7 mi. W of Cody, Cody, Wyoming. County/parish: Park.
Added to the National Register of Historic Places August 12, 1971. NRIS 71000890.
1 contributing structure.Also known as:
Buffalo Bill Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam on the Shoshone River in the U.S. state of Wyoming. Originally 325-foot (99 m), it was the tallest dam in the world when it opened in 1910; a 25-foot (7.6 m) extension was added in 1992 in one of numerous changes and improvements to the structure and its support facilities, which include two full time power generators and two seasonal operations added between 1920 and 1994, and a 2.8-mile (4.5 km) irrigation tunnel completed in 1939.
The dam is located in Shoshone Canyon, and named after the famous Wild West figure William "Buffalo Bill" Cody, who founded the nearby town of Cody and owned much of the land now covered by the reservoir formed by its construction. It is part of the Shoshone Project, successor to several visionary schemes promoted by Cody to irrigate the Bighorn Basin and turn it from a semi-arid sagebrush-covered plain to productive agricultural land. Known at the time of its construction as Shoshone Dam, it was renamed in 1946 to honor Cody.
The original structure was designed by engineer Daniel Webster Cole and built between 1905 and 1910. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and named a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1973. The land around the reservoir is maintained as Buffalo Bill State Park.
(read more...)National Park Service documentation: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/73730583