RAINBOW LAKE

The creation of Rainbow Lake in Lakeside, Arizona, is a classic story of pioneering ingenuity, a harsh environment, and the vital need for water management in the high country.

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Why Rainbow Lake Was Created

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Like many of the lakes in the White Mountains, Rainbow Lake is entirely man-made. It was created as an agricultural reservoir to secure a reliable water supply for the early Mormon pioneer settlements in the region.

• The Impetus (The Drought of 1903): While pioneers had settled the areas of Pinetop and Woodland in the late 1880s and 1890s, the mountain's fresh water sources were highly unpredictable. The 1903–1904 season brought a devastating drought that dried up nearly every local water source except for Adair Spring and Pinetop, forcing residents to haul water from miles away.

• The Solution: The drought was immediately followed by an incredibly wet year. Realizing they needed a way to store this bounty of water for dry cycles, the Pinetop-Woodland Lake Irrigation Company decided to build a permanent reservoir system to impound water for downstream farming and irrigation.

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How It Was Made

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The lake was constructed between 1903 and 1904 through sheer manual labor and pioneering resourcefulness.

 

1. Surveying the Watershed, 1903

Niels Hansen, an early local settler, was tasked with surveying Show Low Creek and its tributaries to find the ideal location to trap seasonal snowmelt and runoff. He mapped out the locations for the future dam and the network of irrigation ditches.

 

2. Damming Walnut Creek, 1903 - 1904

Using homemade tools, teams of horses, and manual labor, settlers built an earthen dam across Walnut Creek, a crucial tributary of the Little Colorado River drainage system.

 

3. Flooding the Basin

The dam successfully blocked the creek's natural flow, allowing water to back up and flood a shallow, 116-acre mountain basin. This action essentially spawned the growth and layout of the town of Lakeside.

 

4. Installing the Headgate, 1911

A few years after the initial construction, a formal cast-iron and steel headgate mechanism was installed to control the exact flow of water released down the canals to shareholders.

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The Lake Today

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What began as a rugged dirt-and-rock irrigation project has evolved into a centerpiece of the community. Today, Rainbow Lake averages about 7 feet deep (reaching 14 feet at its deepest) and is a prime destination for fishing, boating, and viewing local wildlife like elk and waterfowl.

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Because it was built purely for water storage, the Show Low/Pinetop-Woodland Irrigation Company still maintains rock-solid legal title to the water and the land underneath the lake up to the high-water mark. Over the years, local residents, homeowners' associations, and the volunteer-led Rainbow Lake Conservation Company have actively partnered with the irrigation company to fund infrastructure modernization—such as repairing the historic headgate and piping open ditches—to combat seepage, control invasive weeds, and keep this mountain gem sparkling and full for generations to come.

Who owned the land under Rainbow Lake before the dam was built?

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Before the dam was constructed in 1903, the land that now sits beneath Rainbow Lake was federal public domain land—specifically part of the Apache National Forest (established as a forest reserve by President McKinley in 1898) and a natural, marshy basin surrounding Walnut Creek.

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Because the land was federally managed, the early homesteaders and the founders of the Pinetop-Woodland Lake Irrigation Company had to secure explicit legal rights to flood the area. They achieved this through two main historical avenues:

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1. The Right-of-Way Act of 1891

To encourage the development of the arid West, the U.S. Congress passed the General Right-of-Way Act of 1891. This law allowed legally formed ditch and irrigation companies to file maps and claims with the federal government to secure rights-of-way across public lands and forest reserves for reservoirs, canals, and lateral ditches.

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When Niels Hansen surveyed the basin in 1903, the irrigation company utilized this federal act to legally claim the shallow 116-acre valley for water storage. This federal approval granted them permanent ownership of the land beneath the water up to the "high-water mark," a title the modern-day Show Low/Pinetop-Woodland Irrigation Company still holds exclusively today.

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2. Relinquished Homestead Claims

The immediate surrounding areas were being actively settled under the Homestead Act of 1862. A few pioneer families, including the Hansen and Penrod families, held adjacent homestead plots. For the portions of the shallow basin that touched these early private claims, the settlers willingly signed over or dedicated their low-lying, swampy creek acreage to the irrigation company. Because these pioneers were the primary shareholders of the newly formed irrigation company, sacrificing a few acres of marshy creek bottom was a small price to pay to guarantee a permanent water supply for their downstream crops.

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The basin went straight from a rugged, federally managed mountain creek bed to a privately controlled agricultural reservoir, completely bypassing the typical private land market.