Smith and Morehouse Reservoir is in the upper reaches of the Weber River drainage in the western Uinta Mountains, Utah. This area of the Uintas is popular during the summer, as it is relatively close to population centers on the Wasatch Front. It is in a narrow, north-facing canyon that stays cooler and moister than other areas. The reservoir was enlarged in 1987, quintupling its capacity. The shoreline is owned by the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest, and public access is unrestricted. In addition to recreation water use is for both irrigation and culinary purposes, with a greater fraction being used for culinary as population increases along the Wasatch Front.
The Uinta Mountains ( yoo-IN-tə) are an east-west trending chain of mountains in northeastern Utah extending slightly into southern Wyoming in the United States. As a subrange of the Rocky Mountains, they are unusual for being the highest range in the contiguous United States running east to west,] and lie approximately 100 miles (160 km) east of Salt Lake City. The range has peaks ranging from 11,000–13,528 feet (3,353–4,123 m), with the highest point being Kings Peak, also the highest point in Utah. The Mirror Lake Highway crosses the western half of the Uintas on its way to Wyoming.