Desert Lake is a

ghost town A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...

in Castle Valley in northern Emery County,

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

, United States. It was inhabited from 1885 to about 1910.

History

In 1885, several families moved from the nearby town of

Cleveland Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...

to an area they called Desert Lake, and built a

embankment dam An embankment dam is a large artificial dam. It is typically created by the placement and compaction of a complex semi-plastic mound of various compositions of soil or rock. It has a semi-pervious waterproof natural covering for its surface ...

to impound a irrigation

reservoir A reservoir (; ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam, usually built to water storage, store fresh water, often doubling for hydroelectric power generation. Reservoirs are created by controlling a watercourse that drains an existing body of wa ...

(Desert Lake). In 1896, the dam broke, causing significant damage. The

LDS Church The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a nontrinitarian restorationist Christian denomination and the largest denomination in the Latter Day Saint movement. Founded during ...

provided $1000 to rebuild the dam, and also to extend a ditch southwest to Cleveland. The 1900

United States Census The United States census (plural censuses or census) is a census that is legally mandated by the Constitution of the United States. It takes place every ten years. The first census after the American Revolution was taken in 1790 United States ce ...

reported Desert Lake's population at 127. Six years after the Census was taken, in 1906, the Desert Lake area was surveyed. An

LDS church The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a nontrinitarian restorationist Christian denomination and the largest denomination in the Latter Day Saint movement. Founded during ...

, a general store, several frame homes, and a school were constructed. The general store also served as the town's post office. A problem throughout the valley occurred as farmers irrigated land, which dropped the

water table The water table is the upper surface of the phreatic zone or zone of saturation. The zone of saturation is where the pores and fractures of the ground are saturated with groundwater, which may be fresh, saline, or brackish, depending on the loc ...

and caused

alkali In chemistry, an alkali (; from the Arabic word , ) is a basic salt of an alkali metal or an alkaline earth metal. An alkali can also be defined as a base that dissolves in water. A solution of a soluble base has a pH greater than 7.0. The a ...

in the soil to rise. The alkaline soil eroded

adobe Adobe (from arabic: الطوب Attub ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for mudbrick. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is use ...

structures and caused many crops to fail. As the alkali in the soil concentrated, the residents of Desert Lake moved about away and founded the town of Victor. A few log homes make up what's left of the town of Desert Lake.

References

External links

Ghost towns in Emery County, Utah Ghost towns in Utah {{utah-geo-stub

History

See also

References

External links