Tushar Mountains - Watershed

Watershed

The Tushars contain a variety of annual and perennial streams that receive their flow from annual snowpack. The entire watershed region is divided into two main watershed locations: Beaver River originates in the Tushar Mountains east of Beaver at the confluence of the South Fork and several other creeks and springs. It drains west past Beaver and Milford and the southern end of the Mineral Range then turns north and disappears into the ground at the Beaver Bottoms near Red Rock Knoll and Black Rock in Millard County. In earlier days it was known for its large number of beaver colonies. Jedediah Smith called it "The Lost River" and Dominguez and Escalante called it "El Rio de Tejedor" (The Beaver River).

The Sevier River, extending 383 miles (616 km), is the longest Utah river entirely in the state and drains an extended chain of mountain farming valleys to the intermittent Sevier Lake. The Upper Sevier is used extensively for irrigation, and consequently Sevier Lake is now essentially dry. Sevier Lake is a remnant of Lake Bonneville, a freshwater lake that covered much of the western and north western portions of Utah.

Some of the more prominent creeks and streams are: Clear Creek, Pine Creek, Beaver Creek, Cottonwood Creek and various other small steams which drain into the Sevier River. All the watershed from the Tushars has a final terminus in Sevier Lake located in western Utah and is part of the Great Basin. No water reaches any ocean from the Tushars.