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Show 28 its cleanest. 17 Even in Salt Lake City many continued to take drinking water from streams and canals. This was especially so in the so- called " clodhopper" or " westend" wards beyond 7th West which were dotted with ponds and accessed the Jordan River by several waterways. In addition to their culinary roles, waterways were popular for boating and skating. Ponds, including one called " Jim Brown's hole", were heavily used for swimming, fishing, and baptismal purposes. 18 Throughout Salt Lake County, ponds became extremely popular. Some irrigators used them to avoid night watering. 19 More saw their potential for aesthetic and recreational use. Groves and playgrounds were developed in connection with some as at Calder's Farm and Fuller's Hill on 11th East and Bast's Pond on the west side. 20 In addition, well- to- do families like James Henry Moyle maintained small lakes for family use. Earl H. Ottley, for example, remembered his family pond in the Cottonwood district which had been developed by his grandfather for trout fishing and ice harvest. 21 By the younger Ottley's boyhood, kids fished for the lazy " carp, sunfish, perch and suckers" that sunned themselves on its shallow bottom during the summer. In good winters they skated from it along a swale to the Jordan and Salt Lake City Canal, which they could then follow for five miles to Sandy. 22 Much more important than such bucolic uses was the development of municipal water systems in Salt Lake City. The city was among those interested in pushing to develop a series of canals tapping Utah Lake after 1870. When completed in the early 1880s, the Jordan and Salt Lake City canal freed water from City Creek and other mountain streams to culinary and city use. 23 By 1889 City Creek had been developed to provide culinary water to some 15,000 people through 1,018 taps. In all, the city had " 25.3 miles of water- mains" and supplied " water to about half the town." 24 During the 1890s the city moved aggressively to develop springs and other adjacent streams. As recorded by Charles S. Peterson, the following report of A. J. Pendleton, " water commissioner" gives some sense for the work: 25 17 A. K. Larson, "/ Was Called to Dixie" the Virgin River Basin: Unique Experiences in Mormon Pioneering ( Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1961), pp 611- 615. 18 Charles S. Peterson, with John Lambom, " Agriculture in Salt Lake County 1890 to 1915," ( Prepared under contract widi the Henry Wheeler Living Historical Farm, 1980), pp 49- 50. The following section on city developments depends very heavily upon this work. 19Ibid., p 51. 20Ibid. 2, Ibid., pp 52- 53. ^ id. 23Ibid. p 25. Charles S. Peterson provides an excellent description of this canal and the lands and people who depended on it in. 24Ibid., p 54. 25 Irrigation Age, Vol. 4 ( January 1893). As cited in Charles S. Peterson, with John Lambom, " Agriculture in Salt Lake County," p55. |