The Carson River rises in the Sierras and has several tributaries across
the line in California, in Alpine County. The river is about 220 miles
in length and ends in Carson Lake. It enters Nevada in Douglas County.
It has two branches, known as the East Fork and the West Fork. These
unite near the town of Genoa, the county seat of Douglas County. The
river then plows through the center of Douglas County into Ormsby,
passing near Carson City, the capital of the State, thence into Lyon
County, and finally finds its terminal “sink” in Carson Lake, in
Churchill County. This lake has an outlet several miles in length into a
second lake, or sink, which at times of great freshets is united with
the lower sink of the Humboldt, as has already been mentioned. Carson
Lake is circular in form and is about twelve miles long and eight or
nine in width. It has a depth of forty or fifty feet, and its waters are
quite sweet. The lower sink is about twenty miles long and from four to
eight miles wide. Its waters, particularly toward the north end, where
it is very shallow, are strongly alkaline. These lakes are at times
resorted to by great flocks of all kinds of water fowl. It is a poor
place for fish. Trout are not plentiful, and the other kinds—suckers and
chubs—are soft and insipid.
The Carson River affords water for the irrigation of immense tracts of
land in Douglas County, in Carson Valley, and other valleys below, and
power for running many large quartz mills that work the ores of the
Comstock Lode. The first of these mills are at Empire City, and they are
thence found all along down the river to, and a short distance below,
the town of Dayton.
Owing to the great quantities of water taken from it for the irrigation
of ranches above in Carson Valley, the river becomes almost dry in the
lower part of its course during the latter part of each summer. To
remedy this evil large storage reservoirs should be constructed in the
mountains and higher foot-hill regions.