Hurricane Canal

Hand-cut canal that made Hurricane possible

The Hurricane Canal is a hand-excavated irrigation canal that took Virgin River water onto the Hurricane Bench in Washington County, Utah. Listed on the National Register in 1977 for agriculture and engineering, it is the foundation story of the town of Hurricane: without the canal, the bench stayed dry and uninhabitable as farmland.

Construction, 1893–1904

Canal company shareholders began work in 1893. The canal bed was surveyed in 4-rod stations and built mostly by hand — picks, shovels, crowbars, hand drills, wheelbarrows — because horse teams could not work most of the cliffside alignment. Specs called for a 12-foot-wide bed, 8 feet wide at bottom and 4 feet deep in the form’s description of the grade. Pay rates were set per cubic yard of earth, loose rock, and solid rock; stockholders worked off assessments at about $2 per day.

The diversion dam at the Virgin River Narrows failed twice. First, a rock-fill dam was swept out by flood. Second, a pine log and juniper-post structure was lifted out by another flood. The third dam — recovered log, junipers, double rock layers, and heavy galvanized wire lashing — held. Landslides erased months of canal work; tunnels were blasted through rock; trestle flumes spanned washes such as Chinatown Wash. By 1901 only a handful of men remained on the job. In 1902 James Jepson secured $5,000 from LDS Church President Joseph F. Smith, which restarted construction. Water reached the bench August 6, 1904 — eleven years after start.

Settlement

Each share entitled the holder to one acre of farm land with primary water right and equity in a town lot, distributed by drawing, generally capped at twenty acres so more families could settle. Grain was raised in 1905; the Hintons became the first residents in 1906; ten families were established that year. The nomination’s conclusion is blunt: the engineering is not world-class; the significance is determination under necessity.

On the ground now

Portions of the historic canal alignment remain as landscape and interpretive subject in the Hurricane area. Pressurized irrigation later reduced reliance on the open canal for town agriculture, but the canal’s route and story are still visible in local heritage interpretation (including Hurricane Valley museum and historic-district context). The canal is a historic structure and water right corridor, not a hiking trail. Stay off active irrigation works; do not enter flumes, tunnels, or dam sites without explicit public access.

Access is via public roads around Hurricane and La Verkin; the Virgin River Narrows dam site is rugged country. Summer southern Utah heat is extreme. Confirm any signed trail or overlook with local heritage or city sources before treating a ditch bank as a path.