A wet spring had filled the reservoir at Hatchtown, Garfield County, Utah, to the top of its spillway: on Monday, May 25, 1914, its earthen dam held back about 14,000 acre feet of Sevier River water. All was well when caretaker A.W. Huntington made his routine morning inspection.

At 2:00 p.m. he discovered a muddy ooze below the dam and summoned help. For hours he sought the source of the leak. The ooze increased to a stream, and the ground above began to cave, first in small slabs, then large, until the dam gave way entirely at 8:00 p.m. Water burst through the five-story-high breach with the pressure of a fire hose, scouring farmland far beyond the river banks as the flood rushed northward. Continue reading Hatchtown dam collapse (Utah history) →