Spring Creek Basin Mustangs

If you’ve ever looked at one of the maps of Spring Creek Basin, you might have noticed the curious words: “Custer Dam.” You might have wondered what the heck that’s about.

If you’ve visited Spring Creek Basin, you might also have noticed the “dugout” at the first (from the southish) intersection at the west end of “the loop road” (which is impassable all the way around because of washouts). You might even have parked and gotten out to inspect it.

The story I was told – and that I repeat for visitors – is that back around the turn of the last century (1910s?), someone (who must have carried the surname Custer, though I doubt he was closely related to he of massacre infamy?) or someones decided that in Spring Creek Basin, where the three major arroyos of Spring Creek Basin converge (as I call them: the north major arroyo, Spring Creek (the central/deepest arroyo) and the south major arroyo) wouldn’t it be a great idea to build a dam across the arroyo just downstream of the convergences, back up and hold water, dig some irrigation ditches and then sell off farm land with water shares? Because (I always say this with a straight face) the land is CLEARLY immensely fertile and flat and easy to farm. … It doesn’t take long before I break into a grin and/or a laugh when people look around, trying to be polite at the fact that the land is neither flat NOR immensely (or even barely) fertile and/or easy to farm.

I mean, what was ol’ Custer thinking?

The above pic with Sancho isn’t a great depiction of the dam, but I was so surprised when I saw him standing on one end that I took a pic before he left (which turned out to be a good idea as he left within seconds of me fumbling with my camera and taking that pic; the rest of the band was in the greasewood below and across Spring Creek, out of sight behind the other side of the dam). And I thought it would be a good excuse to illustrate some of the history of the place.

That IS Spring Creek between the two ends of the old dam, below the convergences of both the north major arroyo and Spring Creek and Spring Creek and the south major arroyo. See the white? That’s not remnant snow; that’s salt. The soil (and thus all the vegetation and ground water) is heavy with alkali, remnant of the vast ocean that once waved over what is now the very dry (and salty) Colorado Plateau.

The “rest of the story” is that after all the time and effort by the man/men (?) to build the dam and the associated irrigation ditch (it runs a very long way west) – and remember, this is WAY out here, even now; did he use oxen? some kind of tractor?? – the first (or maybe it was a couple of storms on) big storm came along, wiped out the dam (the soil is highly erodable), the water having gathered from all of Spring Creek Basin’s little, medium, big and large arroyos rushed through and down Spring Creek and out of the basin … and Mr. Custer went away *disappointed*. (In truth, I can’t even imagine how he must have felt; it had to have been an ENORMOUS amount of work (and money for equipment and such?) and taken an extraordinarily long time.)

There are a number of these dugouts in Disappointment Valley. What history they could tell.

(Where Eagles Winter: History and Legend of the Disappointment Country, by Wilma Crisp Bankston, tells a good bit of that history, though I’m not sure there’s anything in it about Custer Dam.)