Buffalo Bill Dam

The Buffalo Bill Dam ( english Buffalo Bill Dam ) is a dam on the Shoshone River in the U.S. state of Wyoming. The pent-up from the dam lake called Buffalo Bill Reservoir.

History

The dam is part of the Shoshone Project, one of the first three water conservancy projects of the Bureau of Reclamation. It was built on 19 October 1905 to 15 January 1910. On this day, the construction was completed with the filling of the last concrete charge in the built Shoshone Dam. The building cost 929 658 dollars. Seven workers lost their lives during the construction. At the time of its completion was the dam with 99 meters the highest in the world and probably the first dam, which was higher than the built about 1350 Kurit dam.

Until 1946, the Shoshone Dam Dam retained her name. Then it was renamed after the showman Buffalo Bill, who founded the nearby town of Cody and had a large part of the country, which is now covered by the reservoir Buffalo Bill Reservoir. The area around the reservoir is designated as Buffalo Bill State Park. The dam was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.

Dam and hydroelectric power plant

The shut-off, which is about 10 km upstream from Cody, is an arch -gravity dam made ​​of concrete with a constant radius. It was one of the first high concrete dams of the United States and was built by Thompson - Starrett Co.. Conversions took place in 1915, 1922-23, 1959 and 1990-93. The dam was last increased by approximately 7.6 m to 106.75 m.

The connected hydroelectric plant at the foot of the dam originally had a capacity of 6 MW with three turbines. Due to maintenance and security issues all turbines were taken out of service in March 1980 and replaced one of them in 1991 by a new 3 -megawatt turbine. In addition, there is since 1993 also a new 18- MW power plant 1.6 km further down the Shoshone River.