The history of the Storm Lake dam

The question “When was the dam built?” comes up occasionally, especially now, after a long dry spell and water is churning merrily over Storm Lake’s outlet dam. Research by local historian Jon Hutchins reveals that damming started well before 1916, and the WPA work on the dam was an improvement upon what was already there.

The health and appearance of our lake has always been of great local and even regional interest. In the early 1870s the Pilot newspaper reported a clear lake, the abundance of pike and buffalo fish and a lakeshore scattered with “inexhaustible supplies of sand, gravel and granite boulders.”

Articles promoting Storm Lake spoke of a lake depth of 70 feet and even a 10-20 ft .depth for the little lake. However, in 1916, a state commission report produced a detailed map showing an average lake depth of only eight feet. This map does not indicate the presence of a dam at the outlet, but research shows a lengthy history of lake damming starting long before 1916.

Mill idea off the lake goes nowhere

In 1871, during Storm Lake’s earliest days, there was much need for a grain mill in town. Alex Blakely, from Fairfield, came to the city and proposed a 30-40 foot wide dam at the outlet, holding the lake level not more than a foot higher than it was originally.

He would run a wooden pipe 1.5 miles downstream over what he called a “strong thick slough sod” up to a point where a deepened channel would allow a 30-foot drop and a water-powered grain mill capable of grinding 200 bushels in 12 hours to be built.

The Pilot was enthusiastic about his proposal but the city tabled it for further consideration.

By November of the next year, Messrs. Eadie Guilford & Co. had built a steam-operated mill (Storm Lake Mills) at the corner of Erie and Railroad streets, and the rather fanciful idea of a mill operating on a lake whose level fluctuated so widely never occurred.

Weir dam destroyed by vandals

In 1876 the State Fish Commissioner stocked Storm Lake with several hundred thousand young fish. The next year a weir fish dam costing $40 was erected at the outlet which allowed the passage of water, but kept fish from leaving.

In what the Pilot described as: “A Very Mean Act,” three individuals destroyed the structure and warrants were issued for their arrest.

Controversy regarding such structures continued until 1973. By then a statewide screen removal program had been adopted. State Representative Dennis Freeman that year represented a group of 600 local people protesting this action.

First dam disliked by farmers

In 1882 a controversy arose regarding a physical dam that had been erected to raise the level of the lake, causing some farmers to worry about possible flooding. A local committee was appointed by the Board of Trade to determine at what level the lake should be maintained.

S.W. Hobbs, D.D. Brown and Geo. Currier (all prominent local individuals) voted to lower the dam level four inches. Builder J.M. Russell opposed this, but the level was duly lowered.

First concrete dam was shaky

In 1908 local cement contractor, W.A. Barnes, was awarded $510 to build a new concrete dam. Barnes was responsible for making much of the sidewalk paving in town. During the 1920s Game Warden Dan Fuller talked of “the battle to keep the dam properly holding.”

Sac City even expressed fears of flooding should the dam fail dramatically as had occurred elsewhere. Some repairs were made, but it took the Depression and federal funding to deal adequately with the problem.

New Deal dam project also kept sewage out of the lake

In the winter of 1933-34 hundreds of men were locally employed by Roosevelt’s New Deal WPA project to improve our local lake. Beginning with lake rip-rapping and construction of a new outlet dam, this continued to include a major dredging operation.

Storm Lake had built a new sewage treatment plant which unfortunately discharged effluent to the lake. WPA workers were hired to construct an outfall system reaching to outlet creek.

The creek itself was excavated to carry effluent more quickly to the Raccoon River. In January 1934 Mrs. Frances Rae Geisinger and photographer Howard Mickle made a record of this work for the county emergency relief committee. Two of their photographs appeared in the Nov. 25, 1995 edition of the Pilot Tribune paper. Three of them are included with this article. 

Hutchins is grateful to Jodi Morin at Buena Vista University. “She got me on to the 1908 work by W. A. Barnes.”