When I was a small boy about eight years of age, herding the milch cows, I used to sit on a big black rock on a sidehill called “Little Black Hill” about one and one-half miles west of Richfield. In my mind was a dream that when I grew to be a man, if I had any influence, I would like to see a canal built right under the old black rock that I sat on. I envisioned beautiful green cover over the virgin plain below the rock, and between it and the town. At that time it was just a dry and dusty territory.

Well, little by little I grew up and commenced to work to the fulfillment of my long dream, and the Sevier Valley Canal was commenced. Little by little, with pick and shovel, we constructed that canal. I surveyed the canal right under the old black rock where I had sat many times and dreamed it out.

The first engineer on the upper part of the canal was Niels Mortensen, a fine old man, but he got old and turned it over to me. We surveyed with a water level, a pipe about eight inches long, and with two bottles, one placed on each end vertically. We made a tripod out of three oak sticks. Sometimes we would find a coffee drinker, not very frequently, but when we did, if he had coffee over, we would pour it into our leveling instrument, or surveying instrument, which made it a little easier to see than the plain water.

Well, the canal was eventually finished, but there was no water! Then the question of reservoiring came up. All through the eighties most of the seasons were extremely dry, particularly in the latter part of the seasons. It was difficult to mature many crops, and the people were not able to plant in the Sevier Valley anything but grain crops—no hay, beets, or fodder. Consequently, there was no feeding of livestock. Sometimes in particular seasons the river would get down to about twenty second feet of water, when we were in need of 400 to 500 feet. That was hardly enough to supply one-fourth of one of the twelve canals, but there were few people converted to reservoirs.

People were quarreling, and town was against town, and sometimes the quarrels were quite serious. The Richfield Irrigation Canal had the priority right. So they would put in a dry dam, and that was it. People, to a great extent, knew nothing about reservoirs, and laughed at the idea of doing it for irrigation purposes. They thought perhaps it could be cone for a little drinking pond, or something for animals, but they had no faith in anything larger. They also said, “We have no money,” which was true. It seemed speculative, and they didn’t want to undertake it when they were sure it would result in absolute failure. The government hadn’t awakened to the value of reservoirs and the great need of them in the arid west.

Finally, the President of the Church took it up and sent down to our conference President John Henry Smith and Anton H. Lund. The conference was held in Monroe. When they saw the dry condition of the valley, crops burning up, and the bitter quarrelings, they called some special meetings. They advised the people rather than quarreling, to get together and reservoir. That was the only hope they could see for Sevier Valley. They said, “We don’t know where you will get the money, but the Lord will assist you if you will be faithful.” They said that the Church was not able, at the time, to give any monetary help, but would give the moral support.

President William Seegmiller, W. H. Clark, and Joseph S. Horne, of the Sevier Stake Presidency, then called meeting after meeting. They themselves were converted, but it was hard to convert the people. They were talking and working at that for several years to see if they could agree on uniting the irrigation companies and build some reservoirs. They said, “The Prophet of the Lord advised us to build reservoirs. We should let that be enough.” It was to me, at any rate.

In the meantime, a committee had been appointed to investigate the sites for a reservoir, and they had decided one could be built most economically on Otter Creek, immediately about the junction with the East Fork of the Sevier River.

The time finally came when President Seegmiller was able to get nine different irrigation companies of the valley to meet and talk things over, and some were in favor, and some were opposed. In the meeting, I Robert D. Young, was elected as the president of the company known as the Otter Creek Reservoir Company. Nine directors, some representing irrigation canal companies and others being individual stockholders, were appointed. A secretary and a treasurer were also appointed.

Then we discovered that the laws of Utah prohibited companies from taking stock in companies. Consequently, we had to wait and meet with the legislature to get the law changed, which was done. This proved to be a great blessing to the State of Utah. Immediately, Harriman, then great railroad magnate, discovered that Utah had such a law, just what he had been looking for to consolidate his different railroads, including the Union Pacific.

We went up to the site—L. P. Hansen and myself—and made a legal location, which happened to be just three days ahead of a Texas company who made application to take all the surplus Sevier River down to Millard County. We also made the legal location for the Piute Reservoir the day before the site was picked for the Otter Creek Reservoir. This was, as I recall, April 3, 1896.

We called a meeting, as we had to get an option on the lands to be inundated. We got an option of the Smith and Forzey ranches for $18,000, but we had no money. The rest of the land, with the exception of 160 acres, was owned by the government and came to us as a gift, inasmuch as we were reservoiring. We were pioneers in this undertaking of reservoiring water for irrigation purposes, among the very first in the United States.

We called on the local bank to see if we could borrow the money. The directors of the bank said that it was an insult to ask for that much money, although we were ready to mortgage practically everything worthwhile in Sevier Valley, including the holdings of nine irrigation companies, which meant their lands and all. The bank said it was a speculation to reservoir for irrigation purposes; that the president of the company himself, was a youngster and a dreamer. The president of the bank said he didn’t think it could be done.

The brethren of the Church said that they were not able to help us because the Church had got pretty well down itself through the confiscation of all the property by the United States, but they knew that the Lord would help us to pull through. With that faith I knew that we would get through some way.

We tried other banks, but every bank in the state of Utah turned us down flat. There answer was, “Who knows whether or not such a thing is successful?” And another, “How are you going to build without money? Even if you get this loan, where will your money come from to finish the work?”

There was not a bank in Utah that would take a mortgage from us for $18,000. Finally, we got a prospect up in Oregon state. They thought they would let us have it but said, “We will meet you in Salt Lake City and fix it up.”

I had very little faith in that and told the Board, “We won’t get it.” I thought they would talk to the bankers who had already refused us, and that their advice would be to discourage it.

Every day made it closer and closer to the close of our option, which we had on the land. We met the banker from Oregon. He replied, “After thoroughly investigating the law we have discovered that the Oregon National Bank can’t loan on reservoirs.”

We still had faith and kept going. Just three days before the option was up on the land, we persuaded the Mount Pleasant Bank to sponsor us with a Wall Street bank in New York who loaned us the money by mortgaging the irrigation companies of Sevier Valley. This was in February of 1898.

The morning we received the telegram advising us that we could get the money, our local banker came up to see me and said, “Robert, I have been dreaming about this project, and I can see clearly that Sevier Valley would be worthless—our banks, our stores, and our businesses—without water. Now I’m going to make an effort to get this loan and give you the money.”

“I just received a telegram from New York, and we have the money,” I told him.

“Will you let me telegraph them and ask them to transfer the loan to us?” he said.

“Yes, that will be all right providing you give us the same interest.”

That shows what bankers at the time thought of  Sevier Valley without irrigation security.

Well, so far, so good.

I called a meeting to perfect a working organization and sign the papers necessary to begin the actual work on the reservoir. The notices had to be sent out to all of the directors, informing them that we should decide once and for all whether or not we would build the Otter Creek Reservoir. In the meeting we called the roll, and eight of the nine directors were present.

One of the directors got up and asked the question: “is this really a meeting to decide to build or not to build?”

“Yes,” I said.

Well, five of them said they were not going to be laughed at, that everybody was laughing and making fun of us for trying to build a reservoir without money. Consequently, they put on their hats and walked out.

“Well, R. D., you’re licked I guess,” said the attorney.

“No,” I turned to the secretary.

“How many directors were here in response to the notice?”

“Eight,” he said. I called for a motion.

James Andrew Moss moved that we build a reservoir and that we proceed immediately. I called for the vote, and three men, James Andrew Ross, Jorgen Jorgensen, and James H. Wells, stood up. I then said, “All opposed, stand up.” No one stood up, so I declared the motion unanimous.

That is what started the Otter Creek Reservoir.

I called another meeting for the purpose of arranging for a man to superintend the construction and affairs connected therewith. The Board came, but the men were still faithless concerning construction. I made a short talk and explained what I thought was necessary to make a start.

“Gentlemen,” I said, “The First Presidency have advised us to do it, and the Lord will help us, even though we have no money and the people are laughing at us.” I put the question to the whole board: “Who of you will volunteer to go and superintend the construction of the reservoir for one year without pay? Please raise your hand!”

No hands came up. They said they couldn’t afford to work for nothing, and there was no money in the company. They declined taking turns to superintend the work. Of course, the three loyal members were too old and could not be expected to undertake that hard work. It seemed to fall back and the whole thing to be a futile undertaking.

“Gentlemen, this must be done,” I said. “I am just a young married man. I will talk it over with my sweetheart and if she and I conclude that we have sufficient to keep us for on year, I will superintend that work for one year for nothing to show the people that reservoiring is our only chance to make a success. In Sevier Valley we ought to bring under cultivation the beautiful virgin land that is now lying in sagebrush, greasewood, and shadscale.”

We closed the meeting, and I went home and stated to my lovely sweetheart just how things stood. I asked her if she would be willing to make the sacrifice to go up there and construct this reservoir, at least for the first year, for nothing, no pay. She answered, “The Brethren have advised you folks to do it. Without money it looks hard to me, but I have faith in our leaders, and I have faith in you. I know you never start anything you don’t finish. We have flour and we have meat. We haven’t too much, but enough to pull through for the year.”

She put her arms around me and kissed me. “If you think it is the proper thing to do, I will go with you and do everything I can to help. If the men will furnish their food, I will cook it and wash their dishes, if it will encourage them.”

We then called an engineer to give us some ideas and some sort of a plan. Willard Young, a retired engineer, and R. C. Gemmel, the State Engineer, came down. I took them up to the reservoir site with my team and white-top buggy. I had only $2.50 in cash, but hotels in those days were very reasonable with good beds and meals. The first night we stopped at Kingston. My good wife had put up a lunch for me. We had plenty of food to eat. The $2.50 covered the bill for the engineers, and I told them my condition, which they naturally thought was my health, would not permit me to sleep or eat inside. It was no fabrication, of course, but the money was the question. I slept in the straw stack.

We went to the reservoir site on Otter Creek the next morning. They looked it over and said, “How much money have you got to start this?”

“I haven’t any. I spent the last money I had for your bill down at Kingston. From now on we have got to make it home without any money, unless you gentlemen have it.”

They said the dam would be a treacherous and difficult project, and that we couldn’t start it without from twenty-five to one hundred thousand dollars worth of machinery.

I told them that we planned to build as a welfare, cooperative project without money, but with good, honest, earnest work on the part of the people. They laughed and thought that was the most foolish remark they had heard. I told them that we knew the Lord was back of us, and we would accomplish it. All we asked of them was, when it was completed, to tell whether or not it was worthy of backing water against the dam.

We got back home to Richfield and the discouraged and faithless directors got hold of them and got their opinion. The directors were very much in favor of giving it over to a wealthy eastern company that wanted to build it, the one we had only beaten about three days to appropriate the Sevier River water. They were very desirous of getting hold of the reservoir. The brethren who had spoken to us in the conference had warned us. They said, by all means not to let any other companies have it, but to do it ourselves. If we did we would be like the Children of Israel in Egypt. We would be slaves to them by paying a high price for our irrigation water the rest of our lives.

Everything looked blue, but with a sweet, noble, outstanding wife like Mary (Mary Susannah Parker Young), I felt I could go through almost anything. She never faltered in the right. She is a great person.

We built a log cabin, a couple of rooms, much different to her nice little new brick home. She never made a complaint. She turned the log cabin into a cheerful place. She cleaned and scrubbed, whitewashed it, and made it pleasant. Wherever my darling Mary labored, she always made the surroundings more favorably pleasant, and we all felt that it was good to be there.

I give her great honor and praise for her part in helping to lay the foundation for the fine Sevier Valley. She cooked for a long time, free of charge, for the men. Although at times the way seemed dark, she had faith in the leaders of the Church. Thank the Lord for such a woman!

We were ready to start the construction. Now came the question of getting men and teams to work. We were able to get three boys and one man to begin that big job. We broke ground for the Otter Creek Reservoir October 19, 1897.

There was a swamp about 150 feet across from ledge to ledge that we had to excavate where the dam was to be. But first we had to put in the coffer dam to hold the water back from the bog. We accomplished some success and made some headway. People heard of it and a few more teams came up, which were very welcome. Little by little we finished the coffer dam, which gave us a chance to go to work on the dam proper.

As we got into the excavation of the bog it became very difficult. It was a terrible place to work, without machinery, a steam shovel, etc. We could not get in. In fact, we needed to drag line with machinery so we could be on dry ground to drag it out.

We improvised some machinery. We made a belt conveyor, using some of our timber off the ranch, and a drag line pulled by teams on the banks. But we could see that we had to have power to handle our homemade conveyor, and a pump for our excavation to get the water out of our trench.

Our hardest hours and most discouraging were while we were working in the mud during the excavation of the swamp. Just when we were really having our worst time the six discouraged directors called a meeting and decided to close it down. They sent two of the Board members to tell me to throw it up and get out of it. They said people were jeering at us, and they would not stand it any longer. They said we had no road plows or steam shovels, which we needed, and no money to buy with. Then said I had already run them into a lot of debt as well as the county.

Well, the night the two men came I sat up with them until a late hour to show them we were making headway. I told them the few hands I had were just volunteer labor, young boys, but good workers.

“Some people may laugh at our work, but I don’t. I know our leaders are inspired men, and I feel we should go on,” I told them. “We are making some advancement.”

“No, we’re commanded to shut down,” they said.

“Let’s have prayer and sleep on it and see how you feel in the morning,” I said. So we had prayer and went to bed.

In the morning I called the men out to work. The representatives of the Board asked, “Aren’t you going to shut down?”

“No, sir!” I said. “The leaders have told us how to save ourselves financially and spiritually. The people are fighting for water, and there’s no water to get. We’re going to go ahead and we’re going to complete this reservoir. I’m President and General Manager of this reservoir. When a meeting is necessary for the purpose of shutting down the work, I’ll call it. They won’t. There’s a lot of discouragement right now among the men working in this mud, and you’re not helping it out any. Now you two men get in your white-topped buggy and get down the canyon. I haven’t very kind regards to send to the directors. You go home and stay there until I call a meeting legally and lawfully.”

Well, they did go, but when they arrived in Kingston, about twelve miles down the canyon, they wrote me a very nice letter. They began to feel foolish, they said.

“We’re sorry we accepted this appointment. When you are making headway, having the tunnel four or five feet through the mountain and much other work well done, to discourage you looks foolish on our part. You’re working for nothing, which you agreed from the start.”

So we never heard another word.

We had no money—only faith in what the Brethren had asked and told us to do to save our valley. Of course, we never forgot to pray, so along came a man who told us about a man by the name of William Black, a sawmill man, who was talking about buying an engine and outfit. I located Mr. Black and he said that he wouldn’t need the machinery until October or November. This was in the early spring. I asked him what size he wanted, and he said a 30-horsepower boiler and a 25-horsepower engine.

I talked to Agent James Clitho and asked him if he would trust us for that boiler and engine until the time it could be sold to Mr. Black. He said yes, and got us a good buy from the George A. Low Company. The price suited Mr. Black fine, and the time was just right for us. The engine and boiler cost us $500, and we knocked off the freight, for we had teams to do that without laying out any money which we did not have.

We used the machinery all that summer and got through with the excavation in good shape. By that time, we could get the water by gravity. We didn’t need any more pumping. The beauty was we didn’t cheat anyone or put anyone out. We got the money to the machine company on time, and everyone was satisfied. We were so thankful about how it worked out—just as the Brethren had said, “You will get through some way.”

Our next move was to get 50,000 feet of red pine 12 x 30 x 3. I spoke to the sawmill man and talked it over with him, telling just the truth about how we stood, with no money. We would pay in six or eight months. He said, “For red pine I am making you a wonderful low price,” which I knew. So we made the deal.

There was water in the bottom of the core where we had to drive the piles. We had plenty of tools from the land we bought, although we had tried to shut it off with the two coffer dams we made, one on each side of the swamp. So we put the men to making a raft from the poles we had bought with the ranches.

Then came the question of a pile driver to drive the 50,000 feet of piling to the bottom of the core wall.

“Take the poles and build one. Use two of our red pines. Put one up each side for a slide,” I told them, and we did. We got from around the town some iron and lined the slide. We went up on the mountain and cut a red pine tree. We cut about three feet and made a hammer for the pile driver. We put in a few pulleys to make it lift easy, and it did. We put a horse on it to do the work. We got a pretty good pile driver.

All this time the water was coming against the coffer dam. I kept raising it because it was our bank to pay our debts when they were all due in six or eight months. I guess I was inspired to build the coffer dam and use it to store water. By now it was backed up to or three miles.

After five or six months had passed that the Board had ordered me to stop, I sent for them. They came up. Everything looked good around the dam. The foundation was in, and I told them we had a good piledriver for sale and other equipment if anyone wanted to buy it.

“We are burning up in the valley,” they said, and they were, all of that.

“Well,” I said, “The tunnel is finished, and I have put in a temporary gate. I think I can furnish you daily for a month or six weeks 150 second feet of water.”

When they say the 150 second feet of water flowing out of the temporary gate through the tunnel, the whole board was jubilant. An any rate, that much water in a dry time brought the people together. They could see the good advice that the First Presidency gave for us to build a reservoir, rather than to be quarreling one with another.

The Board went home and we had no more trouble finishing the dam. They all felt so good that they voted me $2.50 per day from now on and asked me to please stay. They got busy and paid the lumber bill of $300. Of course, we still went on without money. We made everything else we needed; the only cost was work. Now we were able to get a good force, a hundred or more men and teams, and soon we were finished.

When the Board had gone home, my sweetheart wife put her arms around me and kissed me and said, “I knew you could do it.”

I said, “Yes, darling, with the help of the Lord we have put it over, for you have been a potent factor, helping in every way and encouraging me in blue hours.” She was surely a heroine.

After the dam was finished the state authorities were probably a little bit dubious of it, and they called in Mr. Quinton, one of the leading engineers of the United States, from Washington, D.C. They asked him to come out and pass on it and its worthiness. He did, and he declared it one of the best and most secure earth reservoir dams in the country.

I feel that “Obedience is better than sacrifice, and to hearken, than the fat of rams.”

I happened to be at the State Capitol in Salt Lake City one day when a man said to me, “I hardly think you people know what you did for the state in building the Otter Creek Reservoir.”

“Perhaps not,” I said.

“You had a law passed that brought the state sufficient money to start the State Capitol, $750,000. That was Mr. Harriman’s first payment when he amalgamated his great railroads, with other considerations later.”

I cite this instance to show the wisdom and inspiration of the leaders of the Church. I feel that the moving power behind the dam was put forth by the Presiding Brethren of the Church. Although they were not able to assist us financially, they were sure that if we would try, we would get through and accomplish the work. I don’t claim any credit. It was just doing the best of my ability, as the Lord gave me the light to see, to bless the future generations. This was the benefit of spiritual knowledge pitted against worldly wisdom.

I feel that the Board members who lost faith were honest—they just could not see how we could do it. So many prominent people were laughing at us who had faith. Just as some of them told me, they could not stand it. They were afraid of their standing in the community if we failed. For myself, I never saw a time, from the commencement to the end, that I thought of failure.

It has been about sixty years (1961), and the dam has stood, and stood well (still stands as of this writing). It has been a great success. It has supplied the people with that great blessing of water in an arid district. It has made Sevier Valley one of the most prosperous valleys of the state. It has increased the opportunities for homes for our people. They don’t have to guard their water rights with guns. I feel that the building of it was one of our good welfare projects.

—This was written in 1951 as told to Revo Morrey young by R. D. Young, who died 12 June 1962, just six weeks before his 95^th birthday.

Robert D. Young died 12 June 1962, a few weeks short of his 95th birthday. He was born 24 July 1867, at Kirkintilloch, Dunbarton, Scotland, and came to the newly settled community of Richfield, Utah, in 1874, with his parents. His Church service included President of the Sevier Stake for twenty-three years, President of the Manti Temple for nine years, and President of the Salt Lake Temple for five years. At the time of his death he was serving as receptionist at the Church Office Building.