Today, Reservoir Park in downtown Salt Lake is a popular green space for many city residents, particularly those who live by the University of Utah. However, for many years it was a vital water source.
Before it was a park, the reservoir, located at 1300 East and 100 South was known as the Thirteenth East Reservoir. It was one of the earliest reservoirs constructed to deliver municipal drinking water to the inhabitants of burgeoning Salt Lake City.
“So the reservoir was built in 1901 to help with the Avenues getting their culinary water,” said Salt Lake City Historian Rachel Quist. “So the Avenues was built on a bit of a hill. It's hard to get water uphill, so the reservoir was built above that to help a gravity-fed system.”
The water primarily came from Parleys and Immigration Canyon, and it helped serve the avenues. When it was constructed, it had a capacity of over 5 million gallons of water.
According to city documentation, it was the first reservoir located outside of City Creek Canyon.
“In the early 1900s the city was expanding,” Quist explained. “This was outside of the city limits at the time. So as part of expanding in a desert, water is always an important commodity.”
As the City’s boundaries grew, the city beautified the area and incorporated the reservoir into the city park system. The additions included trees, a playground, and a wall built in 1914 to keep cars from driving into the reservoir.
In 1931, the Art Barn was also built in the same area. The Art Barn, built by the federal Works Projects Administration, private contributors, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was a gathering place and exhibition center for arts and crafts.
“So in 1956 the federal government mandated that all open reservoirs be capped with concrete to make it a closed system,” Quist said. “So early Cold War, people were afraid of terroristic threats for water system utilities and so the city capped it with concrete, and then they placed tennis courts on top of it.
In 1993, an engineering study found structural problems with the reservoir’s deck. Those findings prompted the Department of Public Utilities to close the tennis courts. Shortly after, the reservoir was taken out of service for good.
“It buckled in, and that's when the city decided that it needed to fix it or condemn it,” Quist explained. “But conveniently, the University of Utah had a new construction project where they had a bunch of excess soil or fill dirt, and so the city accepted their gift, filled it in, and created this nice green grassy area where the reservoir used to be.”
