In 1911, clearing twenty-eight acres for a reservoir here required heavy manual labor with hand saws, axes, mattocks, shovels, blasting, and teams of horses or oxen to remove trees, debris, usable timber, and stubborn stumps. Under the guidance of Victor Hammel, workers constructed a stump-pulling device on-site that used two horses, chains, and nearby anchored stumps to uproot connected stumps, and every part of the tangled root systems had to be removed before horse-drawn scrapers could shape the loamy sand, clay, and gravel. Grading formed the bottom of the impoundment area, provided fill for the main dam and embankments, and reduced underwater decay from leftover plant material after the reservoir filled. Some excavated sand and gravel were used to make concrete for a thirty-foot-wide stepped spillway that carried excess water from the reservoir back into Tibbs Run, helping prevent erosion elsewhere during rare times of extremely high water. Because the inlet pipes were limited in size, much water in the upper watershed remained in the creeks during periods of high rainfall rather than entering the reservoir, and a wooden walkway across the spillway allowed the reservoir caretaker to cross it when needed.