PANGUITCH LAKE
A cracked dam and the youngest lava in Utah
The dam failed partly in April 2024 and is being replaced. The lake behind it is natural, which is not the story people tell about it, and the flows around it are the youngest in the state.
On 8 April 2024 high water and ice pressure caused a section of Panguitch Lake Dam to tilt and crack. The state closed Highway 143, issued a flood watch, and rated the situation level 2 of 3, a potential dam failure situation .
Two days later the wildlife division shut the lake to fishing by emergency change to the guidebook. Its director: "Public safety is a top priority for us, and we want to deter anglers and others from visiting the area at this time" . It reopened on 22 April, by which point the water was down more than 26 inches and the leaking had reduced .
The section that failed was an expansion added in the 1930s or 40s, not the main structure, and a complete breach was considered unlikely .
The federal dam inventory record for this dam could not be retrieved, so no federal identifier, official height, storage or hazard classification is printed here. A dam safety case study gives the dam a build date of 1872 , where the wildlife division's own restoration record says the outlet dam went in during 1885 . Both are printed and neither is resolved.
This is the correction most likely to matter, because the lake twenty miles south of here has a famous origin story and it is not this one's.
Two Utah agencies describe Panguitch Lake the same way. The wildlife division: it is a natural water body about 35 feet deep in its original state, and a dam built at the outlet in 1885 for irrigation storage raised it to about 57 feet . The water quality division puts it identically: maximum depth 57 feet, "approximately 35 feet being in the natural lake and 22 feet being contained by the dam" .
That includes the geologic map of this exact quadrangle. The Utah Geological Survey mapped it in 2014, and the survey's published description of its own map names what is here: "southwest Utah's youngest basaltic lava flows, classic examples of inverted valleys capped by older lava flows, glacial deposits in the Castle Valley area, and the southern margin of the Markagunt Megabreccia," the last of these being the debris of Utah's largest catastrophic landslide, covering 1,300 square miles of the plateau . It does not say what made the lake basin either.
The water leaves as Panguitch Creek and runs to the Sevier River, which reaches no ocean. The Forest Service names the three streams that feed it: Blue Springs Creek, Clear Creek and Ipson Creek .
The Markagunt Plateau volcanic field has its two youngest ends near two lakes. The Smithsonian: "the youngest flows being located near Panguitch Lake on the north and Navajo Lake on the south" .
The Utah Geological Survey names the source: the flows here "erupted from nearby Miller Knoll cinder cone and adjacent vents," and are "among the youngest in Utah" . The federal survey groups them as the Dry Valley and Panguitch Lake flows, "probably erupted in Holocene time," with flow fronts 100 to 200 feet high .
The tree observation traces to a single 1949 reconnaissance paper by a USGS geologist , and it is paywalled. No evidence could be found that formal dendrochronology was ever done on these flows, by anyone, so this page does not name a laboratory or a tree ring scientist. And it is not the Santa Clara flow, which is a different flow in a different place and radiocarbon dates to 27,270 years .
The Smithsonian entry adds that the tree date is "consistent with legends of the Southern Paiute (who arrived in the area about 1000 CE) noting ejection of fiery rocks and molten lava flows" .
That sentence gets repeated a great deal. This page will not build anything on it, for reasons worth setting out.
- The Smithsonian's only source for it is a 1957 popular book of collected legends by a Cedar City businessman, not an ethnographer working to any research protocol.
- No account naming Panguitch Lake could be found in any agency or peer reviewed source. The sentence is the Smithsonian's own summary, not a quotation from a Paiute speaker.
- A rigorous version of this work exists, and it is about somewhere else. The Bureau of Land Management, with the University of Arizona, published an ethnographic investigation of Southern Paiute knowledge of a lava flow in 2013. It records that "Indian people still sing songs that recount the eruption." It is about the Little Springs flow in northwestern Arizona, and it does not mention Panguitch Lake or the Markagunt Plateau anywhere .
Three quarters of the problem is in the mud
Impaired for phosphorus since 2002, and most of the load is not washing in from anywhere. It is already here, in the sediment, and the proposed fix is a 2,600 foot pipe.
The shape at the top of this page was traced by hand for a print, then scaled to the extent of the USGS water body polygon and measured off its own coordinates.
| Scaling | Traced area | Against the federal polygon |
|---|---|---|
| One scale factor, matched on length | 1,034 acres | 1.7 percent small |
| Stretched to fill the extent on both axes | 1,105 acres | 5.0 percent large |
| One scale factor, matched on width | 1,180 acres | 12.2 percent large |
The two shapes are 6.8 percent apart on proportion. The drawing measures 2.01 miles on its long axis against a federal extent of 1.99.
| Measure | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Surface elevation | 8,212 ft | Forest Service , and the federal polygon at 2,503 metres , agreeing |
| 8,210 ft | The federal storage station | |
| 8,200 ft | The 2004 water quality plan | |
| Maximum depth | 57 ft, of which about 35 is the natural lake and 22 is held by the dam | Two Utah agencies, independently |
| Mean depth | 6.4 metres, 21 feet | The 2004 water quality plan . The only mean depth published for this lake |
| Capacity | 23,730 acre feet when full | The 2004 water quality plan |
| 22,300 acre feet | The federal storage station's own reservoir metadata | |
| Surface area | 1,052 acres now, 777 as the natural lake | Federal polygon and the 2004 plan |
This page uses 22,300 acre feet for capacity, because that is the figure the live storage reading is published against. The 2004 plan's 23,730 is about six percent higher.
Panguitch Lake was put on the impaired waters list in 2002 for total phosphorus and low dissolved oxygen, impairing its class 3A cold water fishery. The plan to fix it was approved on 24 June 2004 .
| Measure | Finding |
|---|---|
| Mean total phosphorus, 1990 to 2003 | 0.066 mg/L, against a criterion of 0.025 |
| Samples exceeding the criterion | 86 percent |
| Water column above 4.0 mg/L dissolved oxygen, 1997 to 2003 | 41 percent on average, against a target of more than half |
| Current phosphorus load | 2,822 kg a year, of which 2,158 is the lake's own sediment and 664 is everything outside the lake |
| Loading capacity | 1,196 kg a year |
| Required reduction | 1,767 kg a year, 62 percent |
Read the loading line again. Three quarters of the phosphorus problem is coming out of the lakebed, not off the land. That is why the current proposal is a pipe.
Only the two part split is printed above, because it is the only part of the loading arithmetic that closes. Subtract the sediment from the total and the outside share is 664 kg a year. The plan also publishes a breakdown of that outside share, and the components it names, tributaries at 526 plus other drainage, precipitation and grazing in the lakebed, add to more than 664 . That is the plan disagreeing with itself, not a rounding gap, so this page does not print the components.
An earlier version of the same idea, project 4364, was cancelled . Both records name the 2017 Brian Head fire and the erosion it caused in the tributaries as part of the loading problem.
There is no gauge on Panguitch Lake. The only stream gauge ever run on Panguitch Creek operated from April 1961 to September 1980 and has been silent since .
What exists is a federal reservoir storage station, 10UTPANG:UT:BOR, which advertises daily, semimonthly and monthly series .
The snow card comes from Castle Valley, 390:UT:SNTL, at 9,600 feet about six and a half miles southwest . It is the only snow station inside this lake's own hydrologic unit, and its daily service does work.
No live or recent water temperature for Panguitch Lake could be sourced from anywhere. The historic water column data are in the 2004 plan and are not served as anything a page can read.
Where everything is
Eight places, three campgrounds, two boat ramps, and the other end of the same volcanic field twenty miles south.
| Campground | Sites | Fee | Season |
|---|---|---|---|
| Panguitch Lake North | 39 single, 8 double, 3 group | via the federal booking system | late May to mid September |
| Panguitch Lake South | 18, tent only | 30 dollars | late May to early September, first come first served |
| White Bridge | 27 single, 1 double | 28 and 56 dollars, currently reduced 20 percent | early May to mid September |
North has drinking water, flush toilets and a dump station. South is tent only and all terrain vehicles may not be trailered in. White Bridge sits at 7,900 feet down the creek from the lake, and its potable water is currently unavailable .
No winter maintenance status for Highway 143 could be sourced, so none is printed. The one documented closure of it is the April 2024 dam emergency .
Navajo Lake sits twenty miles south, on the same plateau, in the same volcanic field, with the same young basalt around it .
They are worth reading together and they are not the same kind of lake.
| Panguitch Lake | Navajo Lake | |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | A natural basin, cause unsourced | Dammed by a lava flow, and the federal record says so |
| Outlet | Panguitch Creek, to the Sevier | None on the surface. It drains through holes in its own floor |
| Basin | Sevier, Great Basin | Both. About 40 percent reaches the Colorado |
| Chub | Four rotenone treatments, back again since 2020 | Treated in 1997 and 2021 |
Both are managed by the same Forest Service ranger district out of Cedar City , and the same wildlife division southern region.
The lake is at 8,212 feet and the nearest snow station is at 9,600 . That sets the calendar.
- The campgrounds run late May to mid September . Everything either side of that is snow.
- Ice fishing is one of the activities the Forest Service lists for this lake . No agency publishes an ice thickness for it, and no agency ice fishing guidance names Panguitch specifically.
- The water is cold whenever you get in it, and nobody has published a temperature for it in a form this page can read.
Twelve years of zero, and then ten fish
Four rotenone treatments, twelve consecutive surveys that caught no chub at all, and then they were back. The division still calls the plan a success, and it is right to.
Utah chub
Poisoned out of this lake four times. Absent from every survey for twelve straight years. Ten of them turned up in the 2022 net, in three or four different age classes, which is not what a survivor population looks like.
Back since 2020, after 12 years goneRainbow trout
206 of the 341 trout in the 2022 net, and 19 percent of them were over fifteen inches against a management target of ten.
206 of 341 in the 2022 netTiger trout
Eighty in the 2022 net and one of them weighed 4.2 kilograms. Half of the predator share the whole management plan is judged against.
80 in the net, one at 4.2 kgBear Lake cutthroat trout
The other half of the predator share. The stocking quota went up from 25,000 to 35,000 for 2024, specifically because the chub came back.
Quota raised to 35,000 for 2024Brook trout
Two fish in the 2022 net, six tenths of one percent. Stocked in some years only as surplus from the hatcheries.
2 in the 2022 netBrown trout
The Forest Service lists brown trout for this lake. The wildlife division has never caught one in a trend net. Both positions are printed and neither is resolved.
Forest Service yes, DWR net noThe wildlife division has treated Panguitch Lake with rotenone four times, in 1956, 1973, 1991 and 2006, every time to remove Utah chub .
Before the 2006 treatment, chub averaged 243 fish per net night and made up more than 90 percent of the fish biomass in the lake by 2004 .
The 2006 treatment worked better than any of the others. Twelve consecutive surveys, 2007 through 2019, caught zero chub. Then in spring 2020 they were back .
| Year | Utah chub per net night |
|---|---|
| Before 2006 | 243 average |
| 2007 to 2019 | zero, every year |
| 2020 | 2.0 |
| 2021 | 0.25 |
| 2022 | 2.5, ten fish in three or four age classes |
Four experimental gill nets, two floating and two sinking, set over 2 and 3 May 2022 .
| Species | Caught | Share | Mean size | Largest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rainbow trout | 206 | 56.7% | 330 mm, 422 g | 530 mm, 1,283 g |
| Tiger trout | 80 | 22.8% | 451 mm, 893 g | 756 mm, 4,200 g |
| Bear Lake cutthroat | 53 | 15.1% | 371 mm, 487 g | 515 mm, 1,002 g |
| Brook trout | 2 | 0.6% | ||
| Total trout | 341 | 85.25 per net night | 97 percent of the catch and 99 percent of the biomass | |
Against the management plan's four objectives, that is a clean sweep :
| Objective | Target | 2022 | Long run |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trout per net night | at least 50 | 85.25 | 56 average, missed in 6 of 16 surveys |
| Rainbow over 15 inches | at least 10 percent | 19 percent | 31 percent, missed once |
| Predators as a share | at least 25 percent | 38 percent | 37 percent, missed three times |
| Angler catch rate | at least 0.5 trout an hour | 0.49 in 2008, 0.88 in 2019 |
Not the chub. From the same report :
The named causes are nutrient loading from livestock grazing, tributary erosion made worse by the 2017 Brian Head fire, and cabin septic systems . Its recommendations include investigating "opportunities to mitigate nutrient loading in Panguitch Lake (stream channel work in burned tributaries, responsible grazing management, alteration of dam outlet)."
That last phrase, altering the dam outlet, is the siphon project now budgeted for 2027 and 2028 . A fisheries report and an engineering project arriving at the same answer from opposite directions.
Panguitch Lake carries the Blue Ribbon marker in the guidebook . Its entry :
- "Limit 4 trout (a combined total)."
- "No more than 2 may be cutthroat or tiger trout under 15 inches, and no more than 1 may be a cutthroat or tiger trout over 22 inches."
- "All cutthroat and tiger trout from 15 to 22 inches must be immediately released."
- "Trout may not be filleted and the heads or tails may not be removed in the field or in transit."
- "Any trout with cutthroat markings is considered to be a cutthroat trout."
The tributaries have their own entry, and it is stricter :
- "Limit 2 cutthroat or tiger trout (a combined total)... (goes toward the statewide trout limit)."
- "All cutthroat and tiger trout from 15 to 22 inches must be immediately released."
- "CLOSED Jan. 1 through 6 a.m. on the second Saturday of July."
No Utah state record has ever been set at Panguitch Lake. The division's record list was read row by row across the catch and keep, catch and release, spearfishing, setline and archery tables, and no row in any of them names this water . And no 2026 or 2025 stocking numbers could be obtained: the division's stocking tool renders one alphabetical statewide table and it truncates before the P waters in both years.
What to watch for
A dam under reconstruction, an algae season, and a state advisory record with a hole in it.
The April 2024 incident was rated level 2 of 3, a potential dam failure situation, by the state . Highway 143 was closed, a flood watch was issued, and the lake was shut to fishing for twelve days .
Nobody was hurt and no property was damaged . The response worked: the water was dropped more than 26 inches, the leaking reduced, and the dam was monitored around the clock .
The state environmental department runs a monitoring page for this lake . The 2024 season went like this:
| Date | Status |
|---|---|
| 16 July 2024 | "Our monitoring team did not see any visible signs of a harmful algal bloom" |
| 28 August 2024 | Visible signs observed, samples pending |
| 29 August 2024 | Warning advisory, issued by the U.S. Forest Service |
| 9 October 2024 | Warning advisory still in effect |
| 16 December 2024 | Monitoring ended for the season |
The advisory language: "Algae in the water may be producing dangerous toxins that can make humans and animals sick" . No cell counts or toxin concentrations are published.
The underlying cause is not a mystery. The 2004 plan measured phosphorus at nearly three times the criterion, with three quarters of the load coming off the lakebed itself .
- No drowning, recovery or fatality at Panguitch Lake could be sourced. Not from the county, the state, the Forest Service or news. That is a genuine negative and not the same as saying none has happened.
- No federal dam record. The national inventory could not be retrieved, so no identifier, official height, storage or hazard class is printed.
- No water temperature, current or recent, from anywhere.
- No winter road status for Highway 143 from the state.
This lake has been poisoned four times to remove one fish, and the fish is back.
Fathom Restoration is a Utah 501(c)(3) that runs volunteer dive cleanups and is built to pull what does not belong out of Utah water, statewide.
Donate to Protect Panguitch LakeEvery figure on this page is quoted from the source named beside it.
Sources
How these were checked
Numbered sources are agencies. Lettered sources are everything else. Three claims did not survive checking. The lava here is at least about a thousand years old, not dated to 1050; the Smithsonian says the oldest trees on it date to then, which is a different statement. Panguitch Lake was not formed by a lava dam; two Utah agencies describe a natural basin about 35 feet deep raised 22 feet by an irrigation dam. And the Southern Paiute oral tradition cited alongside the lava could not be sourced to any account naming this lake. Where agencies disagree, all of them are printed: that happens over the surface area, the capacity, the year the dam was built, and whether brown trout live here.Panguitch Lake 2022 trend net survey. Hadley, southern region assistant aquatics manager. The four rotenone treatments, the twelve years without chub, the 2022 catch and the management plan scorecard
Panguitch Lake total maximum daily load and water quality management plan, 2004, approved 24 June 2004. The depths, the phosphorus figures and the required reduction
Watershed Restoration Initiative project 4364, Panguitch Lake anoxic water reduction. Cancelled, and it records the natural lake depth and the 1885 dam
Watershed Restoration Initiative project 7639, the Panguitch Lake hypolimnetic siphon
Panguitch Lake Dam, 15 April 2024. The crack, the hazard rating and the response
Panguitch Dam rebuilds a year later, 14 July 2025. The state engineer approval and the cost
DWR issues fishing emergency closure at Panguitch Lake due to public safety concerns, 10 April 2024
West Panguitch Irrigation and Reservoir Company, water company record
National Hydrography Dataset, Panguitch Lake, GNIS 01447643, reach code 16030001001407. The surface area, the elevation and the polygon extent this page measures against
Panguitch Creek near Panguitch, site 10176300. Record April 1961 to September 1980, then discontinued
Panguitch Lake storage, station 10UTPANG:UT:BOR. Capacity 22,300 acre feet
Castle Valley SNOTEL, station 390:UT:SNTL, at 9,600 feet, reporting since 1980
Panguitch Lake, Dixie National Forest. The elevation, the inlet streams, the two boat ramps and the species list
Panguitch Lake North Campground
Panguitch Lake South Campground
White Bridge Campground
Utah Fishing Guidebook 2026. The Panguitch Lake entry, the tributaries entry, the Blue Ribbon marker and the filleting rule at page 23
Record fish caught in Utah. No row in any of the five tables names Panguitch Lake
Panguitch Lake break, wildlife blog, which calls it a Blue Ribbon fishery
Quagga and zebra mussels. Utah's infested waters are limited to Lake Powell
Panguitch Lake recreational water quality monitoring, and the 2024 warning advisory
Geologic map of the Panguitch Lake quadrangle, Garfield and Iron counties. Biek, Anderson, Sable and Rowley, 2014, map 268DM
Photo of the day, 26 September 2017, which names Miller Knoll cinder cone as the source of the lava flows here
Markagunt Plateau volcanic field. The Dry Valley and Panguitch Lake flows, and the flow front heights
New age for the Santa Clara basalt flow, Survey Notes volume 38 number 3, September 2006
Unav-Nuquaint, Little Springs lava flow ethnographic investigation, 25 September 2013. An agency ethnography of Southern Paiute oral tradition about a lava flow, and it is about a different flow in Arizona
Markagunt Plateau, volcano number 327040. The 1050 of the common era tree date and the reference to Southern Paiute legend. A federal trust instrumentality rather than a land or water agency
Geologic and geographic reconnaissance of eastern Markagunt Plateau, Utah. Gregory, 1949, Geological Society of America Bulletin volume 60. The original source of the tree observation, and it is paywalled
Panguitch Lake Dam, Utah, 2024. The case study, which gives an 1872 build date against the state's 1885 and records no injuries or property damage
Utah rules for specific waters, the digital edition of the division guidebook
Why the reservoir number is so low
The dam is being rebuilt and the reservoir has been drawn down for the work. The state engineer approved a 3.7 million dollar replacement on 19 June 2025 . If the storage card above reads at a small fraction of capacity, that is the reason, and it is not a drought reading.
The storage figure is monthly, not live. Station 10UTPANG:UT:BOR advertises daily, semimonthly and monthly series . Only monthly returns data. Daily and semimonthly both return empty lists, including for control windows well in the past.
Percent of capacity is arithmetic, not a measurement. It divides the storage reading beside it by the 22,300 acre feet the station's own reservoir metadata publishes . The 2004 water quality plan publishes 23,730 instead , which would make this percentage smaller.
The snow card is four miles away and 1,400 feet higher. Castle Valley, 390:UT:SNTL, sits at 9,600 feet and has reported since 1980 . It is the only snow station inside this lake's hydrologic unit. In summer the snow reading is zero, and that is correct rather than broken.
Nothing measures the lake itself. There is no gauge on it, no temperature sensor, and the only stream gauge ever run on its outlet creek stopped in September 1980 .