Steamboat Ditch
canal in Washoe County, Nevada, United States of America
Steamboat Ditch is a roughly 34-mile-long irrigation canal dug in the late 1870s by Chinese laborers. It begins at the Nevada and California state line and joins Steamboat Creek in south Reno.
Geography
This irrigation canal and adjoining access road is relatively flat with a slight declining grade of about 1/660 from its origin. The vast majority of the ditch is open earth and flanked by various specious of vegetation. The access road or "trail" flanking the canal is predominately dirt.
History
In 1877, the Truckee & Steamboat Irrigating Canal Company was organized to construct the Steamboat Ditch (Townley 1983: 13 7-138). Upon completion, it was the longest and most complicated ditch in the Truckee Meadows area. The total length of the ditch is 33–48 miles in length, depending on the source (cf., Angel 1958:634; Townley 1983: 138).
According to the Territorial Enterprise (17 May 1878:2), the ditch company awarded the construction contract to the Chinese firm Quong Yee Wo & Company of San Francisco, California, with a bid of $36,000. Other bidders included Chinese and European-American firms (Territorial Enterprise 17 May 1878:2).
The public source identifies “Steamboat Ditch” as canal in Washoe County, Nevada, United States of America. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Steamboat, Ditch and canal.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Steamboat Ditch”, the useful work is to connect “canal in Washoe County, Nevada, United States of America” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q49268743. Authority coordinates are 39.504, -119.952. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1877, 1983, 1958 and 1878.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Steamboat Ditch” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.