Wayne County (Utah). County Recorder Fish Lake water rights purchase agreement, 1889, 1965.

This series contains original documents, photocopies, and correspondence related to the purchase and use of the outlet of Fish Lake between the Fremont Irrigation Company and a group of Paiute Indians.

Original documents include the deed between the Fremont Irrigation Company and a group of local Paiute Indians for the purchase of water and fishing rights to the outlet of Fish Lake, which is the Fremont River. The irrigation company purchased the rights on March 1st, 1889, making payment with 9 horses, 500 lbs of flour, 1 beef stear [sic], and a suit of clothes. Although the lake is located in Sevier County, the Fremont River ran through the portion of Piute County, that would become Wayne County in 1892. For that reason the agreement took place in Loa, which was the primary community in the area. The original documents also include receipts from the Fremont Irrigation Company to individuals and to the Loa and Fremont LDS wards for goods they provided towards the purchase of the outlet to the lake.

This series also contains several photocopies of the original deed, and the receipts, along with two letters regarding early attempts to preserve the documents in the State Archives. Stamps on the original documents indicate that the Fremont Irrigation Company recorded them with the Wayne County Recorder in 1947. At some point after 1947 the State Archives acquired copies of the original documents. These negative photostatic copies have been maintained in the series because they show pencil writing that has since faded from the original documents. The 1965 correspondence documents that the State Archives apparently requested that the irrigation company donate the original documents to the Archives, presumably for the purpose of preserving them. The letters also indicate that the irrigation company agreed to donate the documents and that the Archives provided a copy of the originals in return.