Time Immemorial: The indigenous Newe peoples lived in Newe Sogobia since time immemorial. From 20,000 to 14,000 years ago, the Newe left very few fragments of existence on the landscape. In that Pleistocene era, massive lakes or inland seas like Bonneville and Lahontan reached their maximum levels. Those lakes, which the Newe experienced first-hand, began to recede due to a rapid advance of climate change (hotter and drier era) after about 11,600 years ago. From the end of the Pleistocene throughout the Holocene eras, the Newe put more footprints on the ground where the large lakes once were, while they created homes, religious gathering sites, food and medicine gathering areas, water healing areas, and the like. Newe homelands expanded across the Great Basin, interrupted upon the arrival of European conquerors and colonists.

1541: The first European person to have entered the Great Basin was probably Captain Garci-Lopez de Cardenas, who led a Spanish expedition into what is now Utah during the late summer of 1541, as recorded in the diary of Francisco de Coronado.

1776: Newe homelands were again crossed in 1776. Franciscan friar named Atanasio Domínguez was directed to organize a group of explorers to find a route between two established missions: Santa Fe, NM, and Monterey, CA. Dominguez and friar Silvestre Vélez de Escalante reportedly explored parts of the Great Basin with Native guides, including some Utes. On 24 September, they witnessed Nuestra Senora de los Timpanogotiz (Utah Lake and Utah Valley), which they described as ". . . the most pleasing, beautiful, and fertile site in all new Spain." Other lakes to the south were also visited, and the expedition's cartographer Don Bernardo Miera y Pacheco mapped large portions of the Great Basin, its water, and its people. He included names and locations of many Native people across Utah, and this expedition played an important role in the rise of the Spanish Trail, a major trail for European influence and serious impact on Native people.

1781: Euroamerican diseases spread through early explorers, including a smallpox epidemic in 1781 that brought big impacts to the Newe. By 1860, Newe populations had been decimated by 80-90% of what their populations had been prior to the 1700s.

1850 and onward: Euroamerican colonization, westward expansion, and manifest destiny resulted in foreigners taking over vast regions of fertile and water-rich areas of Newe homelands. Newe peoples were displaced, exterminated in genocidal acts, and forced onto a tiny fraction of their ancestral homelands where access to water resources was truncated in the process.

1855: Newe peoples negotiated a peace treaty with the United States via a federal agent named Garland Hunt. To the Newe, it was a bona fide and final treaty. However, the United States never ratified the treaty and impacts on the Newe people continued as Euroamericans further settled, colonized, and took over Newe lands and waters.

1859: Based on reports from James H. Simpson who reported his westward route in Spring Valley, Nevada, to US Army General Albert S. Johnston, Gen Johnston led the first-recorded massacre at Swamp Cedars in Spring Valley. It was one of the largest massacres of Native American people in US history, and it occurred at a place where Tribes had been holding water healing ceremonies every year for millennia.

1863: In early May, 1863, the United States California Volunteer Infantry, as directed by Colonel Patrick Conner and carried out by Captain Smith, conducted another massacre of Newe people at Swamp Cedars. Numerous other massacres were carried out before and after.

On October 1, 1863, the Treaty of Peace and Friendship at Ruby Valley was signed between the United States and the Western Shoshone. In that treaty, the represented tribes neither ceded territory nor water resources therein. The treaty only allowed for limited use and passage on lands on a temporary basis.

On October 12, 1863, the Goshutes signed the “Treaty with the Shoshoni-Goship at Tuilla Valley”. This was a so-called “treaty of peace and friendship,” In that treaty, Goshutes neither ceded territory nor the water resources therein.

1908: US Supreme Court case Winters v. United States (Winters Doctrine) held that on the date the federal government created an Indian reservation along with it came an implied federal reserved water right to meet their needs and fulfil purposes of the reservation. 

1914: The Goshute Reservation was created by Executive Order No. 1903, on March 23, 1914, totaling about 112.085 acres. The reservation is now about 112,870 acres.

1915-1924:   The Indian Peaks Reservation was established via Executive Orders in 1915, 1920, 1921, 1923. In 1924, Congress added 4 sections to the Indian Peak Reservation. With the reservation came federal reserved water rights, and IPB occupied the territory and relied on its surface water and groundwater resources.

1930: Under the Act of June 27, 1930, Congress authorized for the Ely Shoshone Tribe “for the purchase of land, city water service connection, installation of pipe and hydrants, and erection of standpipe with necessary protective structure.” Water for Ely Shoshone people was thenceforth restricted and access determined by outside interests.

1931: The Federal government purchased 10 acres of land near Ely, Nevada, for the use by the Ely Shoshone. Given the steep hillslope of the acreage, only 2 acres was suitable for development.

1934: The Ely Shoshone Reservation on the above acres was formed pursuant to the Indian Reorganization Act. Water continued to be an issue of great importance.

1940:  After Duckwater Shoshone Tribe purchased the 3,850-acre Florio Ranch, the Secretary of the Interior created the Duckwater Reservation pursuant to Section 5 of the Indian Reorganization Act. Subsequent legislation on June 28, 1941, December 22, 1943, and January 27, 1955, added roughly 500 acres to the Reservation.

1951: The Western Bands of the Shoshone Nations filed a petition with the Indian Claims Commission triggering a cause of action for the taking without compensation of large tracts of land in the Great Basin, including lands covered by the 1863 Treaty at Ruby Valley. Water was a major issue in this petition, as Tribes had been removed and prevented from access to their traditional water uses and ability to sustain their way of life.

1954: The Indian Peaks Band (IPB) was terminated under the 1954 Termination Act 25 U.S.C. §741-760, P.L. 83-762. But § 745 (d) and §752 expressly reserved water rights for the IPB.

1956:   Pursuant to a trust agreement stemming from the 1954 Termination Act, the United States gave and granted to IPB trustees the Sections 13-15, 21-28, 33-35 from T29S R18W (8,960 acres). trustee’s deed reserved unto Indian Peaks Band trustees and its successors and assigns: All subsurface rights in and to the land above described; right to use and develop surface and subsurface waters; and rights-of-way and easements for subsurface possession, development, operation, extraction.

1958:   State of Utah granted parts of IPB original Indian Peaks Reservation to the Utah Fish & Game. Later, Utah destroyed culturally significant historic objects which established a record of IPB’s use of the Reservation.

1966:    Pursuant to IPB’s trustees’ deed, subsurface rights and water rights were transferred to Tribal beneficiaries.

1973: Ely Shoshone Tribe entered into a 55-year lease with White Pine County for an additional parcel of eleven (11) acres for home site construction. The Tribe purchased this land outright in 1992. The Tribe later began work to get this parcel of land into trust through the federal fee-to-trust process.

1977: Public Law 95-191 conveyed to the Ely Shoshone Tribe an additional 90-acre parcel of land. This parcel adjoins the Ely city limits to the south. Of the 90 acres, 30 are located on the east side of Highway 6 (Great Basin Blvd) and is primarily designated for economic development as it is on prime commercial highway. The Tribe had 74 homes located on the parcel and housing was later full occupancy, creating a longterm housing shortage and waiting list. This housing, and future housing, would become dependent on access to water from outside entities.

1980:  Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah Restoration Act (P.L. 96-227, 94 Stat. 317, 25 USC 760-768) restored the federal trust relationship with the Indian Peaks Band and other Utah Paiutes. Pursuant to Section 3(b) of the Act, “all rights and privileges of the tribe and of members of the tribe under any Federal treaty, Executive order, agreement, or statute, or under any other authority, which were diminished or lost under the Act of September 1, 1954 (68 Stat. 1099), are hereby restored.”

1981:   IPB’s subsurface and water rights were conveyed to the United States in trust for IPB, pursuant to Act of April 3, 1980, P.L. 96-227. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) signed acceptance of Tribal conveyance of rights, as referenced above, to the United States in trust for the Indian Peaks Band.

1989: The  Las Vegas Valley Water District applied for nearly 1 million acre-feet of groundwater rights across the Great Basin. Some of those water rights applications were conveyed to the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), which later triggered the SNWA’s proposal to acquire water rights to more than 80,000 afy of groundwater in Spring, Dry Lake, Delamar, and Cave valleys in east-central Nevada. Tribes later responded to prevent serious impacts to their waters, sacred lands, reservations, and other water-dependent resources and way of life.

2004: The Western Shoshone Claims Distribution Act was signed into law. It was designed to distribute money awarded to the Western Shoshone through a land claim settlement with the US government, stemming from a long-standing dispute over their ancestral lands in Nevada and Utah. The final outcome saw the funds being distributed to individual tribal members and a portion allocated to an educational trust fund. To some, this effectively resolved the claims case. To others, it did no such thing and the Western Shoshone treaties are still valid insofar as they never ceded lands or waters to the United States. The controversy is still alive.

2009: Utah denied CTGR’s application (17-217, A77473) for water rights. A number of people, entities, and government agencies protested, including the Bureau of Land Management.

2012:  CTGR and State of Utah began negotiations to adjudicate CTGR’s federal reserved water rights.

2016:     The Nevada Native Nations Land Act (P.L. 114-232) conveyed about 31,229 acres of BLM land to become part of the Duckwater Reservation Expansion.

2019: The Utah State Engineer granted water rights to Central Iron Country Water Conservancy District through a settlement agreement, including rights within the original Indian Peaks Reservation and ignoring IPB’s existing water rights on their original Reservation.

That same year, the CTGR was granted Treatment as State by US Environmental Protection Agency to administer the CTGR’s water quality standards program under the Clean Water Act Section 303c.

2020: Tribes and coalition groups won the largest water rights trial in Nevada’s history. Later, SNWA withdrew water rights applications for their Groundwater Development Project in Spring, Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar Valleys in east-central Nevada. Tribes’ water, reservation, sacred lands, and other resources were protected.

That same year, the Central Iron Country Water Conservancy District submitted a Right of Way application to the BLM to pump over 10,000 afy of groundwater from Pine and Wah Wah Valleys of Utah to their service area around Cedar City, UT. CICWCD also applied for rights in southern Snake Valley where SNWA had priority water rights on the Nevada side of the valley.

2021:  CTGR met with the Nevada Governor to formally initiate the process of addressing CTGR’s federally reserved water rights.

2022:     The Duckwater Shoshone Tribe developed a 175,000-acre land withdrawal proposal to be added to the Nye County Lands Bill for lands that would be conveyed to the Tribe as a reservation expansion. The lands include springs to which the Tribe holds water rights.

That same year, the Indian Peaks Band submitted an bombshell comment letter in response to BLM’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement for CICWCD’s proposed Pine Valley Water Supply Project. The project has been on hold since.