the Great Salt Lake. Its whole length is nearly 27 miles.

LCTDC takes their water from the creek on Milne Lane about 1600 East and 7600 South and delivers it via ditches in a wide swath through Cottonwood Heights, Holladay and Murray for irrigation and aesthetic purposes. Murray residents would be surprised at all of the pocket farms and other owners (even commercial) who utilize this water.

“A great thing about flood irrigation is that the water we run replenishes the water table,” Reese said. “Our biggest reservoirs are groundwater; bigger than any surface reservoir you can think of in the valley. Once the water is underground it doesn’t evaporate and the water is filtered and clean when you pump it out. Eighty percent of Murray’s drinking water depends on pumping from wells, and that’s groundwater.”

With sprinkler irrigation the water table is not replenished. The water only enriches the top few inches of soil. The rest evaporates and is gone.

Early sources and uses of water in Murray

“Murray was really wet everywhere when I was a kid,” Reese said. “We knew the Indians had camps here to take advantage of the water because you’d find arrowheads everywhere, like on Arrowhead Lane. There were swamps and we’d catch frogs and snakes all the time.”

Reese continued his recollection, “All the early residents in Murray either took their water out of the creeks or they had an artesian well, which means there was a really high water table. When I was young there was this big artesian well by Wendy’s on 900 East with so much pressure, it continually shot water sideways in a stream the width of a basketball, for a distance of 20 feet. This is now one of Murray’s wells used for culinary water.”

Historically, the ditch water was used for many purposes aside from irrigation, Reese recounted. “My great-grandfather would pull water from his ditch and make an ice pond every winter,” Reese said. “We’re talking ice three feet deep and two acres wide. He’d cut and deliver it throughout the summer for refrigeration. Those were different times.”

Murray is uniquely located between Big and Little Cottonwood creeks, but Murray has access to many additional water sources, such as wells and springs. As an early settlement in the valley, Murray gained early water rights. Like much of the western United States, Utah uses the “first in time, first in right” method of appropriation. Lucky Murray.

These days, most wells are capped and used for consumption. “You can see well locations all over once you know what to look for,” Reese said. “There will be a water tank or a little house-like structure on top. There’s one by the swimming pool in Murray Park and there’s a big water tank next to Murray Cemetery.”

Murray’s culinary water comes from 19 wells (pumped groundwater), which provides 81.89% of delivered water. The remainder comes from eight springs.

Last ditch effort? Little Cottonwood Tanner Ditch Company, today

LCTDC is one of the remaining ditch companies in Murray. It is a nonprofit corporation with a water master and a governing board. 

The current water master is Art Quayle, who can often be seen wandering alongside the ditches with a shovel in hand. “This is a job that requires he know the status of the entire ditch system at all times during the water season. It’s a delicate balance and not an easy job.” It also requires hard labor: cleaning trash racks, adjusting headgates, and monitoring the flows. 

The ditch system needs to be serviced every day during the irrigation season by Quayle, Reese and other members of the ditch company. “We pull out dead racoons, roots, you name it. One time we realized someone was dumping used disposable diapers under a bridge, not understanding that the ditch has a function.”

If there is a ditch on a property, there will be a 15 foot easement around the ditch, meaning the company has access to the property to maintain it. There’s even an easement to the easement, meaning the owner can’t enclose the ditch and prohibit access. 

“Sometimes a construction company figures they’ll just fill the ditch in, or people will decide it’s a good place to dump stuff like oil and garbage, and that’s not OK,” Reese said.

If you have a ditch in your yard and want access to irrigation water, you still need to own a share of the ditch company that provides the water, or lease that right from the ditch company. Shares are most often sold with the property. 

Future of irrigation

There are miles and miles of ditches crisscrossing Murray, usable for both irrigation and utilized to catch storm water and control flooding. Regardless of whether the ditches are used to water fields, they need to be maintained for these other purposes.

“I optimistically imagine the future of irrigation might go something like this,” Reese mused. “As water bills go up and up, more people who have access to ditch water will work to utilize it, pumping it out for their sprinkler systems, or using it for their water features.”

“But these days, people who use their water rights are old,” he continued nostalgically. “We hope a new generation will come to understand that irrigation water has value, and it’s available and ready to be used.” λ