Pinto Dam is a dam in

Grant County, Washington Grant County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 99,123. The county seat is Ephrata, and the largest city is Moses Lake. The county was formed out of Douglas County in February 1909 ...

. The dam was a project of 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 ...

, completed from 1946 through 1948 as one element of the vast

Columbia Basin Project The Columbia Basin Project (or CBP) in Central Washington, United States, is the irrigation network that the Grand Coulee Dam makes possible. It is the largest water reclamation project in the United States, supplying irrigation water to over of ...

for irrigation water storage, flood control, and hydroelectric power generation. Pinto Dam is an earthen structure, 130 feet high and 1900 feet long at its crest, that provides offstream storage of water. The six-mile-long crescent-shaped reservoir it creates, Billy Clapp Lake, was originally called Long Lake Reservoir, but was renamed for one of the sponsors of the project, a lawyer from

Ephrata, Washington Ephrata ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Grant County, Washington, United States. Its population was 8,477 at the 2020 census. History Ephrata was officially incorporated on June 21, 1909 and was given the county seat for the newly creat ...

. The lake offers year-round fishing for yellow perch, crappie, rainbow trout, and walleye. The Stratford Wildlife Recreation Area borders Billy Clapp Lake on its eastern shore and hosts migrating waterfowl. Another sizable lake, Brook Lake, also stands below the dam.

Columbia Basin Project

Pinto Dam and Billy Clapp Lake are part of the Main Canal (1951) of the Columbia Basin project.Draft Environmental Statement, Columbia Basin Project, Washington; Columbia Basin Project, Ephrata, Washington; Department of the Interior, (INT DES-75-3), Bureau of Reclamation, Department of the Interior; Washington, D.C.; 1975 The canal is , from

Banks lake Banks Lake is a long reservoir in central Washington in the United States. Part of the Columbia Basin Project, Banks Lake occupies the northern portion of the Grand Coulee, a formerly dry coulee near the Columbia River, formed by the Missoula Fl ...

to Billy Clapp Lake. From the Billy Clap Lakes outlet, the lower reach of the Main Canal continues westward to divide into the East Low and West Canals near Adco on Washington 28. The canals total length is about including about in Long Lake. By constructing Long Lake Dam, later renamed Pinto Dam, Reclamation utilized the coulee to avoid additional canal costs. The Columbia Basin Project; Wm. Joe Simonds; Bureau of Reclamation History Program; Denver, Colorado; Research on Historic Reclamation Projects; 1998

Billy Clapp Lake

Billy Clapp Lake formed behind Pinto Dam along the length of Long Lake Coulee. The coulee is the result of the

Missoula Floods The Missoula floods (also known as the Spokane floods or the Bretz floods or Bretz's floods) were cataclysmic glacial lake outburst floods that swept periodically across eastern Washington and down the Columbia River Gorge at the end of the las ...

. The reservoir is long and wide with a maximum depth of feet. Previous to the creation of the reservoir, the basin contained five smaller lakes, i.e., Long, Coffee Pot, Pot, Cold Spring and July Lakes.

Pinto Dam

Pinto Dam, a zoned earth and rockfill structure, is long and high above bedrock. An uncontrolled open-channel emergency spillway is provided around the left abutment of the dam in a channel excavated in rock. Billy Clapp Headworks has radial gates to regulate the flow of water into the lower reach of the Main Canal.

References

{{Commons, Billy Clapp Lake Dams in Washington (state) United States Bureau of Reclamation dams Buildings and structures in Grant County, Washington Dams completed in 1948 Lakes of Grant County, Washington