Eau Claire Dam is a dam in Eau Claire County,

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. The concrete gravity dam was dedicated on August 12, 1937, as the result of the largest Depression-era

Works Progress 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 ...

project in the entire state. Also known as the Eau Claire River 2WP224 Dam or the Augusta Dam (it stands about six miles north of

Augusta, Wisconsin Augusta is a city in Eau Claire County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 1,550 at the 2010 census. The city is bordered by the Town of Bridge Creek. History Augusta was formerly called Ridge Creek. A post office has been in operati ...

), the dam was developed on the site of the previous "Main River Dam" as a 24-foot-high, 251-foot-long structure impounding the Eau Claire River. The reservoir it creates, Eau Claire Lake, has a normal surface area of 1.7 square miles, with a maximum capacity of 17,000

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 normal storage of 7200 acre-feet. Recreation includes fishing (for musky and walleyed pike), boating and swimming. The county operates two units of its Lake Eau Claire County Park north and south of the lake itself. The dam is one of several in the Eau Claire – Chippewa Falls metropolitan area on the Eau Claire and Chippewa Rivers. As of 2010 the possibility of developing hydroelectric power at this dam was being investigated.

References

External links

Lake Eau Claire Association
{{authority control Dams in Wisconsin Reservoirs in Wisconsin United States local public utility dams Buildings and structures in Eau Claire County, Wisconsin Works Progress Administration in Wisconsin Dams completed in 1937