QUAIL CREEK
The dike, not the dam
It leaked from the day it was filled. Four years of grouting did not fix it. The 209 foot dam is still standing; the thing that failed was the embankment beside it.
Quail Creek is held by two structures, and the one that failed was not the big one. The main dam is 209 feet tall and is still standing . What went was the dike, a zoned earthfill embankment on the south side.
The reservoir had leaked from the day it was first filled in 1985. Grouting in the summer of 1986 cut the seepage to 0.3 cubic feet a second. There was more cutoff work that autumn, and more grouting in 1987 and again in 1988 .
| 31 December 1988 | What was happening |
|---|---|
| Morning | Cloudy seepage at the downstream toe near station 5+90, estimated at 200 to 300 gallons a minute |
| 22:00 | Turbid water at about half a cubic foot a second |
| 22:30 | Seepage reaches 70 cubic feet a second. Work stops. People and equipment are pulled back |
| 22:30 to 23:30 | Downstream evacuation ordered |
| 23:00 to 23:30 | "A wedge 50 feet wide and 25 feet high suddenly dropped several feet" |
| 1 January 1989, 00:30 | Complete breach. 300 feet wide, 80 to 90 feet deep |
Timeline and quotation from the dam safety case study that carries the official investigation . Two and a half hours separate the first 70 cfs reading from an empty reservoir.
The Independent Review Team reported in 1989. Its finding, as quoted in the dam safety literature :
"if the materials had been protected by proper filters, drains, and foundation surface treatment, the failure would not have occurred."
Grout takes of up to 805.5 sacks at a single location told the investigators there were open conduits under the dike. The design had underestimated how permeable the foundation was, and the remedial grouting may have made things worse .
The geology literature says something different, and it is in the federal publications warehouse :
The dam safety papers never use the words gypsum or karst. The geology paper never uses the words filter or drain. They are not in conflict. One describes what was under the dike and the other describes what should have been built on top of it. This page prints both because leaving either out makes the failure sound simpler than it was.
One term that gets attached to this failure could not be sourced at all: no source found here names the Moenkopi Formation. It is not on this page.
The federal survey put a report on it . Its numbers:
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Water released | about 25,000 acre feet |
| Peak outflow through the breach | 100,000 cubic feet a second |
| Peak at three federal gauges | 60,000 to 66,000 cubic feet a second, above the theoretical hundred year flood at all three |
| Damage | more than 12 million dollars to roads, bridges, agricultural land, livestock, irrigation structures, businesses and residences |
| Channel rebuilt | about 80 kilometres, roughly 50 miles, of major change downstream |
| Deaths | None. "No loss of human life was reported thanks to the evacuation efforts of emergency responders" |
Washington County "was declared a disaster area by President George Bush" . The flood ran through three states.
What was flooded: St George , Bloomington, which one contemporary account called one of the hardest hit areas , Littlefield in Arizona, where the channel filled with 3 centimetres of sand , and Mesquite in Nevada . A local museum account traces the water on through Bunkerville and Riverside and into Lake Mead .
Washington City sits on the river between the confluence and St George, so it is necessarily inside the flood reach, but no source found here names it. This page does not assert it. No agency figure for the flood's depth or its travel time could be obtained either: the full text of the federal report returns an error on every route, and only its abstract and its map plate are readable.
The dike was not repaired. It was replaced with a different kind of dam. Utah State Parks describes it plainly : "The south dam is a roller-compacted concrete dam, constructed to replace the original earth-fill dam that failed in the early hours of New Year's Day 1989."
| Main dam, UT00514 | South Dam, UT00710 | |
|---|---|---|
| Completed | 1984 | 1990 |
| Material | earthfill | roller compacted concrete |
| Height | 209 ft structural, 199 hydraulic | 80 ft structural, 77 hydraulic |
| Crest | 895 ft long, 25 ft wide | 2,050 ft long, 16 ft wide, at elevation 2,988 ft |
| Storage | 45,050 acre feet at crest, 40,325 normal | 37,000 at crest, 33,000 at spillway crest |
| Hazard | high | high |
| Last inspected | 29 May 2025 | 29 May 2025 |
The state record for the South Dam adds a cut off trench 600 metres long and 25 metres deep , a spillway rated to 73,640 cubic feet a second, and an assessment that it "meets applicable hydrologic and seismic regulatory criteria" .
Quail Creek itself is a small stream off the Pine Valley Mountains . The reservoir drains 78.4 square miles of Quail Creek and Leeds Creek , which in this country is not enough to fill 40,000 acre feet.
So the water is imported. The Quail Creek Diversion takes it out of the Virgin River at 37.20115, -113.23417 and it travels, in the water district's own words, through "an 8.7-mile, 66-inch steel pipeline to the Hurricane Hydropower Plant before delivery to Sand Hollow and/or Quail Creek reservoirs" .
That is worth reading twice. Quail Creek and Sand Hollow are two ends of one system, filled off the same diversion, through the same pipe, past the same power plant. The diversion is deliberately placed several miles upstream of the La Verkin Hot Springs so the system does not pick up that saline water .
Three surface areas and one water sample
Nothing about the size of this reservoir is agreed, the drawing above matches the federal outline worse than any lake in this series, and the only temperature anyone has measured here is sixteen years old.
The shape at the top of this page was traced by hand for a print. Before it went on a page with federal numbers next to it, it was checked against one: scaled to the extent of the USGS water body polygon for this reservoir and then measured directly off the traced coordinates.
It failed the check in an unusual way. The two shapes are not the same proportion. The federal polygon has an aspect ratio of 0.4375. The drawing has 0.4912. That is 12.28 percent apart, and it means there is no single honest answer to how big the drawing is. The answer depends entirely on how you scale it.
| If you scale the drawing this way | Its area comes out | Against the federal polygon |
|---|---|---|
| One scale factor, matched on width | 604 acres | 1.9 percent small |
| Stretched to fill the extent on both axes | 678 acres | 10.1 percent large |
| One scale factor, matched on length | 761 acres | 23.6 percent large |
The drawing is proportionally too wide, or too short. Either way it is the worst match in this series so far, and the range above is printed instead of whichever number happens to flatter it. Use the federal polygon for anything that has to be right.
Federal polygon extent 1,482 metres by 3,388 metres, which is 0.92 by 2.11 miles. Permanent identifier 33033527, reach code 15010008007872 .
Nothing about the size of this reservoir is settled, and every figure below comes from a government.
| Surface area | Source |
|---|---|
| 615.6 acres, 2.49144 sq km | USGS water body polygon |
| 600 acres | Utah State Parks |
| 590 acres at spillway crest | Utah Division of Water Rights, on both dam records |
| Elevation | Source | What it is probably measuring |
|---|---|---|
| 3,300 ft | Utah State Parks | the park, not the water |
| 2,988 ft | Utah Division of Water Rights | the top of the South Dam |
| 2,960 ft | USDA soil conservation service | the storage gauge |
| not populated | USGS water body polygon | the field is empty |
The 3,300 foot figure cannot be the water surface, because the dam holding the water in has its crest at 2,988 feet. This page uses about 2,960 to 2,988 feet for the water and leaves 3,300 attributed to State Parks as a park elevation.
There is no gauge in this reservoir. There is a federal lake site on it, number 371045113233901, and its entire record is a single visit on 9 August 2010: thirty one parameters, one measurement each .
That one visit is also the only water temperature the federal survey has ever recorded here. It was 27.4 degrees Celsius, 81.3 Fahrenheit . If you want to know what this water is doing today, nobody is measuring it.
What does exist:
- Storage, from the USDA soil conservation service station 09UTQUAI:UT:BOR . It is the only routinely published number about the reservoir itself.
- The river, at USGS 09408135, "Virgin River above Quail Creek near Hurricane," active with a record starting 15 February 1989, six weeks after the flood .
- The river again, downstream, at USGS 09408150. Discharge back to 1967. Water temperature at that gauge stopped on 11 October 1993 .
The state environmental department runs a monitoring page for this reservoir . Quail Creek's advisories use the benthic mat language rather than the tiered health watch, warning and danger scale, which means the concern is mats on the bottom, not a bloom in the water column.
| Date | Status |
|---|---|
| 7 August 2025 through 17 December 2025 | "Harmful algae mats may be present at Quail Creek" |
| 6 January 2026 | "Harmful algae mats were not observed at Quail Creek Reservoir." Routine monitoring ended; sporadic checks resume June 2026 |
No cell counts or toxin concentrations are published for this water. E. coli stayed within safe levels through 2025 .
No Utah Division of Water Quality assessment result or impairment listing for Quail Creek could be obtained. The federal assessment database requires a key this page does not have. Sampling exists. A published conclusion could not be found.
Where everything is
Ten places, two dams that are not the same dam, a diversion twelve miles away that supplies almost all the water, and a campground the state counts three different ways.
| Fee | Amount |
|---|---|
| Day use, Utah resident | 20 dollars a vehicle |
| Day use, Utah resident 65 and over | 10 dollars |
| Day use, out of state | 25 dollars |
| Bicycle or walk in | 5 dollars |
| Night fishing, 21:00 to 07:00 | 15 dollars |
| Camping, primitive | 28 dollars a night |
| Camping, power and water | 40 dollars a night |
| Extra vehicle | 20 dollars a night, two per site maximum |
All from the park fee page . That page carries no effective date, so these are the posted amounts as read rather than a certified 2026 schedule.
The park is open 06:00 to 21:00 year round. Boat ramp hours move with the season, from 07:00 to 17:00 in winter out to 06:00 to 21:00 between May and September .
Current conditions, last updated 16 July 2026: water level average at 67 percent, main ramp fair, south boat ramp closed, Stage 2 fire restrictions with no open fires of any kind, and a warning about submerged objects around the shoreline .
The official park brochure lists the activities here as "boating, kayaking, paddle standing, waterskiing, wakeboarding, sailing, sailboarding, scuba diving, and swimming" .
The current park landing page lists boating, fishing, camping and hiking. Scuba is not on it .
Two publications by the same agency, two different answers, and nothing anywhere that resolves them.
A dive club publishes a 90 foot maximum, 40 foot mean, 8 to 10 feet of visibility and 65 to 70 degrees in summer. Its own page puts the reservoir at coordinates that fall outside the federal water body polygon entirely, so this page does not carry any of its numbers. And nothing has been sunk here on purpose: the purpose built dive park in Washington County is at Sand Hollow, the other reservoir on this pipeline, and its aircraft and its bus do not belong on this page.
This is the geography that explains both the flood and the fish rule, so it is worth having straight.
- The diversion sits on the Virgin River at longitude -113.234, east of and upstream of Hurricane and La Verkin .
- An 8.7 mile pipeline carries that water west, past the towns, to the reservoirs .
- The reservoir's outlet reaches the Virgin River again at about longitude -113.353, west of and downstream of both towns. The federal gauge there is named "Virgin River above Quail Creek near Hurricane" .
Water is taken out above the towns and put back below them. In 1989 that is why they were not flooded. Today it is why the state worries about what swims out of the outlet.
Four state records, and one fish you must kill
A Blue Ribbon fishery that has produced four Utah records, none of them a trout, and a rule requiring anglers to kill every smallmouth bass they catch.
Smallmouth bass
Nobody stocked these. The state's own sport fisheries coordinator said so on the record in 2011. Every one you catch here, you are required to kill.
No limit. Must be killedLargemouth bass
The Utah catch and release state record came out of this water: 27 inches, Dennis Miller, 29 March 1998. The old slot limit was struck in the 2025 rule cycle.
6 of any size. State recordBluegill
State record by weight, 2 pounds 8 ounces, Scott Gubler, 2024. The state's own regional bulletin says to look for schools suspended in 20 to 40 feet of water near cove mouths and points.
50 statewide. State recordBlack crappie
State record by length, 16 and three quarter inches, Draygen Picklesimer, 18 April 2022.
50 statewide. State recordGreen sunfish
State record by length, 11 and a quarter inches, Jeremy Martinez, 6 September 2014. Four records in this reservoir and this is the least famous of them.
50 statewide. State recordRainbow trout
The only trout here, and it is put in rather than born here. The state's southern region bulletin says stocking happens in late October or early November.
4 trout statewideBlack bullhead
Utah State Parks names bullhead catfish among the species here. No agency source could be found either way on channel catfish, so channel catfish is not on this page.
No statewide limitThe rule for this water, word for word :
"Limit 6 largemouth bass of any size."
The same wording sits in a state advisory council packet from September 2014 . The largemouth line is newer than it looks: the August 2024 packet records the recommendation to strike the old slot limit, "Limit 6 largemouth bass, only 1 may be over 12 inches" .
Spearfishing here is an eradication tool, not a sport allowance. Utah Administrative Code R657-13-9 opens Quail Creek to underwater spearfishing "for smallmouth bass only" . The one species you may spear is the one you must kill.
On 20 September 2011, at a regional advisory council meeting in a high school in Beaver, a council member asked the state's sport fisheries coordinator a direct question. The minutes record the exchange :
Cushing: "I'm looking at our entire staff and they say no."
Woodbury: "No? So that was all illegally introduced."
Cushing: "Yes sir."
And on where they go from here, in the same meeting :
That is the whole reason for the rule. The outlet of this reservoir is on the Virgin River, downstream of the towns, in the water where the state and its partners are trying to recover six native fish: woundfin, Virgin River chub, desert sucker, Virgin spinedace, flannelmouth sucker and speckled dace .
The state's southern region aquatic program manager put the biology plainly in 2021 : "Smallmouth are a very direct threat to the native species within the Virgin River system. If they got out into the river system, not only would they compete, but more likely they would prey on and eat these native species that we're trying to keep from being endangered."
Five days before that meeting, the division put the proposal to the public and its spokesman framed it as enforcement rather than fisheries management : "Non-native fish can end up destroying a body of water's ecosystem," and "someone who plants fish illegally is every bit as much a poacher." Cushing, in the same coverage: "Two tools we have to fight illegal fish stocking are no limit and catch-and-kill regulations."
Two things this page will not overstate. The rule is not unique. Mandatory kill provisions are in force at roughly twenty Utah waters for six or more species, including Bear Lake, Flaming Gorge, Pelican Lake, the Provo River, Utah Lake and the Colorado, Green and San Juan systems . What is distinctive here is the driver, not the mechanism. And the year the fish were found here, and who found them, could not be sourced. The 2011 minutes establish they were present and illegal by then and nothing found here dates it more precisely.
Quail Creek is a Blue Ribbon fishery , and the record book says why. Four Utah state records were set in this reservoir, and not one of them is a trout.
| Record | Species | Figure | Angler | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Catch and release | Largemouth bass | 27 inches | Dennis Miller | 29 March 1998 |
| Catch and release | Black crappie | 16 3/4 inches | Draygen Picklesimer | 18 April 2022 |
| Catch and release | Green sunfish | 11 1/4 inches | Jeremy Martinez | 6 September 2014 |
| Catch and keep | Bluegill | 2 lbs 8 oz | Scott Gubler | 2024 |
All four read row by row off the state record list , taking only rows whose water column actually says Quail Creek Reservoir, Quail Creek State Park or Quail Lake. There are no Quail Creek entries in the spearfishing, setline or archery tables.
Three gaps, stated rather than filled.
- No stocking numbers. The state stocking tool renders one long alphabetical table for the whole of Utah, and every retrieval of it stops in the letter L, before Quail Creek. Every filter parameter returns an error. There is no annual stocking report to fall back on. What exists is one southern region bulletin saying rainbow trout go in in late October or early November.
- No fishery survey. The state publishes trend net and monitoring reports for other waters. None exists for Quail Creek.
- Two species this page refuses to claim. Wiper appears in no agency source for this water; the phrase that put it on the first draft of the species list turns out to be Newcastle Reservoir's spearfishing rule, not this one . Channel catfish and common carp could not be confirmed or refuted at all. None of the three is drawn above.
What to watch for
Four deaths that could be found, two of them within a few feet of dry ground, and a wind that starts them.
This is not a complete record. Utah State Parks publishes releases but there is no per park index to enumerate, so what follows is what could be found.
25 August 2024. Pedro Castillo, 49, of Cedar City, was paddleboarding with his wife and daughter about half past four when, in the state's words, "strong gusts of wind began to blow, and the three paddle boarders were knocked from their boards." "They were not wearing life jackets at the time of the incident." A ranger nearby got the wife and daughter out and found Castillo face down after about thirty seconds under. CPR on the boat and again at the docks. He was pronounced dead at the scene at about 17:17 .
8 March 2021. Donald L. Denoon, 77, went fishing in the morning. His family reported him missing at about 19:45 and his body was recovered at about 22:45. It was windy and the water was cold. A life jacket was in his boat. He was not wearing it .
14 May 2019. Zachary Mansfield, 24, of Provo, was fishing from shore from about 19:30 and was alone at the time. He was found face down in two to four feet of water near the shoreline at about 23:30. His family later told reporters he had a seizure .
15 June 2015. Jared Todd, in his thirties, of Renton, Washington, tried to swim from a fishing area to a dock, got into trouble and called to his family for help. The people who reached him could not hold him up because "he was pulling them under as well." He was recovered at about 20:45 in roughly fifteen feet of water, about twenty feet from shore. The water was 76 degrees .
The 2024 death began with a gust . This reservoir runs about 2.1 miles on its long axis in open desert country, which is enough distance for wind to build a chop that will take a paddleboard or a small boat off its line.
There is no wind gauge on the water and no agency publishes conditions for it. The National Weather Service forecast in the strip above is a point forecast for the middle of the reservoir. It is weather over the water, not water conditions.
Utah State Parks names scuba diving as a park activity in its own brochure and gives the depth as 120 feet . Beyond that it publishes nothing operational: no dive rules, no flag rule, no entry points, no visibility, no map, and no water temperature profile.
The current conditions page warns of submerged objects around the reservoir and lists the south boat ramp as closed . Boat traffic is present and the park has a 15 mile an hour limit .
Nothing on this page is dive instruction or a dive plan. Fathom is a diver led organisation and the honest thing to say about this water is that the agency managing it has published almost nothing a diver could use, and the best known third party source for it publishes coordinates that land outside the reservoir.
A dam failed here in living memory, and the federal register has no record of the dam that replaced it.
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 Quail CreekEvery 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. Four claims were checked and corrected before they reached this page. The structure that failed was the dike, not the dam, and the 209 foot dam is still standing. Hurricane and La Verkin were not flooded; the reservoir's outlet is below both towns and the federal gauge name proves it. The mandatory kill rule for smallmouth bass is not unique to this water, it is in force at roughly twenty Utah waters. And wiper does not live here; that phrase belongs to Newcastle Reservoir. Where agencies disagree, all of them are printed: that happens over the surface area, the elevation, the capacity, the height of the diversion dam, how many campsites the park has, and whether scuba diving is an activity here.National Inventory of Dams, record UT00514 Quail Creek, the main dam
National Inventory of Dams, record UT00515 Quail Creek Diversion, on the Virgin River
Dam safety record UT00710, Quail Creek South Dam. The roller compacted concrete replacement, which the federal inventory returns nothing for
Dam safety record UT00514, which gives a surface area and a more recent inspection date than the federal inventory does
Flood on the Virgin River, January 1989, in Utah, Arizona, and Nevada. Carlson and Meyer, water resources investigations report 94-4159. The 25,000 acre feet, the peak discharges and the damage figure
Geomorphic and sedimentologic effects, water resources investigations report 97-4073, which measures how far downstream the channel was rebuilt
Gypsum karst problems in constructing dams in the USA. K.S. Johnson, Environmental Geology 53(5), 2007, indexed in the Publications Warehouse
National Hydrography Dataset, water body permanent identifier 33033527, reach code 15010008007872. The surface area and the polygon extent this page measures against
Virgin River above Quail Creek near Hurricane, site 09408135. Active, record since 15 February 1989
Virgin River near Hurricane, site 09408150. Water temperature at this gauge stopped on 11 October 1993
Quail Creek Reservoir lake site 371045113233901. One water quality sample, 9 August 2010
Quail Creek storage, station 09UTQUAI:UT:BOR. Reservoir storage in acre feet
Quail Creek State Park brochure, which lists scuba diving as a park activity and gives the 120 foot depth
Quail Creek State Park, current conditions
Quail Creek State Park, park fees
Cedar City man dies while paddle boarding at Quail Creek State Park, 25 August 2024
Man found dead at Quail Creek State Park, 15 May 2019
Utah Fishing Guidebook 2026. The Quail Creek entry, the statewide limits, the disposal of fish list and the underwater spearfishing section
Administrative Rule R657-13. R657-13-9 lists Quail Creek as open to spearfishing for smallmouth bass only, and R657-13-21 is the authority the kill rule rests on
Southern Regional Advisory Council minutes, 20 September 2011, in which the state sport fisheries coordinator says on the record that the smallmouth here were put in illegally
Regional advisory council packet, September 2014, carrying the mandatory kill wording
Regional advisory council packet, August 2024, which strikes the old largemouth slot limit
Record fish caught in Utah
Blue Ribbon Fisheries. Quail Creek carries the designation in the division's own fishing application
The Virgin River Program, and the six native fish it exists to recover
Quagga and zebra mussels. Utah's infested waters are limited to Lake Powell
Quail Creek Reservoir recreational monitoring, and the harmful algae mat advisories
The Quail Creek diversion dam, the 8.7 mile pipeline and the two reservoirs it feeds
Virgin River, water rights area 81, which names Quail Creek as a Pine Valley Mountains tributary of the Virgin
Quail Creek Dike, Utah, 1989. The case study that quotes the Independent Review Team report, the seepage timeline, the breach dimensions and the 100,000 cfs peak outflow
The Quail Creek dike failure. Hall, 1989, the paper that describes the dike zoning and the grouting history
Area nearly back to normal 1 year after collapse of Quail Creek dike, 31 December 1989. The Bloomington damage and the evacuation
DWR takes aim at illegal fish stocking in Utah, 15 September 2011, reporting the division proposal and quoting its spokesman
A fishy invasion: koi fish, smallmouth bass infest local reservoirs and ponds in southern Utah, 27 April 2021, quoting the DWR southern region aquatic program manager and reporting the 2015 Gunlock treatment
Southern Utah man dies at Quail Creek Reservoir, 9 March 2021
Man feared drowned in Quail Creek, 15 June 2015
Floods. A local museum account that traces the 1989 water from St George to Lake Mead
What these numbers are measuring
The storage figure is monthly, not live. Station 09UTQUAI:UT:BOR is the only routinely published number about this reservoir . Its own metadata advertises a daily series going back to 1985, and the daily service returns an empty list for every window asked of it. The card therefore reads the monthly series and prints the month it belongs to.
Percent of normal pool is arithmetic, not a measurement. It divides the storage reading beside it by the 40,325 acre feet the federal dam inventory publishes as normal storage . A different figure, 45,050, is the capacity at dam crest, and using that one would make this percentage smaller.
The river card is not the reservoir. USGS 09408135 sits on the Virgin River above the point where Quail Creek reaches it . It tells you what the river is doing before this reservoir's outlet joins it. It is not inflow to the reservoir either: the water that fills this reservoir is diverted twelve miles upstream and arrives by pipe .
No gauge measures the water level, the depth or the temperature of this reservoir. The only federal water temperature ever recorded here was a single reading on 9 August 2010 .
The forecast is a point forecast from the National Weather Service for the middle of the reservoir. It is weather, not water conditions, and there is no wind gauge on this water.