Melville Irrigation Company

The Melville Irrigation Company was established in 1907 in order to assist the Desert Irrigation Company in building the Yuba dam. The company was also in a position to take advantage of federal land grants to aid in developing western farm lands. Thus in 1908, the company joined in partnership with the Oasis Land and Irrigation Company, a Salt Lake City firm, in order to speculate in land development. This company aided in the building of the Hinckley Ditch, which would deliver water from the Sevier River Bridge Dam to the town of Burtner, later called Delta.

In order to deliver the water to this newly built canal, it necessitated the construction of a diversion dam. This diversion dam during the years 1909 and 1910 washed out twice and had to be rebuilt. Thus one of the earliest sets of documents in the collection are the records from the summer of 1909 reconstruction effort. These documents are primarily in the form of payroll records. Most of the laborers were stockholders of the Melville Irrigation Company. These records are found in box two of the collection.

Because of the failure of the diversion dams the Oasis Land and Irrigation Company went out of business in 1912 and was replaced by the Delta Land and Irrigation Company. This new company actually was comprised of the same officers as the Oasis company. The documents in the collection from 1913 to 1930 contain information about the activities of the Delta Land and Irrigation Company. Primarily however they document various court cases that the Melville company was involved with, as well as documenting different construction projects that occurred over the two decade period.

During the year 1916 a major problem occurred in the Delta area from irrigation water. This being that the water brought out alkaline in the soil and the farms began to fail. In answer to this problem there began an effort to drain the lands of the area. An outgrowth of this drainage work was the Millard County Drainage District #4.

This district operated under similar rules to a water conservancy district, and taxed land owners in order to pay for the tile drains.

From the guide to the Melville Irrigation Company Papers, 1907-1930, (Utah State University. Special Collections and Archives)