Almost a decade after its completion - and more than 90 years after it was begun - Strawberry Reservoir is finally full.
"It truly is a milestone," said Don A. Christiansen, general manager of the Central Utah Water Conservancy District, which manages the facility. "It has been a long time coming, but it's nice to see Strawberry Reservoir reach its capacity and . . . operating at peak efficiency."Now recognized as a blue-ribbon trout fishery, the Strawberry Valley Project was begun in 1905 to divert irrigation water through a tunnel into Diamond Fork and then into the Spanish Fork River where it was used by Utah County farmers.
The project, which has been shrouded in political controversy since its inception, marked the first time water from the Colorado River drainage had been successfully diverted into the Great Basin. The Strawberry River is a tributary of the Duchesne River, which in turn flows into the Green River, which is the main Utah tributary of the Colorado River.
The original Strawberry Reservoir was constructed using horse-drawn wagons and crews of more than 500 workers moving earthen fill to build the 72-foot-high dam and dig a 3.8-mile tunnel.
In the early 1970s, the 250-foot-high Soldier Creek Dam - in effect a new and larger Strawberry Reservoir - was constructed seven miles downstream, which allowed the reservoir capacity to expand from 286,900 acre-feet of water to 1.1 million acre feet.
A collection system to divert various streams in the Upper Stillwater area to the expanded Strawberry-Soldier Creek Reservoir was completed in 1989. Even though the collection system had a capacity of 100,000-acre feet of water annually, it has taken almost 10 years to fill the enlarged reservoir.
"In the late 1960s and early 1970s when Soldier Creek Dam was first proposed and built, some people might have felt they were getting ahead of themselves by creating such a large reservoir," said Richard Tullis, operations and maintenance manager for the water district. "I think they realize now what tremendous foresight our forefathers had in envisioning such an effective system of water storage and delivery."
Strawberry Reservoir has since become a renown fishery and recreation area, as well as providing water for agriculture, industry and municipalities.
"If you visit Strawberry Reservoir today and see it full, it's a real tribute to all of those who worked on the project for nearly a century," Christiansen said.