The Belle Fourche Dam, also known as Orman Dam, is a dam on Owl Creek in Butte County,

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux Native American tribes, who comprise a large porti ...

, USA, approximately eight miles east of

Belle Fourche, South Dakota Belle Fourche (; ) is a city in and the county seat of Butte County, South Dakota, United States. Its population was 5,617 at the 2020 census. It is near the geographic center of the United States, which moved some 550 miles northwest from the ...

, along U.S. Route 212. Its construction created the Belle Fourche Reservoir, the Belle Fourche National Wildlife Refuge, and the Rocky Point Recreation Area. The reservoir has approximately eight thousand acres of water surface, 6700 acres of land, and 58 miles of shoreline. It's stocked with walleye, catfish, and white bass. Average depth is twenty-five feet, but it has areas as deep as sixty feet at full capacity. Common activities at BFR include boating, fishing, ice fishing, ice skating, camping, cooking out, water skiing and fossil hunting. Construction occurred in several stages between 1903 and 1907. The dam was the first project undertaken by the

United States Bureau of Reclamation The Bureau of Reclamation, and formerly the United States Reclamation Service, is a federal agency under the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees water resource management, specifically as it applies to the oversight and opera ...

(USBR). At its 1911 completion by the USBR, Belle Fourche Dam was the largest earthen dam in the world. The dam is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

. With . In 1989 it was listed among the approximately 250

Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks __NOTOC__ The following is a list of Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks as designated by the American Society of Civil Engineers since it began the program in 1964. The designation is granted to projects, structures, and sites in the United State ...

. The dam is described as "a homogeneous earthfill structure containing about 1,783,000 cubic yards of material. It has a maximum base width of 650 feet, a structural height of 122 feet, and a hydraulic height of 97 feet. The crest of the dam at elevation 2989.75 has a length of 6,262 feet and a width of 19 feet."

References

External links

*
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation page
* {{authority control Dams on the National Register of Historic Places in South Dakota Dams in South Dakota Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks Protected areas of Butte County, South Dakota Reservoirs in South Dakota United States Bureau of Reclamation dams Dams completed in 1911 Bodies of water of Butte County, South Dakota 1911 establishments in South Dakota National Register of Historic Places in Butte County, South Dakota