In Spring 1942, the U.S. Government transformed the landscape southwest of here from an abandoned town into a place where it forcibly confined more than 11,000 Japanese Americans, and water was critical to that effort. Decades earlier, the Owens Valley Improvement Company had built a creek-fed water system, including a small reservoir near here, for the farming town of Manzanar. In May 1942, Army contractor Vinson and Pringle began construction on this reservoir, fed by Shepherd Creek, with infrastructure that included a settling basin, sand trap, chlorine house, and storage shed. In 1943, Japanese American crews enlarged the 540,000-gallon reservoir to a 900,000-gallon capacity. It supplied up to 1,500,000 gallons of water daily through 40,000 feet of pipes to faucets outside barracks and into mess halls, latrines, and laundry rooms, and it also served 84 fire hydrants, Victory Gardens, and dozens of Japanese gardens. After the camp closed in 1945, Owens Valley locals swam here for decades. The reservoir remained an important part of Manzanar's history because Japanese Americans used its water to reshape the landscape with gardens that enriched meals and beautified their surroundings. Inscriptions in the reservoir's concrete record a range of attitudes among Japanese Americans, including the pebble message “Stone wall by the Emergency Crew 2/25/43.” The emergency crew did vital but difficult labor that was considered one of the worst jobs in camp, and some crew members were viewed by the administration as uncooperative. Other inscriptions expressed feelings of alienation, with pro-Japanese and anti-American sentiments appearing alongside names, initials, and dates, while artistic elements such as stone lanterns and upright rocks showed pride in the work. One inscription, the Japanese character for “peace,” echoed the hopes of thousands confined at Manzanar.