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The Rampart Dam was a hydroelectric power proposal in the 1950s and 1960s by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dam the Yukon River in Alaska, United States. The project was planned for Rampart Canyon, about 105 miles (169 km) west-northwest of Fairbanks, Alaska. The resulting dam would have created a lake roughly the size of Lake Erie, making it the largest man-made reservoir in the world. The plan for the dam itself called for a concrete structure 530 feet (162 m) high with a top length of about 4,700 feet (1,430 m). Though supported by many politicians and businesses in Alaska, the project was canceled when concerns arose about the project's cost. Native Alaskans in the area protested the threatened loss of nine villages that would be flooded by the dam. Conservation groups abhorred the threatened flooding of the Yukon Flats, a large area of wetlands that provides a critical breeding ground for millions of waterfowl. Fiscal conservatives opposed the dam on the grounds of its large cost and limited benefit to Americans outside Alaska. Because of these objections, United States Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall formally opposed construction of the dam in 1967, and the project was shelved. (more...)

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