Bicknell settlers homesteaded by streams to obtain water for crops and consumption, dipping water from ditches and the Fremont River into large barrels to settle before drinking and, during freezing conditions, chopping ice blocks and hauling them home to melt for cooking, drinking, and washing. This unsanitary water caused sicknesses and diseases among early residents. After the town was moved, pipes were buried to bring water from Cottonwood Canyon north of Bicknell, and later from Thousand Lake Mountain springs, and in 1992 Bicknell constructed a pump house on a spring south of town to supplement the mountain springs, while obtaining sufficient culinary water remains a major priority. The Fremont River has always provided most of the valley's irrigation water. In 1889, for nine horses, five hundred pounds of flour, one good beef steer, and one suit of clothes, the Fremont Irrigation Company purchased the water rights to Fish Lake from the Paiute Indians. Additional irrigation capacity came with dams that created Johnson Valley Reservoir in 1899, Forsyth Reservoir in 1922, and Mill Meadow Reservoir in 1954. Several canals were built to divert river water for irrigation, including the Tub Ditch and Spring Ditch for the first Thurber town and a central canal from the Fremont River to Lyman, and Bicknell residents worked for seven years, mostly in winter when not ranching, to complete the canal from Lyman to Birknell, building fires to thaw the frozen ground for digging.