Deerfield Dam is a dam impounding Castle Creek in the

Black Hills The Black Hills ( lkt, Ȟe Sápa; chy, Moʼȯhta-voʼhonáaeva; hid, awaxaawi shiibisha) is an isolated mountain range rising from the Great Plains of North America in western South Dakota and extending into Wyoming, United States. Black Elk P ...

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota people, Lakota and Dakota peo ...

. The dam creates Deerfield Reservoir within the

Black Hills National Forest Black Hills National Forest is located in southwestern South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming, United States. The forest has an area of over 1.25 million acres (5,066 km²) and is managed by the Forest Service. Forest headquarters are located ...

. The earthen dam was originally built 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 ...

in 1942–1947, with a height of 171 feet, to store irrigation water for the surrounding Pennington County. Construction was started in July 1942 by the

Farm Security Administration The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was a New Deal agency created in 1937 to combat rural poverty during the Great Depression in the United States. It succeeded the Resettlement Administration (1935–1937). The FSA is famous for its small but ...

, and later continued by the

Civilian Conservation Corps The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. The CCC was a major part of ...

under the

Works Projects Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

during World War II. Employment of conscientious objectors under the

Civilian Public Service The Civilian Public Service (CPS) was a program of the United States government that provided conscientious objectors with an alternative to military service during World War II. From 1941 to 1947, nearly 12,000 draftees, willing to serve their ...

here drew complaints from locals. The reservoir has a capacity of 15,700

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 ...

and covers 414 acres of surface. Along with providing irrigation and recreation such as ice fishing and ice skating, the reservoir also supplements the municipal water supply of

Rapid City, South Dakota Rapid City ( lkt, link=no, Mni Lúzahaŋ Otȟúŋwahe; "Swift Water City") is the second most populous city in South Dakota and the county seat of Pennington County. Named after Rapid Creek, where the settlement developed, it is in western So ...

and for the nearby

Ellsworth Air Force Base Ellsworth Air Force Base (AFB) is a United States Air Force base located about northeast of Rapid City, South Dakota, just north of the town of Box Elder, South Dakota, Box Elder. The host unit at Ellsworth is the 28th Bomb Wing (28 BW). Assi ...

. Today, several recreational areas and campgrounds operated by the

National Forest Service The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands. The Forest Service manages of land. Major divisions of the agency in ...

offer public recreational opportunities to the lake area.

References

Black Hills Dams in South Dakota United States Bureau of Reclamation dams Reservoirs in South Dakota Buildings and structures in Pennington County, South Dakota Civilian Conservation Corps in South Dakota Dams completed in 1947 Bodies of water of Pennington County, South Dakota 1947 establishments in South Dakota {{SouthDakota-struct-stub