Historic drought conditions have forced Utah state leaders to pull water from  emergency storage and shut down boat ramps across the state. The extremely low levels at one reservoir in Summit County have revealed pioneer-era buildings not usually visible:

“The first building you can see usually is exposed every yearIt’s sitting at about 60 percent. The other foundations you don’t see nearly as often. It is kind of cool because it is still history. This used to be a town. It was a fort before it was a town. It was called Rock Fort.” – Rockport State Park Manager Eric Bradshaw

That remains of the fort in Rockport Reservoir dates back to the mid-1800’s:

“European settlers came in, established a little community there. They were having some conflicts with the natives, so they ended up building kind of a rock wall around their settlement.” –Jon Parry

At one a time, a settlement of around 100 was in the area. That dwindled to about 27 families by the 1950’s:

“And so, at that point, the federal government came in and bought the land, relocated several of those historic buildings.” -Jon Parry

That’s when Rockport, along with several other reservoirs, were created in the Weber Basin. Parry said it’s not all that unusual to have them over old settlements, but a bit more rare to have that history show up again.

“To be this low, it’s very eye-opening, hopefully for people” –Eric Bradshaw

Unofficial Networks Newsletter

Get the latest snow and mountain lifestyle news and entertainment delivered to your inbox.

Hidden
Newsletters
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.