Box Butte Dam (National ID # NE01069) is a dam in the arid northwestern panhandle area of

Dawes County, Nebraska Dawes County is a county in the U.S. state of Nebraska. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 9,182. Its county seat is Chadron. The county was formed in 1885; it was named for James W. Dawes, the Nebraska Governor at the time ...

. The earthen dam was constructed from 1941 through 1946 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 ...

with a structural height of 87 feet and 5508 feet long at its crest. It impounds the

Niobrara River The Niobrara River (; oma, Ní Ubthátha khe, , literally "water spread-out horizontal-the" or "The Wide-Spreading Water") is a tributary of the Missouri River, approximately long,U.S. Geological Survey. Many early settlers, such as Mari Sando ...

for flood control, part of the Bureau's Mirage Flats Project for irrigation water storage. No hydroelectric power is produced here. The reservoir it creates, Box Butte Reservoir, has a water surface of 1600 acres, 612 land surrounding land acres, about 14 miles of shoreline, and a capacity of 31,060

acre-feet The acre-foot is a non- SI unit of volume equal to about commonly used in the United States in reference to large-scale water resources, such as reservoirs, aqueducts, canals, sewer flow capacity, irrigation water, and river flows. An acre-f ...

. Recreation includes fishing (for northern pike, walleye, largemouth bass, yellow perch, and channel cat), hunting, boating, camping and hiking. The southern shore of the lake borders the

Box Butte Reservoir State Recreation Area Box Butte Reservoir State Recreation Area (SRA) is a state park in northwestern Nebraska, United States. The recreation area is located on the 1,600 acre Box Butte Reservoir, a reservoir on the Niobrara River, approximately north of Hemingfo ...

References

{{authority control Dams in Nebraska Reservoirs in Nebraska United States Bureau of Reclamation dams Buildings and structures in Dawes County, Nebraska Earth-filled dams Dams completed in 1946 Landforms of Dawes County, Nebraska