Would you like to go fishing or boating at northern Utah’s Watkins Dam?

What? Where’s that?

Sometimes, popular usage over time can supersede official titles …

We’re talking Willard Bay here, but its original name was Arthur V. Watkins Dam or Watkins Bay.

The nearby town of Willard and/or Willard Peak soon became the water reservoir’s official namesake, by popular reference.

(In fact, one of the few places you will find the Watkins name used today is on the Bureau of Reclamation’s official website.)

Willard Bay, 11 miles northwest of Ogden and adjacent to the Great Salt Lake, is often taken for granted. But this artificial treasure has a history worth examining.

However, it is surprising how little of its history is readily available.

Thanks to some additional information supplied by the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District, here’s the scoop on “Willard Bay” …

This water project was authorized by an act of Congress on August 29, 1949. It was U.S. Sen. Arthur V. Watkins, R-Utah, who worked to create funding for this project.

It became a 14.5-mile-long, rough rectangle shaped dike structure that impounds surplus fresh water from reaching the Great Salt Lake. Some 17 million cubic yards of material were used to create the dam.

The earthen dike material used in the project is highly compressible. So in order to allow maximum time for settlement, the dam was constructed in three stages over a period of more than 7 years. The dam was built by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and completed in 1964. Essentially, a dike was created. The salt water was drained out and fresh water was then stored inside.

In 1990, a fourth stage of construction entailed restoring the dike crest to its original 4,235 feet above sea level (about 36 feet high), following even more additional, yet anticipated settlement of the foundation.

Surplus water from the Weber River and its tributaries, which cannot be controlled by mountain reservoirs, as well as winter releases through Gateway and Wanship Powerplants and other private utilities, normally would flow into the Great Salt Lake. This surplus water is diverted from the Weber River at the Slaterville Diversion Dam, located west of Ogden, and carried north 8 miles by the Willard Canal into Willard Bay Reservoir. To meet project needs, water can be returned in the summer from Willard Bay Reservoir to the Weber River and into the Layton Pumping Plant intake channel, as needed, for irrigation of lands lying along the shores of the Great Salt Lake.

About 5 miles north along the diversion canal, a turnout can also divert water into the Plain City Canal, a privately owned irrigation system.

Water can also be released to the Harold Crane Wildlife Management Area and to Great Salt Lake Minerals through a siphon outlet at the southwest corner of the Willard Bay dike.

Willard Bay Reservoir is the lowest reservoir of the Weber River system. It averages 19 feet in depth and as much as 36 feet deep.

Willard Bay can hold a maximum of 215,120 acre feet of water (almost twice that of Pineview). Among the Bureau of Reclamation’s 25 dams in Utah, only Flaming Gorge and Jordanelle reservoirs can hold more water. (Glen Canyon Dam is in Arizona.)

Operation and maintenance of the dam was turned over to the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District in 1968.

Creating Willard Bay meant the loss of some farmland dating back to the pioneer era. Unlike most area settlements, Willard (originally known as “Willow Creek”) had most of its farmland on its fringes, rather than its interior.

Notwithstanding, Willard Bay’s creation eventually led to a multiplication of much more new farmland in northern Utah, thanks to the additional water available.

Willard Bay State Park came along in 1966.

Over the decades, there have been considerations to dike off other areas of the east side of the Great Salt Lake and divert surplus water into similar fresh water reservoirs. No others have ever happened, so Willard Bay remains Utah’s lone Great Salt Lake side reservoir.

And, funding for a feasibility study to see if Willard Bay itself could be expanded even more, recently failed to gain approval.

-TRAIN ROBBERY UPDATE: There’s a lot more detail and even unsolved mystery to “The Great Ogden Train Robbery of 1911,” reported in this column last week.

After reading last week’s column, Sgt. Lane Findlay of the Weber County Sheriff’s Office sent me an unverified photograph the department had in its collection referencing the Jan. 2, 1911 train robbery.

However, the names of the two suspects being released, listed on the back of the photograph, didn’t match the names I had.

Armed with new details, I searched for the new names and realized the first two suspects must have been released early on in the investigation, for lack of evidence – which is why my first search of their names had ended so quickly – with only their arrest.

Two new suspects – men in Michigan – were eventually extradited to Ogden to stand trial in the crime.

However, after a lengthy trial, those two men were also released, on May 22, 1911.

So, the train robbery was never solved, or at least with enough evidence found to convict anyone.

You could rename this “The Great Unsolved Ogden Train Robbery of 1911.”