Waterworks - Sheridan WY - Living New Deal

City:: Sheridan, WY
Site Type:: Infrastructure and Utilities, Water Supply
New Deal Agencies:: Public Works Administration (PWA), Public Works Funding
Started:: 1936
Completed:: 1937
Site Survival:: Extant

Description

A waterworks system featuring components in multiple locations was constructed for Sheridan, Wyoming during the Great Depression thanks to a grant provided by the New Deal’s Public Works Administration (PWA). The PWA provided a $357,078 grant to Sheridan for the project, whose total cost was $796,654. Construction started in Jan. 1936 and was largely completed Oct. 1937.

The work included several projects, including an intake about 13 miles southwest of Sheridan with settling basin, filter beds, and caretaker’s house; two reservoirs each in an “upper section” and “lower section”, about a couple of miles west of downtown; and a pressure tank on a hill east of downtown.

The National Archives’s visual record of this project features seven images, which have been scanned and provided in the pages linked to this project. The images are as follows; Evan Kalish has supplied the geographic coordinates associated with the structure(s) in each image and created the map shown here.

A. Intake: 44.697124, -107.188561
B. South Section – Upper Reservoir: 44.777661, -106.984698
C. South Section – Lower Reservoir: 44.781693, -106.980759
D. North Section – Upper Res.: 44.801374, -106.996313
E. North Section – Lower Res.: 44.798229, -106.996966
F. “Section C”: Settling Basin & Filter Beds: 44.697617, -107.185958
G. “Section H”: Pressure Tank: 44.802484, -106.942100

PWA Docket No. WY 1026-R.

Source notes

Record Group 135: Public Works Administration; Projects Control Division; Entry 52: Indices to Non-Federal Projects; Report No. 5: Status of All Completed Non-Federal Allotted Projects, page 157.

National Archives: RG 135-SAR: Public Works Administration Prints: Photographs rejected for use in the Photographic Report to the President: “Survey of the Architecture of Completed Projects of the PWA, 1939.” Box 23, Wyoming File, Folder "17. Water Works."

Site originally submitted by Evan Kalish on April 25, 2022.