CURIOUS MIND COLUMNIST {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Williams-Brackett EDITOR’S NOTE: This column ran May 14, 2013, in the Times-News and at Magicvalley.com .
Q: How large is Murtaugh Lake, what is its tributary and what is the water used for? A: Murtaugh Lake was originally called Dry Creek Reservoir. “Murtaugh Lake is roughly 700 surface acres, and the average depth when full is roughly 10 feet. So the storage capacity is roughly 7,000 acre feet,” said former Twin Falls Canal Company General Manager Brian Olmstead.
“Historically two creeks ran through what is now Murtaugh Lake on their way to the Snake River. Dry Creek is an intermittent stream that originates in the South Hills a few miles north of Bostetter Guard Station, and Cottonwood Creek is a small perennial stream.” “Prior to 1900, both streams entered the Snake River just east of the present town of Murtaugh,” Olmstead said.
In the early 1900s when the Twin Falls Canal System was built, they decided to make a large dike across this intermittent channel and used the resulting Murtaugh Lake as a re-regulating reservoir for the Twin Falls system. At the time, Milner Dam was the only significant dam on the Upper Snake River, so flows were highly variable at Milner and a “buffering” reservoir was desirable for canal management purposes. Olmstead said present-day Cottonwood Creek was long ago diverted for irrigation purposes, so i.
