ROCKPORT
A town of twenty seven families, bought out and flooded
Four names in ninety years, a wall built against a war, the buildings that were carried out before the water came, and a dam whose own agency publishes two different heights for it.
Settlers arrived in this valley in 1860. They called the place Crandall, then Enoch City after the first year. During the Black Hawk War of 1866 and 1867 they evacuated to Wanship, came back, and built a wall two feet thick and eight feet high around the settlement, after which it was called Rock Fort. When the war ended they pulled the wall down and used the stone in other buildings, and the town became Rockport .
Population stayed between one and two hundred . Summit County records about 200 residents in 1940 . By the 1950s, when the federal dam plans arrived, 27 families were left .
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1860 | First settlement, called Crandall, then Enoch City |
| 1866 to 1867 | Evacuation, return, and the wall. The town becomes Rock Fort |
| 1952 | The government acquired all local property |
| 1954 to 1957 | Reclamation built Wanship Dam |
| 1966 | Utah State Parks took over and Rockport State Park opened |
The dam itself is not on the Weber at the town. It is a mile and a half above Wanship . The creek that runs into the reservoir from the east still carries the town's first name, Crandall Creek, and so does one of the park campgrounds.
Utah State Parks names two buildings that were moved rather than drowned: the Rockport Coop, which operated until 1930, and the Rockport School House, built in 1870. It says both went to Pioneer Village at Lagoon Amusement Park in Farmington .
One building stayed in the valley. The Old Church, a one room white frame building, is at Rockport State Park today. It is said to have been built in 1892 about a mile and a half further south, moved here in 1956, and restored in 2005. None of those three dates comes from an agency. Utah State Parks does not mention the church on its history page at all . What it does do is rent it out at 825 dollars and name a campground loop after it .
Houses were reportedly moved to Peoa and Hoytsville. No agency document naming any of those houses or their addresses could be found. The cemetery is widely said to survive above the waterline, and no agency document confirms its status either way, and no record of any grave relocation programme could be found. This page does not assert what happened to it.
Nothing at Rockport or Wanship is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Not the townsite, not the Old Church, not the schoolhouse, not the co-op, and not Wanship Dam. The Summit County register runs to 113 properties and is overwhelmingly Park City, with entries in Coalville, Oakley, Kamas, Francis, Echo, Hoytsville and Peoa. There is no Rockport listing and no Wanship listing.
There is exactly one agency archaeological record touching this reservoir, and its scope matters. Reclamation's 2007 environmental assessment for a pipeline and pumping action carried out 100 percent pedestrian class I and class III cultural resource inventories over 101 acres, and reported: "No historic properties were located." The determination went to the Utah State Historic Preservation Office as report U-06-BE-1553w, and tribal consultation was carried out with the Uintah and Ouray Ute Tribe and the Northwest Band Shoshone Tribe .
Also not found: any Daughters of Utah Pioneers or Sons of Utah Pioneers monument for the townsite, any interpretive sign text about it, and any townsite trail or overlook in the park. The state park's published interpretation of the town it sits on is a single web page .
Wanship Dam is a zoned earthfill structure on the Weber River, built 1954 to 1957 as part of the Weber Basin Project, authorised by Congress in 1949 . Operation and maintenance passed to the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District on 1 October 1968 .
| Measure | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Height | 156 ft | Reclamation's prose, on the dam page and the project page, and the 2007 assessment |
| 175 ft structural | The data table on the same Reclamation page, and the national dam inventory | |
| Hydraulic height | 150 ft or 138 ft | Reclamation against the dam inventory |
| Crest length | 2,010 ft or 2,015 ft | Reclamation's prose against its own table |
| Capacity | 62,100 acre feet | Reclamation, the 2007 assessment and Utah State Parks |
| 62,120 normal, 75,730 maximum | The national dam inventory | |
| 60,000 acre feet a year | What the water right actually permits to be stored | |
| Drainage area | 339, 325.08, 334 or 335 sq mi | Reclamation, the dam inventory, and two federal gauges |
The reservoir is designed to fill. The 2007 assessment states that "normal operations at Wanship Dam fill the reservoir annually and commonly generate spillway releases," and that it "has filled and spilled nearly every year" . There is also a maximum flood control reservation of 135,000 acre feet, which is more than twice the reservoir's own capacity and is a release obligation rather than a storage figure.
- Who built it. No contractor name appears on Reclamation's facility page, in the 2007 assessment, on the water district's history, or in the dam inventory, whose designer and constructor fields are both empty .
- What it cost. No construction cost figure was found from any source.
- Any modification history. The dam inventory records none, and Reclamation's page has no modification section . That is a seventy year old high hazard dam with no published modification record.
- A project history. Reclamation publishes written histories for the neighbouring Weber River Project and Ogden River Project. There is no Weber Basin Project history in that series, and the Weber River Project volume does not mention Wanship Dam or Rockport at all.
- A condition rating. The inventory records the hazard potential as high, an inspection on 5 May 2022, and the condition assessment as not available .
Rockport is not state regulated. The inventory records no state jurisdiction, permitting, inspection or enforcement, because Reclamation owns it . It is the same situation as every Reclamation dam in this series, and it means there is no Utah dam safety record to fall back on.
Three surface areas within two percent, and one fish out of five
The tightest set of published numbers in this series, a name the federal record does not use, a mercury advisory on the one long lived predator, and three algal blooms with one toxin figure between them.
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 width | 1,054 acres | 0.2 percent small |
| Stretched to fill the extent on both axes | 1,109 acres | 5.0 percent large |
| One scale factor, matched on length | 1,166 acres | 10.4 percent large |
The two shapes are 5.2 percent apart on proportion, and matched on width the traced area lands within a quarter of one percent of the federal figure. That number is also close to the other two published areas: Reclamation gives 1,080 acres and the dam inventory gives 1,077 , against the polygon's 1,056.
The valley is this shape because of what is under it. The Utah Geological Survey's study of the Kamas and Coalville region records that the Absaroka thrust system is exposed along Rockport Reservoir and in the hills north of Kamas Valley, and that the Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks here are tilted and folded adjacent to those thrusts, from deformation related both to the Absaroka system and to younger thrusting on the North Flank system . North of the reservoir those Mesozoic rocks dip 10 to 30 degrees northwest, and springs come out of the side canyons of the Weber valley above it .
Traced from OpenStreetMap geometry under the Open Database License, and that credit travels with any public use of the shape. The drawing measures 2.52 miles on its long axis, the same as the federal extent. The federal recreation record describes the reservoir as "approximately three miles long and one-half mile wide." No Utah Geological Survey 1:24,000 geologic map of the Wanship, Coalville, Peoa or Hoytsville quadrangles could be found, so the regional bulletin above is the closest agency mapping of this ground.
Utah State Parks calls it Rockport Reservoir . Reclamation calls the water behind Wanship Dam Rockport Lake . So does the national dam inventory, in its other names field . And so does the federal hydrography dataset: a query on the name Rockport Reservoir returns nothing at all, and the polygon is filed as Rockport Lake, GNIS 01434857 .
The elevation in the polygon record, 6,037 feet, is the spillway invert rather than a water surface . The storage station's published elevation, 5,930 feet, is the top of the dead pool . Neither is the elevation of the water on any given day, and both get quoted as if they were. Maximum depth, mean depth and shoreline length are not published by anyone.
Utah sampled five species here in 2021. Four came back clean and one did not :
| Species | Fish sampled | Mean mercury | Range | Above the screening value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Smallmouth bass | 10 | 0.699 mg/kg | 0.3 to 1.0 | Yes |
| Yellow perch | 9 | 0.224 mg/kg | 0.2 to 0.3 | No |
| Rainbow trout | 9 | 0.140 mg/kg | 0.06 to 0.2 | No |
| Brown trout | 10 | 0.104 mg/kg | 0.04 to 0.2 | No |
| Kokanee | 10 | 0.096 mg/kg | 0.07 to 0.1 | No |
The advisory for smallmouth bass, in maximum meals a month :
| General public | Women 16 to 50, children 6 to 16 | Pregnant or breastfeeding, children under 6 |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | 1 | Do not eat |
The same advisory list carries Echo Reservoir, the next water down the Weber, for brown trout and smallmouth bass, and the Weber River itself for brown trout . The state environmental department confirms advisories exist in Utah for arsenic, mercury, selenium and PCBs and enumerates no water bodies, deferring to the health department .
Rockport has had at least three documented harmful algal bloom seasons, and between them they have produced exactly one published toxin concentration.
| Year | What is on the record |
|---|---|
| 2017 | A bloom occurred. The state environmental department maintains a page for it. That page could not be read, on a certificate failure |
| 2018 | Detected 19 June, advisory issued 20 June by the county health department. Found by staff doing routine bacteria monitoring who saw "small olive-green spheres." A sample at the main boat launch measured 7.5 micrograms of microcystin per litre . The state's own monitoring table records a last sample date of 20 June 2018 . The advisory was lifted within about a week |
| 2022 | A warning advisory issued 12 September covering the entire reservoir, after monitors saw blue material at four shoreline sites and satellite imagery picked up blooms across multiple areas. No cell counts and no toxin concentrations were published, and no lift date was given |
On 27 July 2026 the park's own current conditions page listed the algae status as clear, attributed to the state health advisory panel . That page is the thing to check before you swim, not this one. In the 2018 season Echo, Jordanelle and Deer Creek were affected as well.
The storage station works and it is old. Station 10129400:UT:BOR has recorded reservoir contents since 1 February 1957, which is the year the dam was finished . It publishes daily, semimonthly and monthly series and all three return data, in three different shapes:
| Duration | What a value object actually contains |
|---|---|
| Daily | date and value |
| Semimonthly | month, monthPart, year, value. No date, and monthPart is a string where the others are integers |
| Monthly | month, year, value. No date |
The federal survey also has a lake site on the reservoir itself, sharing the storage station's number. It published daily values only between 18 July 1990 and 13 February 2000 and has been inactive since . Above the reservoir there is a gauge on the Weber near Peoa, draining 296 square miles, and one on Crandall Creek draining 11.8. The snow card in the strip above is Smith Morehouse at 7,640 feet in the Weber headwaters ; a snow course has been read in that same basin since April 1929.
Rockport is classified 1C, 2A, 3A and 4: protected as a domestic supply after treatment, for frequent primary contact recreation, for cold water game fish, and for agriculture. That is the strongest set of protections in the state's scheme and it is consistent with a reservoir that supplies drinking water.
What could not be determined. Rockport's current impairment listing and assessment unit. Utah's 2024 integrated report was approved by the federal environmental agency on 30 April 2024 , and the page for it carries no assessment unit tables. The federal assessment interface returned an authorisation error on every query, and the state's own assessment map is an interactive application with no documented interface behind it. No total maximum daily load for Rockport was found, and that is "not established" rather than "none exists."
Where everything is
Nine places, a campground the state describes three different ways, and the reservoir twelve miles downstream that everything here eventually reaches.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Campgrounds | The park page says five . The current conditions page names six open: Juniper, Crandall, Twin Coves, Cottonwood, Pinery, Riverside . The park map shows nine named loops plus two group sites |
| Hours | Utah State Parks says 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. and calls it sixteen hour access . The federal booking record for the same park says 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. and calls it seventeen hour access |
| Day use | 20 dollars a vehicle, 15 for seniors, and 5 dollars to park on Highway 32 and walk in |
| Camping | Juniper double 70; Cottonwood, Crandall Cove and Riverside 35 single and 45 double; Twin Coves 35; extra vehicle 25 |
| Group | 300 dollars a reservation: Hawthorne and Riverside take 75 people and 40 vehicles, Crandall 40 and 15, Lariat 40 and 25 |
| The Old Church | 825 dollars to rent the building |
| Other | Marina, boat ramp, a 3D archery range with full size animal targets, a dump station with potable water, and winter ice fishing and snowmobile access |
Fees rose across eighteen Utah state parks effective 8 January 2026, Rockport among them. Utah State Parks publishes no coordinate for this park; the pin on the map above is the federal booking record's. Reclamation's 2007 assessment put the reservoir's annual recreation benefits at roughly 7 million dollars .
Rockport sits on the Weber mainstem. Everything released from Wanship Dam runs past Wanship, picks up Silver Creek, takes Chalk Creek at Coalville, and arrives at Echo Reservoir twelve miles north . That is a true upstream and downstream pair, and it is the only relationship among the Weber reservoirs that is a direct channel connection.
| Water | Relationship to Rockport |
|---|---|
| Echo Reservoir | Directly downstream on the Weber mainstem. Built 1927 to 1931, which makes it older than the Weber Basin Project |
| The Weber River, Wanship to Echo | The tailwater. This reach is a designated Blue Ribbon fishery where the reservoir above it is not, and it carries its own mercury advisory for brown trout |
| East Canyon Reservoir | On East Canyon Creek, which joins the Weber at Morgan. Downstream, but on a different stream. Fathom has a page on it, and it is the only concrete arch dam among these |
| Lost Creek Reservoir | On Lost Creek, joining the Weber near Croydon. Same structure of relationship |
| Smith and Morehouse Reservoir | Upstream, in the Weber headwaters, and paired with Rockport in the 2007 delivery scheme |
| Causey and Pineview | A different river. Both are on the Ogden. Same project, no channel connection to this water |
One correction worth carrying, because this page previously implied otherwise. The joint Echo and Rockport algal advisory was October 2017. The bloom documented at Rockport in June 2018, the one with the 7.5 microgram microcystin reading, was Rockport alone; the state's own 2018 monitoring table records Echo that year with an advisory status of none.
Ice fishing is a listed winter activity here and the park stays open year round . There is no Rockport specific ice guidance from any agency.
That account is from a news outlet quoting the park manager, not from an agency release. It is printed because a detached ice sheet on a reservoir that is drawn down through the winter is the specific local hazard, and because no agency has published anything about ice at Rockport at all.
One night of netting, and the numbers are published
Seven species, a rainbow trout fishery that is 80 percent of the biomass, a kokanee year class that was never produced, and a guidebook rule a machine tried to invent.
Kokanee salmon
Four fish in the 2022 nets, one weak adult age class, and survival to maturity that the division says "warrants concern." None were stocked at all in 2023, because the state's brood run failed.
4 fish, and none stocked in 2023Smallmouth bass
One fish in the 2022 nets, and the only species here that carries a consumption advisory. Mean mercury 0.699 milligrams a kilogram, seven times the kokanee figure.
Do not eat, for the most vulnerable groupRainbow trout
104 of the 137 fish caught in 2022, 75.9 percent of the catch and 80.3 percent of the biomass. The division stocks 20,000 a year and recommends continuing.
104 of 137 fish, 80% of the biomassBrown trout
Nine fish, and the only species in the 2022 survey whose condition the division did not call acceptable.
The one species below acceptable conditionYellow perch
Ten fish, and the report flags something it cannot explain: they were split between two habitats, shallow and deep, and the division has an open action to find out why.
Split between two habitats, unexplainedUtah chub
Five fish. The report's judgement is that the population "appeared to be under control," which is not a sentence that gets written about chub very often in Utah.
Under control, for onceUtah sucker
Four fish, and 8.5 percent of the biomass off 2.9 percent of the catch, which tells you how much bigger they are than everything else in the net.
2.9% of the catch, 8.5% of the weightMost waters in this series have no fishery report at all. Rockport has one, and it publishes its numbers. Four curtain gillnets were set overnight on 19 April 2022 and retrieved at dawn. The nets are a new design the division brought in during 2021: 45.7 metres long by 6.1 metres deep, six panels, mesh from 13 to 64 millimetres, three of them suspended at six metre intervals through the open water and one set on the bottom near shore .
| Species | Caught | Share of catch | Share of biomass | Mean length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rainbow trout | 104 | 75.9% | 80.3% | 367 mm |
| Yellow perch | 10 | 7.3% | 1.4% | 198 mm |
| Brown trout | 9 | 6.6% | 3.6% | 307 mm |
| Utah chub | 5 | 3.6% | 2.3% | 280 mm |
| Kokanee | 4 | 2.9% | 2.7% | 361 mm |
| Utah sucker | 4 | 2.9% | 8.5% | |
| Smallmouth bass | 1 | 0.7% | 1.1% |
Rainbow trout came in at 26.0 fish a net night and had their highest abundance in the top six metres. On condition, the report is blunt: "All target species except Brown Trout were acceptable" .
Four kokanee in four nets. The report: the size structure "suggested a single, weak adult age class", and the low abundance "suggested survival to age-3, and subsequently survival to maturity, was low and warrants concern" .
The division's own recommendation is to evaluate the programme rather than defend it: three years of stocking were done to try to establish a naturally reproducing population, and no stocking at all was performed in 2023, "because of a low number of broodstock spawning, limiting the number of offspring available to be stocked throughout the state" .
The report's five standing actions, in its own order: keep using the new net design and run a power analysis after two more years; keep stocking 20,000 rainbow trout; evaluate the kokanee programme; watch the chub and be ready to alter rainbow stocking; and find out why the yellow perch are separating into two assemblages, which it suggests may be about refuge habitat or about oxygen and temperature changing when the reservoir is drawn down . No annual stocking numbers could be read from any source, and the division's stocking application truncates alphabetically before the R waters.
Rockport Reservoir has no entry of its own in the rules for specific waters. Statewide general limits apply. Its only appearance in the 2026 guidebook is on page 20, on the seasonal bass closure list :
"The following waters are closed to the possession of largemouth and smallmouth bass from April 1 through June 27, 2026 (the fourth Saturday in June) while underwater spearfishing."
Rockport is on that list with Deer Creek, East Canyon, Echo, Flaming Gorge, Lake Powell, Pineview, Recapture, Red Fleet, Starvation and Steinaker . It applies only to spearfishing. Ordinary angling for bass is not restricted in that window.
No state record fish has ever been taken from Rockport . And Rockport is not a Blue Ribbon fishery: it does not appear on the division's Blue Ribbon page, which states the programme covers 43 water bodies and publishes the list only in a downloadable card . The Weber River from Echo to Wanship is, which is the tailwater immediately below this dam.
What to watch for
Two drownings that were almost the same incident, four men on a detached ice sheet, and a long list of things nobody publishes.
Two modern fatalities on this reservoir are documented, and they are almost the same incident seven years apart.
| 18 July 2015 | 21 July 2022 | |
|---|---|---|
| What happened | Separated from a paddleboard at about 3:11 p.m. | Fell from a paddleboard with his dog. The dog was wearing a life jacket and reached shore |
| Flotation | A life jacket was issued with the rental and he was not wearing it | Not wearing one |
| Conditions | A microburst, 50 mile an hour gusts, two to three foot waves | Not reported |
| How he was found | Sonar. No divers were deployed | Drones, a remote operated vehicle and sonar, recovered 150 to 200 yards from shore |
| Who responded | Two county search and rescue teams, the state public safety department, air ambulance and state parks | Two county search and rescue teams, the state public safety dive team, and state parks |
Sources for both are news outlets quoting the agencies involved . The 2015 death was reported as the first paddleboard related death in Utah, and the park manager said it was the first drowning at Rockport since 1995 . No detail on the 1995 incident could be found.
The wind is the best evidenced hazard here. A microburst produced two to three foot waves on a reservoir roughly three miles long and half a mile wide, lying along a canyon. The park manager in 2015: "Even the best swimmer can't fight off waves that size." No agency operates a wind station on this reservoir.
- Who built this dam, what it cost, and whether it has ever been modified. The inventory's designer and constructor fields are empty and its modification field is empty .
- A condition rating for a high hazard dam. Hazard high, inspected 5 May 2022, condition not available . Not state regulated, so no Utah record either.
- Maximum depth, mean depth and shoreline length, from anyone, including the 2022 fishery report and the 2007 assessment.
- Rockport's current impairment listing and any total maximum daily load.
- Any cell count for any algal bloom here, in any year, and any numeric threshold for the state's three advisory tiers. One toxin figure exists for one day in 2018 and it comes from a newspaper .
- Annual stocking numbers from any source.
- Whether the yellow perch, smallmouth bass or Utah chub here were illegally introduced. The 2022 report does not say, and Rockport does not appear in the division's illegal introduction releases. Report as unknown. There is also no record of any rotenone treatment ever at this reservoir.
- The fate of the Rockport cemetery, and any record of a grave relocation programme.
- Any state historic preservation file on the townsite, and any monument, marker, interpretive sign or trail about it.
- Per campground site counts, and a coordinate for anything in this park from Utah State Parks.
- A settled visitation figure. The state's own compiled data gives 864,853 for 2020 and 759,199 for 2021, where a 2022 news report gives "nearly 175,000 visitors in the prior year." Those cannot both be right, and the primary annual files are spreadsheets this page could not read. No visitation number is printed on this page.
There is a town at the bottom of this reservoir and no agency has ever surveyed 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 RockportEvery 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 they carry things no agency wrote down: the exposed townsite, the schoolhouse's real route out of the valley, the one toxin measurement from the 2018 bloom, both drownings, and the four men on the ice. Three claims did not survive checking. An automated read of the fishing guidebook invented a Rockport rule that does not exist, which is the third such fabrication in this series and is written up on the page. Nothing at Rockport is on the National Register, including the dam. And no visitation figure survived, because two sources differ by a factor of four. Where agencies disagree, all of them are printed: that happens over the dam's height, its crest length, its hydraulic height, its capacity, its drainage area, its purpose, the park's hours, and how many campgrounds there are.Rockport State Park history. The 1860 settlement, the four names the town had, the wall, the 27 families, the 1952 acquisition and the buildings that were moved
Rockport Reservoir. The 1860 establishment on the Overland Stage route, and the roughly 200 residents the community had in 1940
Wanship Dam data. Structural height 175 feet against 156 feet in its own prose, crest 2,015 feet against 2,010, capacity 62,100 acre feet, surface 1,080 acres, drainage 339 square miles
Weber Basin Project. The 1949 authorisation, the 1968 transfer to the water district, the project yield, and the seven reservoirs it built or enlarged
Rockport Reservoir final environmental assessment and finding of no significant impact, February 2007. The cultural resource inventory, the water right, the flood control reservation, the species list and the recreation figures
National Inventory of Dams, Wanship Dam, federal identifier UT10131. Hazard potential high, condition assessment not available, last inspected 5 May 2022, not state regulated, no modification recorded, and purpose listed as irrigation alone
District history. Reclamation began planning in 1942, the district was created 26 June 1950, and the voters authorised the repayment contracts in 1952 and 1961
National Hydrography Dataset, Rockport Lake, GNIS 01434857, reach code 16020101000878. The surface area and the polygon this page measures its outline against
Rockport Reservoir 2022 monitoring report. The gillnet design, the catch, the biomass, the kokanee finding and the five management actions
2026 Utah Fishing Guidebook. Rockport appears once, on the page 20 seasonal spearfishing bass closure list, and has no entry of its own in the rules for specific waters
Record fish caught in Utah. No row names Rockport Reservoir
Blue Ribbon fisheries. Rockport Reservoir does not appear, and the enumerated list is not published on the page
Rockport Reservoir storage, station 10129400:UT:BOR, record from 1 February 1957. All three durations return data, in three different shapes
Weber River near Wanship, site 10129500. Daily discharge since 1 October 1950, and it sits below the dam
Rockport Reservoir near Wanship, site 10129400. Daily values 1990 to 2000 only, and inactive since
Smith Morehouse SNOTEL, station 763:UT:SNTL, at 7,640 feet in the Weber headwaters, reporting since 1978
Fish consumption advisory updates, June 2023. The 2021 mercury tissue concentrations for five species here, and the advisory that follows for one of them
Game and fish advisories. Rockport smallmouth bass is on the current list, alongside Echo and the Weber River
Harmful algal blooms. The 2018 monitoring updates table records Rockport with a last sample date of 20 June 2018
Recreational water quality. The three advisory tiers and the monthly May to October monitoring cadence, with no numeric thresholds published
Rockport State Park. The hours, the manager, the contact and the campground count
Rockport State Park current conditions, last updated 27 July 2026. Six campgrounds open, and an algae status of clear
Rockport State Park fees. Twenty dollars a vehicle, five to park on Highway 32 and walk in, and 825 dollars to rent the Old Church
Rockport State Park map. Nine named campground loops plus two group sites, the marina, the boat ramp and the Old Church
The geology of the Kamas and Coalville region, water resource bulletin 29, Hurlow, 2002. The Absaroka thrust system exposed along this reservoir, and the springs north of it
Invasive quagga and zebra mussels. Utah's infested waters are limited to Lake Powell, and Rockport is named on no mussel list
Echo Dam data. Built 1927 to 1931, twelve miles down the Weber, and predating the Weber Basin Project
Utah fish advisories. Advisories exist for arsenic, mercury, selenium and PCBs, and no water bodies are enumerated
Park visitation data, the primary annual files
2024 integrated report. Submitted 1 April 2024 and approved by the federal environmental agency on 30 April 2024, with no assessment unit tables on the page
Utah ghost town reappears as a result of drought, 19 September 2021. Drone documentation of foundations and a road grade at 26 percent capacity, with a state parks spokesman quoted
Rockport schoolhouse. The 1870 build, the dimensions, and the relocation path: offered to the Sons of Utah Pioneers around 1954, moved to Pioneer Village in Salt Lake City, and only reaching Lagoon in 1975 to 1976
New algal bloom detected at Rockport Reservoir, 21 June 2018. The detection date, the advisory date and the only toxin concentration ever published for a bloom here
Paddleboarder's body found at Rockport, 20 July 2015. The microburst, the unworn life jacket, the sonar search and the park manager's account
Rockport Reservoir drowning victim's body recovered, 22 July 2022. The agencies that responded, the drone and remote vehicle search, and the dog in a life jacket that reached shore
Four fishermen fall through ice at Rockport Reservoir, February 2015. The park manager on an ice sheet that had separated from the shore
Which capacity, and why the flow card says outflow
The percentage divides the storage reading by 62,100 acre feet, which is what Reclamation publishes as total capacity and what Utah State Parks and the 2007 assessment both repeat . That is arithmetic, not a measurement.
Three other numbers are published. The national dam inventory gives 62,120 as normal storage and 75,730 as maximum storage , the second of which would make this percentage smaller. And the water right behind the reservoir permits 60,000 acre feet a year to be stored , which is less than any of them.
The flow card is labelled outflow because that is what it is. USGS 10129500 sits at 40.7927 north and the dam sits at 40.7884. North is downstream here. The snow service carries the same gauge under the name Rockport Reservoir Inflow, which is a computed inflow convention rather than a description of where the instrument is . Its daily discharge record starts 1 October 1950, seven years before there was a dam.
The storage record is one of the longest in this series. Station 10129400:UT:BOR has recorded contents since 1 February 1957 . All three of its durations return data, which is not true of most stations on these pages, and they return it in three different shapes. Code written for the daily shape silently gets nothing from the other two.
Nothing measures the inside of the water. The federal lake site on this reservoir published daily values only from 1990 to 2000 and is inactive . There is no live temperature, and no published depth of any kind.