How life in Green River is intertwined with water from the river that shares its name
Sonya Nelson Spackman stood in line on a mild Saturday afternoon, waiting patiently to purchase a bag of kettle corn as she proudly displayed her latest acquisition — a woven purse crafted to look like a juicy piece of watermelon, a bargain she said she got for just $35.
Spackman lives five hours away from the town of Green River, but the 326-mile trek from Park Valley, Box Elder County, is something she worries little about.
Green River, she says, is in her heart. Her roots.
“I grew up here. This is home,” she explained. “I try to come down every year.”
Melon Days, held since 1906 during the third weekend of September, is where strangers make new friends, and old friends who are natives of Green River reconnect through their shared heritage and culture of growing up in a small town where high school graduating classes numbered a dozen or less and at a young age you discovered the value of dirt, mud puddles, farm animals and of course — the melons.
“I can’t get enough of the good ones, so I sure miss those that are grown here,” Spackman said. “I love them.”
From right to left, Matt Beatty, Noah Myers, Vanessa Adams, Bella Beatty and Amy Beatty take a selfie eating watermelon during the 118th annual Melon Days Festival in Green River on Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. The Beattys have been coming to Green River’s Melon Days Festival with family and friends for over a decade. | Brice Tucker, Deseret News
Opportunity from a river that connects us
The town of Green River, Emery County, — population of about 800 people — is more than just a place along the I-70 corridor that boasts famous watermelons and some of the most scenic nearby landscapes in Utah — including the San Rafael Swell, Goblin Valley State Park, the Little Wild Horse and Bell Canyon trails. There is the Green River itself, with rafting, kayaking and its namesake — the lush Green River State Park that is packed with mature trees, plenty of shade, a golf course and spectacular views of the river itself.
If you are a lucky youngster, you might even snare a catfish from the river like Lily Sparrow, 12, did while on a field trip from Promontory Charter School in Perry, Box Elder County. She and a couple dozen other students were part of an outing that focused on the environment and the effects of erosion.
Sparrow proudly held up the results of her hard work of casting her fishing rod and being as patient as possible to snare the yellow fish she dubbed Greg No. 2, named in sequence after Greg No. 1, caught the day before.
The Green River is 730 miles long and is the main tributary of the Colorado River. The Colorado River was once dubbed the country’s most endangered river by American Rivers because of its many depletions, the dams it supports in the arid West and a more than two-decades-long drought that has left a hydrological imprint that will be hard to overcome.
Seven basin states, two countries and 30 tribes depend on the Colorado River. And for the Colorado River to be healthy, the Green River has to do its part.
The Green River passes by a bend in this slow moving segment of the Green River that defines the town's identity on Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. Behind, an arid mesa rises into the sky during a morning on Green River which is vital for the melon growers and other farmers in Green River | Brice Tucker, Deseret News
The Green’s headwaters are in the Wyoming’s Wind River Range and — like someone presented with too many choices on a menu — the river seems unable to make up its mind about where to go first.
From Wyoming, it drops down into Utah where much of its water is captured in Flaming Gorge, famous for its trophy trout.
According to Utah.com, the Flaming Gorge Dam rises 502 feet above bedrock, capturing enough Green River water to form a reservoir that extends as far as 91 miles to the north. It has a total capacity of nearly 3.8 million acre-feet and a surface area of 42,020 acres.
The Green River then makes a detour to the east into Colorado before eventually returning to Utah to carve out dramatic canyons with amazing opportunities for rafting, including Desolation Canyon.
The Green is Utah’s main waterway and by the time it meets up with the Colorado River at Canyonlands National Park, it has traveled more than 450 miles through the state. In 2023, 4.52 million acre-feet of water was measured at a gauge along the river. A previous year, it sat at 1.6 million acre-feet, according to Mike Drake, deputy state engineer with the Utah Division of Water Rights.
“It definitely varies,” he said. “As an interstate river, it functions very differently. There is always a lot of water running in the Green River.”
That said, the strain on the Colorado River is leading to new operational decisions that affect the system.
“We know the Colorado River, just the whole system, is not generating the water it has in the past and so there’s definitely a cause for concern, and the need to manage the river more effectively,” he said.
To help prop up the Colorado River, there was an orchestrated combined release over a two-year period of time of 660,000 acre-feet of water from Blue Mesa and Flaming Gorge into the Green River to help the Colorado River system and to ultimately keep hydropower on at the Glen Canyon Dam at Lake Powell.
Gene Shawcroft, Upper Colorado River Commissioner, said both reservoirs have since recovered from those releases due to good water years.
Green River has not been without complicated fights over its water resources, which has long been an issue in the West.
Critics of a proposed nuclear power plant spent a week in a Price courtroom arguing against the Utah state engineer’s decision to grant applications that ultimately would divert 53,600 acre-feet from the Green River for the plant.
The judge in the trial upheld the state engineer’s decision, which was challenged again in the Utah Court of Appeals. The appellate court, too, ruled that the district court had not erred in its decision granting the applications to divert the water from the river. But, the plant never became a reality.
Most recently, environmental groups have raised concern over Anson Resources’ Green River project to harvest lithium via the extraction of brine.
The state approvals associated with the project will allow the company to take water for nonconsumptive use amounting to 19 cubic feet per second of brine through the lithium extraction process.
According to the company, the brine is then returned to the geological formation from which it was originally extracted. As all the brine will be returned to its origin, the Division of Water Rights determined that its use is nonconsumptive — a big deal when it comes to water in Utah. Critics, however, say such projects should not be approved; in this case tapping part of a system that is already overstressed.
Fostering a community
Sitting across from the Ace Hardware store on Main Street waiting for the Melon Days parade to begin, Moab resident Rick Cordero said he makes it a point to come to the Green River celebration as often as he can.
A marching band and cheerleaders perform along Main Street and a huge replica of a watermelon slice is towed behind a truck. Cheers rise up from the crowd.
Sam Newman high-fives people along the parade route while dressed as a watermelon with the KZMU radio station float during the 118th annual Melon Days Festival parade in Green River on Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. | Brice Tucker, Deseret News
Surrounded by numerous family members — with young ones scrambling to snatch all the candy possible being thrown by parade participants — Cordero said Green River’s annual event is a real hometown celebration.
“It is a community,” he said. “It’s all about the community.” Moab, he said, has become too commercialized, expensive and is overrun by seasonal homeowners who have driven prices so high, even a single-wide trailer hits the housing market at several hundred thousand dollars.
“That is why I like coming up here — community,” he said.
It’s not at every community celebration, for example, that children — especially young girls — get a chance to ride a unicorn.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the price of hay became so high that Landon and Stacie Rigby thought they would have to sell off their horses, they became creative.
At this year’s Melon Days, Sprinkles, Marshmallow, Galaxy and Twinkie delighted their young riders.
Twinkie, a palomino, was sporting a yellow “horn” and had a watermelon painted on her hip. Sprinkles, the paint who was somehow dehorned, patiently walked the circle hosting riders with smiles plastered on their faces and hands gripped tightly around the saddle horn.
The Rigbys’ idea worked.
Landon Rigby said it is far less common to have pony rides at fairs or community events, so the niche opportunity has them in demand.
“You really don’t see horses anymore,” he explained. They’ve made appearances in Carbon County, elsewhere in Emery County, the Herriman town celebration, in Salt Lake County and even participated in the Unicorn Festival outside Denver.
With another Melon Days wrapped up, the celebration for 2025 will be another testament to the future of this town, a way to rise above some of the boarded-up buildings that speak to another time, a way to celebrate the stubborn continuity of a rural, Western town. Melon Days brings in upwards of 4,000 people from outside the town who come for the tradition, for the community spirt and, of course, for the famous melons.
Green River Mayor Ren Hatt says the melon crop symbolizes the town itself.
“The river is like a great artery that runs through our town, and it helps feed so many parts of our residents’ lives and our economy. The river is a massive provider of tourism draw, and tourism makes up the majority of our economy currently,” he said.
“The river provides water, and in an ever-increasing tightening of the watershed, it’s such a great boon to our city for future economic growth that we have access to the water. The river is a vital part of why melons can thrive here, and the river provides critical opportunities for recreation, economic growth, and cultural identity to the town.”
