General
The Humboldt Project is located in northwestern Nevada on the Humboldt River. Rye Patch Dam and Reservoir is on the Humboldt River about 22 miles upstream from Lovelock, the county seat of Pershing County. The dam stores river flows for diversion to irrigated lands.
The project lands are in Lovelock Valley, on the lower flood plains of the river in an area of approximately 45,000 acres. The Lovelock Valley has been a gateway for gold and silver prospectors since the 1860s. Farming thrives, but it is a culture separate from the comings and goings of miners, ranchers and tourists passing through the region. Every drop of the Humboldt is precious as the average annual project rainfall is a scant 5.76 inches.
Entirely contained within the borders of the state, the Humboldt River rises in the Ruby Mountains of northeastern Nevada, winding and meandering 280 miles in a southwesterly direction until it is eventually swallowed by the desert. It drains most of the northern third of Nevada with tributaries covering more than 600 miles on the ground. A spot of fertility surrounded by miles of emptiness, Lovelock Valley soil along the Humboldt is rich and productive, though saline.
This desert anomaly is a mixture of sand, clay and highly organic soil. Framing project lands are the West Humboldt and Stillwater ranges to the east and the Trinity and Hot Springs Mountains to the west, the landscape of the lower river valley gently slopes from north to south, but it is almost flat in the lower reaches of the district.
History
Irrigation of the lands in the project area began in 1862. Because of the erratic natural flow, a full-season water supply without storage facilities was dependable for only a small portion of the 40,000 acres of irrigable land. During cycles of wet years, larger areas produced crops, but during dry cycles there were crop failures. Demands on the Humboldt River grew as the population increased from the 1880s to the 1920s.
In 1884, during a flood season, the Oneida dam, an earthen bulwark across the lower Humboldt backed-up water into valley, destroying acres of alfalfa fields. Farmers and ranchers donned masks and dynamited the dam to reclaim the flooded land.
In 1902, officials of the new United States Reclamation Service (USRS), informed settlers of Lake Tahoe, Carson and Truckee River valleys, Carson and Humboldt Sinks and the Lovelock Valley they would soon benefit in a mammoth irrigation project covering 400,000 acres. After further study, Reclamation officials found they had overestimated the output of the Humboldt and underestimated the amount needed to irrigate vast amounts of desert acreage.
The eventual project, the Truckee-Carson would service Reno, Fallon and Carson City, shutting out the people of the lower Humboldt. The first attempt to provide storage facilities was started by the Humboldt-Lovelock Light & Power Co. which, in 1911, filed an application for 57,000 acre-feet of floodwater from the Humboldt River. This company built the two Pitt-Taylor Reservoirs. Storage in these reservoirs has been limited because of high evaporation and inferior quality water. Designed to hold 49,000 acre-feet, Pitt-Taylor now safely stores 35,000 acre-feet. The Pershing County Water Conservation District purchased the water rights in these reservoirs in 1945, and uses the present storage in conjunction with Rye Patch Reservoir.
Construction
The Rye Patch Dam’s design has three major structural features, an embankment, outlet and spillway. The full reservoir is 21 miles long from Rye Patch Dam north to the Callahan Bridge, near the town of Imlay.
The finished earthfill, rockfaced structure stood 71 feet high and its crest was 800 feet long. The 10,820 acre lake holds 190,000 acre-feet of water. The outlet works can release 1,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) and its spillways can discharge 20,000 cfs. The foundation is a mixture of clay, sand and fine gravel. A total of 322,900 cubic yards of compacted earthfill covered by 9,800 cubic yards of gravel and 36,200 cubic yards of rockfill and riprap forms the Rye Patch Dam.
In 1935 and 1936, to project engineers it was important how much earth would go into the dam, but for everyone else whose futures were part of Rye Patch, it was more pivotal how many people could be put to work and how much hope could be squeezed out of a paycheck or a harvest. Rye Patch Dam was a people's project, and laborers of all types profited from its development.
Plan
The Humboldt Project provides for storage at Rye Patch Dam, acquisition of lands and water rights upstream in the Battle Mountain area for supplementing the water supply for project lands, and utilization of the Pitt-Taylor Reservoirs.
The plan is designed to provide seasonal and long-term regulation of the Humboldt River and to increase the amount of water available.
Other
No text for this section
Overview
No text for this section
Contact
