hehehe..."expectations".... I learned a long time ago not to have too many of those!

The reality is that I haven't done even the first steps of exploring a pond other than "dream" using the maps of my land... It could very easily turn out that my soil is so bad that I'll have to reduce plans to a 1/4 acre swimming hole that dries up every July.

However, the opposite could just as easily be true. That area is strange when it comes to water availability. In one spot, about 30 feet above where that image shows my "dream pond", there is an abundance of very green grass. It's a tiny area of about 50 square feet but stays very green all year long. Everything around it is the normal dried up desert scrub and cheat grass during the summer and fall. Could there be a natural water source percolating up due to pressure from the underlying basin? Possible. It would not be the first time I've found springs high up on the side of a hill.

Soooo... I'll keep dreaming until I get out there to dig some pretty serious test holes. I have to do that anyway so a soil engineer can come out and evaluate the "mean high ground water" mark for my proposed home site for a septic system.