RED FLEET
A trackway on the shore and no record of who went in after it
What was thrown in the water, what was said about it, what was never published, and the dam that used to have a different name.
On 30 April 2018 Utah State Parks published a release with a plain title: stop vandalising the dinosaur tracks at Red Fleet. Visitors, it said, "have been ripping up sandstone slabs containing 200 million year old dinosaur tracks and throwing them into the water" .
The park manager at the time, Josh Hansen: "Some of the tracks are very distinct to the layperson, but just as many are not. That is why it is important to not disturb any rocks at the dinosaur trackway." And: "It is illegal to displace rocks that contain the tracks. Disturbing them like this is an act of vandalism" .
The agency's own conservative estimate was at least ten tracks destroyed in the six months before that release .
Every contemporary account says the same thing, and it is always in the conditional. The park was considering sending a dive team to retrieve the thrown slabs .
Utah State Parks' only publication on the incident says nothing about divers, nothing about entering the water, and nothing about recovery . No agency has published a count of slabs recovered in 2018, a date for a dive, or a statement of what became of the material. The state parks archive for that month carries one Red Fleet post and no follow up.
That is the whole documentary record of the 2001 recovery: one Deseret News article. Utah State Parks, the Utah Geological Survey and the Utah Department of Natural Resources have published nothing about it. A volunteer dive that got 90 percent of a vandalised trackway back off the bottom of a reservoir is not in any agency's record of itself. Where the 2001 recovery is repeated in later coverage, it is being repeated from this one story.
The Utah Geological Survey maps them: "Dinosaur tracks can be observed along the north shore of Red Fleet Reservoir in the upper part of the Nugget Sandstone" . The Nugget here is Lower Jurassic to Upper Triassic, 500 to 1,140 feet thick, and mostly wind blown dune sand .
Utah State Parks describes them as three toed and made by bipedal dinosaurs, ranging 3 to 17 inches, and "believed to be more than 200 million years old." It also records a second site, about 40 smaller tracks of four to five inches in the Carmel Formation, where "the species has not yet been identified" .
| What is missing | Where it was looked for |
|---|---|
| Any ichnogenus name, the formal name for a kind of track. No Grallator, no Eubrontes, no Anchisauripus | Utah Geological Survey publications and its geologic map of this quadrangle, Utah State Parks, the Bureau of Land Management |
| Any peer reviewed description of the tracksite at all | The published ichnological literature. The site has been interpreted to the public since 1988 |
| A total count of tracks at the main site, and a count of what has been lost | Every agency above. The only loss figure anywhere is "at least 10" in six months |
| Any condition monitoring, photogrammetry or map of the trackway | Every agency above |
The best agency document on this trackway is a Utah State Parks booklet published for it. Its own link returns a server error, and a mirrored copy has no readable text. If you want the detail, ask the park for a copy directly.
Utah State Parks: a 1.5 mile trail one way, three miles round trip, "somewhat strenuous because of its several uphill and downhill sections" .
The Bureau of Land Management publishes a recreation site called Dinosaur Trackway Trailhead at 40.595646, -109.436318, which plots on the north shore of this reservoir where the geologic map puts the tracks. It calls the walk about one mile round trip and easy to moderate, and dates the tracks to 180 million years .
Utah State Parks publishes no coordinates at all for this park: not for the entrance, the beach, the trailhead or the tracks. Given the vandalism history that may well be deliberate, but no agency says so.
Red Fleet Dam is a Bureau of Reclamation dam, built as the Jensen Unit of the Central Utah Project and operated since 1 May 1985 by the Uintah Water Conservancy District . Construction ran May 1977 to April 1980 and the reservoir began storing water in May 1980 .
Two things about the site are worth knowing. The dam was moved downstream from the original Tyzack site to site C-5 on geologic grounds, and the design was revised after the Teton Dam failure of June 1976 .
The name changed because of the rocks. Water district president B. H. Stringham thought the red sandstone near the dam site looked like the sails of a fleet of ships, and led the effort to rename dam and reservoir from Tyzack to Red Fleet . The fins are the Chinle Formation at the base and the Nugget Sandstone above, cut apart by differential erosion .
The park opened to the public on 1 January 1988, when Utah State Parks took over the recreation facilities .
The Utah Division of State History records that Paleoindian, Archaic and Fremont peoples all lived in the Uinta Basin, that Fremont groups left rock art in Dry Fork Canyon near Vernal, and that the Uinta-ats Utes lived in the basin . That is the county scale, and it is as far as the sourced record goes.
- No agency source and no peer reviewed work found documents a specific Fremont or Ute connection to Big Brush Creek or to this reservoir site.
- No archaeological survey, site record or Section 106 file for the inundation area could be located. Reclamation's own history of the Jensen Unit discusses Fremont and Ute presence in the basin generally, records no consultation with any tribe before construction, and gives only a bibliographic reference to Central Utah Project cultural resource surveys with no detail on this site .
- The valley Vernal sits in is outside the reservation boundary, and the reservation was cut down repeatedly: 7,000 acres taken for gilsonite mining in the late 1800s, and the Uintah Reservation opened to settlers six years after that .
A reservoir that has ranged from 149 acres to 524
Four surface areas, three dam heights, no depth at all, water that arrives out of a cave, and a state agency that contradicted itself in a single day.
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 | 471 acres | 5.4 percent small |
| Stretched to fill the extent on both axes | 516 acres | 3.7 percent large |
| One scale factor, matched on width | 566 acres | 13.8 percent large |
The two shapes are 8.8 percent apart on proportion. Both are the same kind of shape: the traced outline fills 18.4 percent of its own bounding box and the federal polygon fills 18.2 percent of its, which is what a drowned canyon looks like from above.
Traced from OpenStreetMap geometry under the Open Database License, and that credit travels with any public use of the shape.
This is the widest spread of published figures for any water in this series. Every one of these is a federal or state agency.
| Measure | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Surface area | 750 acres | Utah State Parks |
| 521 acres | Reclamation, the national dam inventory and the 2015 treatment assessment, agreeing | |
| 498 acres | The federal water body polygon | |
| 149 to 524 acres | The operating range across the record, federal survey | |
| Dam height | 175 ft structural | Reclamation dam data |
| 161 ft | The national dam inventory | |
| 144 ft | Reclamation's Jensen Unit page and its own written history | |
| Capacity | 26,000 acre feet total, 24,000 active | Reclamation |
| 26,015 total, 22,000 active | The 2015 treatment assessment | |
| 33,600 acre feet | The national dam inventory, whose own maximum and normal storage both read 26,000 | |
| Drainage area | 94.39 sq mi | The national dam inventory |
| 83 sq mi | Reclamation | |
| 77.2 sq mi | At the gauge just above the reservoir, which legitimately excludes the ground below it | |
| Crest length | 1,670 ft or 1,750 ft | Reclamation, against the dam inventory |
| Normal water surface | 5,608.2 ft, maximum 5,621.0, crest 5,627.0, dead pool 5,506.0 | Reclamation |
| Maximum depth | Not published by anyone | See the note below |
| Mean depth | Not published by anyone | Same |
Utah State Parks' 750 acres is about 44 percent above every federal figure and cannot be reconciled with a 26,000 acre foot reservoir at 521 acres. Both are printed because both are what the agencies say. There is also no published shoreline length from anyone.
The single most substantial piece of science about this reservoir is a federal survey report from 2019, and its finding is that the inflow is karst .
"Big Brush Creek is predominantly supplied by Brush Creek Spring," about four miles above the Highway 191 bridge, and that spring is "the primary discharge point for karst features that are developed in Paleozoic carbonate lithologies" . The gauge upstream of the spring carries the fact in its own name: Big Brush Creek above cave, near Vernal.
| Aquifer | Dissolved solids | Where its water comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Nugget Sandstone | Under 200 mg/L, good quality | High altitude sources unrelated to the reservoir |
| Frontier Sandstone | About 2,150 mg/L, poor quality | Low elevation, at temperatures like the reservoir's own |
Total groundwater discharge to the reservoir from 1980 to 2015 was calculated at roughly 40,000 acre feet, which is more than one and a half times the reservoir's own capacity .
The rock around the reservoir dips 20 to 30 degrees south. From north to south the section runs Nugget Sandstone, Carmel, Entrada, Curtis and Morrison, then Dakota, Mowry, Frontier and Mancos .
What works. There is a live inflow gauge, which most reservoirs in this series do not have: USGS 09261700, Big Brush Creek above the reservoir, daily since 1 October 1979, run with the Utah Division of Water Rights . And the storage station 09UTREDF:UT:BOR publishes a working daily series, which is not something to take for granted after four reservoirs in this series whose daily series returned nothing .
What is gone. The old gauge, USGS 09262000, ran daily from 16 March 1939 and carried water samples back to 27 June 1908. It stopped on 9 October 1979, nine days after the new gauge upstream started, and the federal survey records that the site was later inundated by the reservoir .
What nobody reads live. There are twelve water quality stations in and around this reservoir, three federal and nine state, including three profile stations inside the water and one that exists solely to sample fish for mercury . None of them publishes a live reading. The only dated agency water temperature this page could find is 58 degrees on 3 May 2019, from a fishing report .
There is no snow station in Big Brush Creek's own subwatershed. The closest in the same subbasin is Kings Cabin, 559:UT:SNTL, at 8,740 feet about ten miles north, reporting since 1978 . Hickerson Park is often listed as a nearby Vernal station and sits in a different subbasin entirely.
Red Fleet is classified 1C, 2B, 3A and 4: protected for domestic supply after treatment, for infrequent primary contact recreation, for cold water game fish, and for agriculture . Reclamation's 2015 assessment says 2A instead, which is the frequent contact class . The rule controls, and both are printed.
Reclamation's 2015 assessment also states Red Fleet was "listed as impaired for water temperature; previously cited for dissolved oxygen deficiency" . That is an eleven year old statement and this page could not verify the current status.
Two clean findings survive. Red Fleet carries no fish consumption advisory, and it appears nowhere in the state's June 2023 advisory document , even though the state runs a mercury fish tissue station here . And on 13 August 2026 the park's live algae status field read clear .
Steinaker, six and a half miles away and run by the same water district, carries three mercury advisories: brown trout, largemouth bass and rainbow trout . Two neighbouring reservoirs, one operator, and a different answer.
Where everything is
Nine places, a rebuilt campground, a trail two agencies cannot agree on, and the sister reservoir six miles south.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Campsites | 29 total: 3 cottages, 23 standard, 3 standard with full hookups |
| Season | Open year round, no holiday closures |
| Facilities | Eight shower facilities, 30 amp electric and water at most sites, sewer at full hookup sites, dump station, accessible sites, pets allowed |
| Hours | 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. in summer, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in winter. Quiet hours 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. |
| Day use | 15 dollars a private vehicle, 5 dollars for Utah seniors and for walk ins and cyclists, 2 dollars a commercial passenger |
| Other fees | Hammock stands 5 dollars a night and tree hammocks prohibited, firewood 6 dollars, ice 3 dollars |
| On the water | Boat ramp and picnic areas are day use only. Speed limit 15 miles an hour |
| Jumping | Allowed from heights of 15 feet or less, which is the agency rule rather than a guideline |
Camping fees are not published on the park fee page; it refers you to the reservation contractor . Canoe, kayak and paddleboard rentals are offered and their prices are not published either. The park is 1,963 acres .
On 25 March 2022 Utah State Parks announced the park would close for "extensive construction" starting that June and running through the rest of the year, reopening for the 2023 season. The campground was completely redesigned and reconstructed, along with beach access, day use picnic areas and parking .
The same release makes a point of one thing: "Access to the hiking trail leading to the Dinosaur Trackway at Red Fleet State Park will remain open" .
In August 2026 the park's own page was flagging the boat ramp as operating at reduced capacity or at risk of closing soon . Check it before towing a boat here.
Steinaker Reservoir is the sister park, and the connection is real but it is not the one people assume. They do not share a watershed. Steinaker is an off stream reservoir fed from Ashley Creek through a feeder canal; Red Fleet is on Big Brush Creek . They are separate tributaries of the Green River with separate entries in the state water quality rules .
What they do share is an operator. Both are Reclamation dams in the Central Utah Project, both are run by the Uintah Water Conservancy District, both are Utah state parks, and Utah State Parks publishes the same phone number, the Steinaker office, as the contact for Red Fleet . Steinaker is the older one, built 1959 to 1962 as the Vernal Unit .
| Red Fleet | Steinaker | |
|---|---|---|
| Mercury advisories | None, despite a mercury fish tissue station here | Three: brown trout, largemouth bass, rainbow trout |
| Utah record fish | None in any of the five tables | One, a bluegill taken by spearfishing in 2009 |
| Central Utah Project unit | Jensen | Vernal |
The park is open all year and the winter hours are short: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. . Utah State Parks publishes a live ice conditions field for this reservoir, which on 13 August 2026 read open water .
There is no Red Fleet specific ice guidance from any agency. The statewide guidance is the state's outdoor recreation division: at least four inches of good clear ice to walk on, six or more for a snowmobile or an all terrain vehicle, clear ice holds more than cloudy, March and April are particularly dangerous as the ice deteriorates, and "ice is never 100 percent safe" .
The snow card in the strip above is Kings Cabin at 8,740 feet, about ten miles north . It is the closest station to the headwaters of the creek and it is more than 3,000 feet above the reservoir. In summer it reads zero, and that is correct rather than broken.
Everything in here was killed in 2015, for fish that live somewhere else
Two illegal introductions, one rotenone treatment carried out for endangered fish below the dam, and a rebuilt fishery that most descriptions of this reservoir have not caught up with.
Walleye
Illegally introduced in 2002. It is the reason everything in this reservoir was killed in October 2015, and the concern was never the reservoir. It was the endangered Colorado River fish below the dam. What is stocked now is sterile.
Illegally introduced 2002, poisoned out 2015Flannelmouth sucker
The only native on this list, and the only fish here before 2015 that was supposed to be. Its relatives downstream are why the treatment happened at all.
The only native in the listColorado River cutthroat trout
Native to this drainage and stocked back in after the treatment. The division called it cutthroat trout in its restocking; the habitat project names it in full.
Stocked back after the treatmentTiger trout
A named target species of the 2017 in lake habitat project, along with crappie, perch, whitefish, cutthroat, walleye and wiper.
Named target of the 2017 habitat projectWiper
Stocked after the treatment as a predator. A sterile hybrid, which is the point.
Sterile predator, stocked after 2015Yellow perch
Restocked first and fastest. The division wanted them in before the spring so they could spawn that year.
Restocked November 2015, to spawn that springBlack crappie
Part of the deliberate rebuild, and one of the seven species the habitat structures were sunk for.
Restocked after the treatmentLargemouth bass
Present before 2015 as an illegal introduction, killed with everything else, and then put back on purpose. Same fish, opposite legal status, ten years apart.
Illegal before 2015, stocked afterRainbow trout
The original stocking here from 1980, at 78 to 185 fish an acre a year, and still stocked after the treatment.
Stocked here since 1980Reclamation's environmental assessment sets out the reason in one line: illegally introduced sport fish in Red Fleet threatened endangered Colorado River fishes downstream, through predation or competition . The treatment was not carried out to improve the fishing. It was carried out on behalf of fish that do not live here.
| Fish | How it got here |
|---|---|
| Walleye | Illegally introduced in 2002 |
| Smallmouth bass | Illegally introduced in the 1980s |
| Largemouth bass, bluegill | Also present from illegal introductions |
| Rainbow trout, brown trout, green sunfish | Stocked or established |
| Flannelmouth sucker | Native |
All of it, from the 2015 assessment . The treatment was planned for 13 October 2015, with the wildlife division and the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program as cooperating agencies .
Restocking began in November 2015 . The clearest agency list of what this fishery is now supposed to be comes from a habitat project rather than a stocking record: Watershed Restoration Initiative project 3700, 2017, names its target species as black crappie, yellow perch, mountain whitefish, Colorado River cutthroat trout, tiger trout, walleye and wiper .
That project sank 110 Pond King structures in October 2016, in two groups of 55 about fifty yards apart, for 20,100 dollars of which 15,000 was state money and 5,100 was in kind . Partners: the wildlife division, Utah State Parks, Reclamation, the Red Fleet Management Committee and local angler groups. The project describes the reservoir as "a canyon type lake near Vernal with mixed rocky and muddy terrain" .
The original stocking, from 1980, was rainbow trout fingerlings, raised to five inch fish in 1987, at rates between 78 and 185 trout an acre a year . No wildlife division management plan or trend netting report specific to Red Fleet could be found, in a report series that carries them for Rockport, Piute and Hyrum.
Red Fleet has no entry in the rules for specific waters. Checked against its alphabetical neighbours in the 2026 guidebook: the nearest preceding entry is Recapture Reservoir and no Uintah County R entry follows . So the statewide limits are the limits.
- Trout, kokanee salmon and Arctic grayling, combined: 4
- Largemouth and smallmouth bass, combined: 6
- Bluegill and green sunfish, combined: 50
- Season 1 January through 31 December, and fish may be taken by angling or setline 24 hours a day
The guidebook also states that "any person who illegally stocks fish in Utah waters may be criminally prosecuted" . At this reservoir that sentence has a price attached to it, and the price was every fish in the water in October 2015.
Read row by row across all five wildlife division record tables, no row names Red Fleet Reservoir . Steinaker, six miles away, has one: a bluegill, 14 ounces and 9 and three quarter inches, taken by Tony Arbaney in 2009 by spearfishing .
Blue Ribbon status could not be determined either way. The division's Blue Ribbon page publishes the four criteria and no list, and directs users to an interactive map application. No agency list confirming or denying Red Fleet could be found, so this page claims nothing.
The one dated agency fishing observation this page could find: 10 May 2019, fair fishing from shore and boat, wiper and walleye becoming more active, largemouth bass being caught and anglers encouraged to release them to support population growth, and tiger trout to 18 inches near the main ramp .
What to watch for
One documented drowning, a high hazard dam with no condition rating, and a long list of things nobody measures.
On 15 July 2020 Dustin Peterson, 34, of Uintah County, was boating in the wakeless area when a child in his group began struggling in the water. He went in after the child, got the child back into the boat, and then "was unable to remain afloat and keep his head above water" .
Six agencies worked the incident: Utah State Parks law enforcement, the Division of Wildlife Resources, the Uintah County Sheriff's Office and Search and Rescue, the state parks remote vehicle team, the Department of Public Safety dive team and the Uintah County dive team . At about 10 p.m. the state dive team located him at approximately 40 feet. The remote vehicle team held the position until the county dive team made the recovery .
This is the only drowning, boating fatality or search and rescue incident at Red Fleet that could be sourced from any agency. The county sheriff publishes no accessible incident or search and rescue log. The absence of other records is not evidence that there are none.
- Jumping and diving are allowed from 15 feet or less. That is an agency rule, not advice . No agency has published a jumping injury or fatality record for Red Fleet.
- Speed limit 15 miles an hour, and the boat ramp is day use only .
- Quagga mussels are not here. The wildlife division, updated 21 April 2026: Utah's infested waters are limited to Lake Powell . The statewide rule still applies to you: remove all drain plugs when leaving any water, and decontaminate before entering another.
- No wind station. The nearest surface observation is Vernal Regional Airport, about ten miles southwest and more than 400 feet lower. This is a canyon reservoir with sandstone fins standing in it, and an airport wind is a poor proxy for what is happening on the water.
- No maximum depth, no mean depth, no shoreline length and no bathymetric survey from any agency, including the federal report written about this reservoir .
- No agency record of a 2018 dive to recover the thrown track slabs, and no record of the 2001 one either outside a single newspaper story .
- No ichnogenus, no trackmaker and no peer reviewed description of the tracksite.
- No current water quality assessment, no algae advisory history, no cell counts and no toxin concentrations. The state environmental department's site is closed to automated reading in full.
- No condition rating for a high hazard dam. The national inventory records the hazard potential as high and the condition assessment as not available . Red Fleet is not state regulated, because Reclamation owns it, so there is no Utah dam safety record either.
- No prosecution, citation or sentence from the 2018 damage. The only legal consequence ever recorded at this trackway is the juvenile charges in 2001, and that is in the newspaper account .
- No agency statement about track damage after 30 April 2018. Nobody publishes condition monitoring, so silence is not the same as it having stopped.
The Utah Geological Survey has been writing about this for a decade. Its own 2016 explainer on geovandalism, which it defines as the ruin of valuable earth features by wanton or malicious conduct, names this place directly: "the theft and mutilation of dinosaur prints and trackways around the Colorado Plateau and at Red Fleet State Park." The same article records a bill called Protection of State Park Resources, which would have increased the punishment for defacing geological features in a state park, and notes that it did not pass . Ten years later a broader one did.
Somebody threw a 200 million year old footprint into this reservoir and no agency knows whether it is still down there.
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 Red FleetEvery 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, and on this page one of them carries something important: the entire record of the 2001 recovery dive is a single newspaper story, and it is labelled as such everywhere it appears. Three claims did not survive checking. There is no agency record of a 2018 dive. There is no ichnogenus, no trackmaker and no peer reviewed description of this tracksite from anyone. And the 2026 public lands vandalism statute does not name paleontological features in its enrolled text, so this page does not say it covers dinosaur tracks. Where agencies disagree, all of them are printed: that happens over the surface area, the dam height, the capacity, the drainage area, the age of the tracks, the length of the trail, and the reservoir's own live temperature.Stop vandalism of dinosaur tracks at Red Fleet, 30 April 2018. The only agency statement on the vandalism. It gives the "at least 10 tracks" figure and quotes the park manager
Red Fleet State Park, discover page. The tracks, the second Carmel site, the trail, the surface acreage and the live conditions fields
Red Fleet State Park brochure, 2020. The park rules, the hours, the fifteen foot jumping limit and the sandstone formations
Geologic map of the Donkey Flat quadrangle, Uintah County. Jensen, Sprinkel, Kowallis and Brown, 2016, map 16-2DM, 1:24,000. It places the tracks in the upper Nugget Sandstone and names the formations that make the fleet
Glad you asked: what is geovandalism? Survey Notes volume 48 number 2, May 2016. It names Red Fleet, and it records a protection bill that did not pass
Utah Code Title 79 Chapter 3 Part 5, paleontological resources. Section 79-3-504 makes unpermitted excavation of a critical paleontological resource a class B misdemeanor
House Bill 536, criminal conduct on public lands amendments, enrolled. Effective 6 May 2026. Its protected categories are geological and archaeological, and it does not name paleontological features
Dinosaur Trackway Trailhead. The only published coordinate for the trackway trail, and it gives a different length, difficulty and age than the state park does
Red Fleet Dam data. Structural height 175 feet, crest 1,670 feet, capacity 26,000 acre feet, surface 521 acres, drainage 83 square miles
Jensen Unit, Central Utah Project. The build dates, the transfer to the water district, the annual yield and a structural height of 144 feet
The Central Utah Project: Jensen Unit, by Adam R. Eastman. The Tyzack name, the move to site C-5, the Teton Dam redesign, the contractors and the pre dam irrigation history
National Inventory of Dams, Red Fleet Dam, federal identifier UT82901. Hazard potential high, condition assessment not available, last inspected 22 June 2021, not state regulated
National Hydrography Dataset, Red Fleet Reservoir, GNIS 01455473, reach code 14060010004876. The surface area and the polygon this page measures its outline against
Groundwater and surface water resources near Red Fleet Reservoir. Marston, Solder and Jones, 2019, Scientific Investigations Report 2019-5101. The karst spring, the two aquifers, the groundwater total and the operating range of the reservoir
Big Brush Creek above Red Fleet Reservoir, site 09261700. Live inflow, daily record since 1 October 1979
Big Brush Creek near Vernal, site 09262000. Daily record 16 March 1939 to 9 October 1979, water samples from 27 June 1908, then discontinued
Red Fleet Reservoir storage, station 09UTREDF:UT:BOR, at 5,600 feet, record from 1 October 1979. Its daily series works
Kings Cabin SNOTEL, station 559:UT:SNTL, at 8,740 feet, reporting since 1978
Red Fleet Reservoir rotenone treatment, final environmental assessment, August 2015. The illegal introductions, the species list before the treatment, the stocking rates and the reason the treatment was carried out
Watershed Restoration Initiative project 3700, Red Fleet Reservoir in lake habitat structure, 2017. The 110 structures and the target species after the treatment
2026 Utah Fishing Guidebook. Red Fleet has no entry in the rules for specific waters, and appears only on the seasonal bass closure list at page 20
Record fish caught in Utah. No row in any of the five tables names Red Fleet. Steinaker has one
Northeastern region fishing report, bulletin of 10 May 2019. The only dated agency water temperature for this reservoir
Man dies while aiding child at Red Fleet State Park, 16 July 2020. The six agencies that responded, the depth the dive team worked at, and the life jackets
Red Fleet State Park to close for extensive construction, 25 March 2022. The campground rebuild, and the fact that trackway access stayed open
Red Fleet State Park campground record. Twenty nine sites, open year round, and a full hookup list that contradicts the park brochure
Red Fleet State Park fees. Fifteen dollars a vehicle, five for Utah seniors and walk ins
Utah Administrative Code R317-2-13, classification of waters of the state, effective 25 January 2023. It still calls this Tyzack (Red Fleet) Dam, and it assigns class 2B where Reclamation says 2A
Utah fish consumption advisory updates, June 2023. Red Fleet appears nowhere in it. Steinaker carries three advisories
Water Quality Portal. The twelve sampling stations in and around this reservoir, including the mercury fish tissue station
Ice safety. The four inch and six inch thresholds, and the warning about stream mouths and underwater springs
Quagga and zebra mussels. Utah's infested waters are limited to Lake Powell. Page updated 21 April 2026
I Love History, Uintah County. Paleoindian, Archaic and Fremont peoples in the Uinta Basin, the Uinta-ats Utes, and the reduction of the reservation
Steinaker Dam and Reservoir, Vernal Unit. Built 1959 to 1962, fed from Ashley Creek rather than Big Brush Creek
Red Fleet State Park, main park page. The live water temperature, water level, algae status and ice condition fields, and the boat ramp advisory
Divers find dino prints in reservoir, 1 August 2001. The only account anywhere of the 2001 recovery: the two volunteer divers, the depth they searched at, and the share of the footprints they got back
Red Fleet Reservoir benefits anglers and endangered fish, 2 December 2021. The restocking list after the 2015 treatment and the screening infrastructure
Utah bill would make vandalizing rock formations a crime, 24 February 2026. The sponsor and the department of natural resources comment on House Bill 536
Ancient dinosaur tracks are disappearing, 10 May 2018. One of several contemporary accounts recording that the park was considering sending a dive team
Which capacity this percentage is against
It divides the storage reading beside it by 26,000 acre feet, which is what Reclamation publishes as total capacity . That is arithmetic, not a measurement.
Three other capacities are published for this reservoir. Reclamation also gives 24,000 acre feet as active capacity, which would make this percentage larger. Its own 2015 treatment assessment gives 26,015 total and 22,000 active . And the national dam inventory records a 33,600 acre foot NID storage against its own maximum and normal storage of 26,000 , which would make this percentage smaller.
The storage station works, and that is worth noting. Station 09UTREDF:UT:BOR publishes a daily series and it returns data . Several reservoirs in this series advertise a daily series and return an empty list.
The inflow gauge is real inflow. USGS 09261700 sits on Big Brush Creek above the reservoir with a daily record since 1 October 1979 . Most waters in this series have no live inflow at all.
Nothing here measures the water itself. There is no live temperature, no live level gauge on the reservoir, and no bathymetry. Utah State Parks publishes a temperature and a percentage on its own pages, and on 13 August 2026 its two pages disagreed with each other .