Fort Peck Dam and Lake

Located 59 miles north of here is Fort Peck Dam, the largest hydraulically-filled earthen dam in the United States. The dam is nearly four miles in length and 250 feet in height. It contains 130 million cubic yards of earth, gravel, and rock. The one-mile-long spillway can discharge 250,000 cubic feet of water per second. The dam impounds a reservoir 135 miles in length with 1,520 miles of shoreline – longer than the coastline of California. The reservoir is the fifth largest man-made lake in the United States. In 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt authorized the construction of Fort Peck Dam during the tough years of the Great Depression. The intent of the dam was to provide flood control and to assist navigation on the Missouri River. It also provided water for irrigation and, beginning in 1943, functioned as a hydroelectric facility. Construction on the dam began in 1934 and was completed in 1940. At its peak in 1936, over 10,500 workers labored on the dam and lived, many with their families, in the eighteen shanty towns that surrounded the construction site. One resident later wrote: Here we are out where there is nothing but thistles, black widow spiders, ticks, rattlesnakes, and heat. We’re living in pasteboard boxes and eatin’ dirt, with nothing to do when we’re not working but guzzle beer and wake up with a headache.