PROVO — A raging flood that wreaked havoc on homes in St. George also did extensive damage to a nature preserve owned by Brigham Young University.
At the site, fields and orchards are covered with mud and debris, fences are gone and irrigation pipes have been unearthed and broken. Settling ponds are destroyed and mud has slopped into outbuildings and adobe structures.
Ken Packer, who helps run BYU's Lytle Ranch, says damage could exceed $200,000.
Packer has been to southern Utah several times since the flooding, trying to assess the damage to the 700-acre nature preserve and research station in the Beaver Dam Wash area
"Every time I come down here, it's worse," Packer said Friday. "We're finding a mess. It was very, very widespread flooding. A tremendous amount of water came down that wash."
The preserve, located about 45 miles northwest of St. George, was donated to the university in 1985 by Talmage and Eleanor (Marie) Lytle and hosts an extensive cottonwood riparian forest as well as distinctive Mojave Desert vegetation — including a unique flora found nowhere else in Utah.
"It is a preserve and a research station with a number of ongoing important experiments under way," Packer said. "This put us back probably 10 years. We've got to restore a lot."
The ranch is currently closed to tours and visitors but is welcoming those who are coming to help clean up, such as an LDS youth group from Las Vegas that came to muck out the sheds and other farm buildings.
Packer said one of the most pressing concerns involves getting the water pipes operational again, especially since the Mojave Deseret creatures, including deer, coyotes, foxes and birds, depend on the riparian forest for food.
"We need to take care of the irrigation system right away because orchards and animals don't do well without water," Packer said.
In addition, it's critical that the university maintain the right to its water.
"We need to protect our water rights with the state," said Douglas C. Cox, assistant director of the Bean Museum. "To preserve the rights, you have to use the water. It's a 'use it or lose it' deal."
Ranch officials are taken aback at the severity of the damage but philosophical at the same time.
"It's a nature preserve, so what do you do?" Cox said.
"Floods are kind of a natural occurrence on the wash," Packer said. "What we need to do is work with Mother Nature here."
Cox said it will cost the university money it doesn't have in the budget to repair the damage.
"We'll be looking for donations to help us," he said.
Those interested in making donations can send them to the Bean Museum at BYU earmarked for the recovery effort for the Lytle Preserve.
The region now included within The land in the Lytle Preserve was settled by pioneer Dudley Leavitt sometime during the 1870s. Dudley's Leavitt's daughter, Hannah Louisa, married Thomas Sirls Terry as his third polygamous wife and moved to the Beaver Dam site of her father's property in 1889. Hannah and her six children were hidden in this remote site from federal authorities, who were prosecuting those engaged in cohabitation.
In addition to raising hay and cattle, Hannah and her children planted fruit trees and other crops. Today near Hannah Terry's meager homestead is a grove of persimmon trees that offer shade to the passer-by. Hannah reared her family at the cabin site and left the wash in 1912. Her sons Ed and Jed Terry continued to farm downstream from the original home site.
In 1928, a portion of the Terry property was purchased by John Eardley, whose wife and six children cleared the fields and built the house, reservoir, fences and ditches. They raised alfalfa, sorghum, melons and fruit of various kinds.
The Lytles purchased the ranch from the Eardleys in 1952.
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