Carbon Canal  The Carbon Canal is an irrigation canal in the central portion of Utah, United States. The canal was constructed by the Carbon Canal Company between 1907 and 1909 to provide water to agricultural fields west and south of the Price River. The Carbon Canal is a 28-mile long canal containing lined and unlined (i.e., earthen) sections. It begins at a weir on the Price River near the Spring Glen turn-off on U.S. Highway 6 and extends through Carbonville and the community of Price into Emery County to a point northeast of Elmo. It contains numerous flumes that carry the canal over rolling terrain. From the beginning of Euro-American settlement in Carbon County, the Price River was one of a few perennial freshwater sources on which pioneers could rely. The river’s drainage was first permanently settled by Mormon pioneers in the late 1870s at Spring Glen. Within three years, other small settlements appeared at Carbonville, Price, Wellington, and Helper. With the exception of Helper, which was established to support trains making the climb over Soldier Summit, these communities depended on agriculture for basic subsistence. Thus, their dependence on freshwater sources—particularly the Price River—for more than culinary water was strong and deep. Crop production on the dry uplands was limited by a lack of facilities to carry water from the river. The first settlers reportedly carried water from the river in wooden barrels and tanks to their fields. This lasted until the settlers dug a series of small ditches to convey irrigation water to their fields. The ditches proved generally sufficient to serve the needs of the limited settler population until 1883, when the Denver & Rio Grande Western (D&RGW) Railroad was completed through Utah. The railroad passed through the Price River communities on its way north through Spanish Fork Canyon and on to the Wasatch Front. The completion of the railroad transformed the communities from isolated farm towns to a booming railroad region almost overnight. The arrival of the railroad coincided with the discovery of vast coal reserves in the area, and within a few years, the communities of the Price River bustled with hundreds of miners, railroad men, and entrepreneurs, forever changing the sleepy Mormon bergs into Utah’s mecca of ethnic and religious diversity. The arrival of the railroad and mining industries saw a concurrent increase in the general settler population of the area as the economy grew sufficiently to allow for a community of supporting commercial enterprises. Most settlers not directly involved in the mining and railroading industries as laborers at least supplemented their household economy with agricultural pursuits if not relying entirely upon them.