Bull Shoals Dam

Bull Shoals Dam
Bull Shoals Dam
	Bull Shoals Dam from the air
Country	United States
Location	Baxter / Marion counties, Arkansas
Coordinates	36°21′58″N92°34′29″W / 36.36611°N 92.57472°W Coordinates: 36°21′58″N92°34′29″W / 36.36611°N 92.57472°W
Construction began	1947
Opening date	1951
Owner(s)	U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Dam and spillways
Type of dam	Concrete gravity
Height	256 feet (78 m)
Length	2,256 feet (688 m)
Dam volume	2,100,000 cubic yards (1,600,000 m3)
Spillways	17 gate-controlled bays
Spillway capacity	112,200 cubic feet per second (3,180 m3/s)
Reservoir
Creates	Bull Shoals Lake
Total capacity	5,760,000 acre feet (7.10 km3)
Active capacity	3,400,000 acre feet (4.2 km3)
Catchment area	6,036 square miles (15,630 km2)
Surface area	71,240 acres (28,830 ha)
Maximum length	87 miles (140 km)
Normal elevation	695 feet (212 m) (max)
Power Station
Turbines	4x 45-MW units, 4x 50-MW units
Installed capacity	380 MW
Annual generation	883,910,000 KWh [1]

Last updated March 17, 2019

Bull Shoals Dam is a concrete gravity dam on the White River in northern Arkansas in the United States. The dam lies on the border of Marion and Baxter Counties, and forms Bull Shoals Lake, which extends well northwest into Missouri. Its main purposes are hydroelectricity production and flood control.

A gravity dam is a dam constructed from concrete or stone masonry and designed to hold back water by primarily using the weight of the material alone to resist the horizontal pressure of water pushing against it. Gravity dams are designed so that each section of the dam is stable, independent of any other dam section.

Arkansas is a state in the southern region of the United States, home to over 3 million people as of 2018. Its name is of Siouan derivation from the language of the Osage denoting their related kin, the Quapaw Indians. The state's diverse geography ranges from the mountainous regions of the Ozark and the Ouachita Mountains, which make up the U.S. Interior Highlands, to the densely forested land in the south known as the Arkansas Timberlands, to the eastern lowlands along the Mississippi River and the Arkansas Delta.

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.

The dam was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in response to severe flooding between 1915 and 1927. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt authorized the construction of the dam as well as six others on the White River and its tributaries in the Flood Control Act of 1938. Construction started in June 1947 and the dam was completed in July 1951. When finished, the dam was one of the largest concrete structures in the world. From its completion until 2009, it is estimated that the dam has prevented about $225.5 million in flood damages.^[2]^[3]

The Flood Control Act of 1938 was an Act of the United States Congress signed into law by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that authorized civil engineering projects such as dams, levees, dikes, and other flood control measures through the United States Army Corps of Engineers and other Federal agencies. It is one of a number of Flood Control Acts passed nearly annually by the United States Congress.

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Bull Shoals is a city in Marion County, Arkansas, United States, founded in 1954. The population was 1,950 at the 2010 census. Primarily a retirement and vacation center, Bull Shoals is bordered in three directions by the clear, deep, man-made Bull Shoals Lake.

Yellville is a city and county seat in Marion County, Arkansas, United States. Yellville is located in the Ozark Mountains along the banks of Crooked Creek, and neighbors the small town of Summit to the north. The population was 1,204 at the 2010 Census. The town's original name is preserved in the Shawnee Town Branch, a local creek. The town also holds an annual Turkey Trot Festival.

Bull Shoals Lake is an artificial lake or reservoir in the Ozark Mountains of northern Arkansas and southern Missouri. It has hundreds of miles of lake arms and coves, and common activities include boating, water sports, swimming, and fishing. Nineteen developed parks around the shoreline provide campgrounds, boat launches, swim areas, and marinas.

The White River is a 722-mile (1,162 km) long river that flows through the U.S. states of Arkansas and Missouri. Originating in the Boston Mountains of northwest Arkansas, it flows northwards into southern Missouri, and then turns back into Arkansas, flowing southeast to its mouth at the Mississippi River.

Beaver Lake is a man-made reservoir in the Ozark Mountains of Northwest Arkansas and is formed by a dam across the White River. Beaver Lake has some 487 miles (784 km) of shoreline. With towering limestone bluffs, natural caves, and a wide variety of trees and flowering shrubs, it is a popular tourist destination. Beaver Lake is the source of drinking water in Northwest Arkansas, which is managed, treated and sold by Beaver Water District.

Bull Shoals-White River State Park is a 732-acre (296 ha) Arkansas state park in Baxter and Marion Counties, Arkansas in the United States. Containing one of the nation's best trout-fishing streams, the park entered the system in 1955 after the United States Army Corps of Engineers built Bull Shoals Dam on the White River. The park runs along the shoreline of Bull Shoals Lake and the White River above and below the dam, and contains picnic areas, a marina, boat rentals, interpretive programs, and a visitors' center with gift shop.

Norris Dam is a hydroelectric and flood control structure located on the Clinch River in Anderson County and Campbell County, Tennessee, United States. Its construction in the mid-1930s was the first major project for the Tennessee Valley Authority, which had been created in 1933 to bring economic development to the region and control the rampant flooding that had long plagued the Tennessee Valley. The dam was named in honor of Nebraska Senator George Norris (1861–1944), a longtime supporter of government-owned power in general, and supporter of TVA in particular. The project infrastructure was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.

Oroville Dam is an earthfill embankment dam on the Feather River east of the city of Oroville, California, in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of the Sacramento Valley. At 770 feet (235 m) high, it is the tallest dam in the U.S. and serves mainly for water supply, hydroelectricity generation and flood control. The dam impounds Lake Oroville, the second largest man-made lake in the state of California, capable of storing more than 3.5 million acre feet.

The Saluda Dam or Saluda River Dam, officially the Dreher Shoals Dam, commonly referred to as the Lake Murray Dam, is an earthen embankment dam located approximately 10 miles (15 km) west of Columbia, South Carolina on the Saluda River. Construction on the dam began in 1927 and was completed in 1930. The purpose of the dam is flood control, hydroelectricity, recreation and water supply. At the time of its completion, the Saluda Dam was the world's largest earthen dam, creating the world's largest man-made lake, Lake Murray. In 2005, construction on a 213 ft (65 m). tall roller-compacted concrete (RCC) dam was completed at the toe of the original dam in order to mitigate an earthquake-caused dam failure.

Norfork Dam is a large dam in northern Arkansas southeast of Mountain Home. It dams North Fork River and creates Norfork Lake. The top of the dam supports a 2-lane roadway, part of AR 177.

Gavins Point Dam is a 1.9 mi (3 km) long embankment rolled-earth and chalk-fill dam which spans the Missouri River and impounds Lewis and Clark Lake. The dam joins Cedar County, Nebraska with Yankton County, South Dakota a distance of 811.1 river miles upstream of St. Louis, Missouri, where the river joins the Mississippi River. The dam and hydroelectric power plant were constructed as the Gavins Point Project from 1952 to 1957 by the United States Army Corps of Engineers as part of the Pick-Sloan Plan. The dam is located approximately 4 miles west or upstream of Yankton, South Dakota.

Narrows Dam is a dam located 6 miles north of Murfreesboro, Arkansas, that impounds the water of the Little Missouri River (Arkansas) to create Lake Greeson. Narrows Dam was authorized as a flood control and hydroelectric power project by the Flood Control Act of 1941. The dam is a feature of the comprehensive plan for the Ouachita River Basin. Lake Greeson is operated for hydroelectric power, recreation, and flood control.

Lake Ouachita is a reservoir created by the damming of the Ouachita River by Blakely Mountain Dam.

The North Fork River or the North Fork of White River is a 109-mile-long (175 km) tributary of the White River, into which it flows near Norfork, Arkansas.

Clearwater Lake is a reservoir on the Black River six miles from Piedmont, Missouri. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers uses Clearwater for flood control in the White and lower Mississippi River Basins.

Auburn Dam was a proposed concrete arch dam on the North Fork of the American River east of the town of Auburn, California in the United States, on the border of Placer and El Dorado Counties. Slated to be completed in the 1970s by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, it would have been the tallest concrete dam in California and one of the tallest in the United States, at a height of 680 feet (210 m) and storing 2,300,000 acre feet (2.8 km³) of water. Straddling a gorge downstream of the confluence of the North and Middle Forks of the American River and upstream of Folsom Lake, it would have regulated water flow and provided flood control in the American River basin as part of Reclamation's immense Central Valley Project.

Bull Shoals is located in Arkansas and Missouri in the southern United States. It was originally a swift-moving section of the White River in Arkansas.

Cougar Dam is a 519-foot (158 m) tall rockfill hydroelectric dam in the U.S. state of Oregon. It has a gated concrete spillway and a powerhouse with two turbines totaling 25 megawatts of electric power.

Highway 178 is a designation for two east–west state highways in the Ozark Mountains. One segment begins near Flippin and runs east across Bull Shoals Dam to downtown Mountain Home. A second segment begins in eastern Mountain Home and runs east to Lake Norfork. Both highways are maintained by the Arkansas Department of Transportation (ArDOT).

Richard B. Russell Dam is a concrete-gravity and embankment dam located on the Savannah River at the border of South Carolina and Georgia, creating Richard B. Russell Lake. The dam was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers between 1974 and 1985 for the purposes of flood control, hydroelectricity, recreation, additional stream flow regulation, water supply, and fish and wildlife management. The concrete structure of the dam spans 1,904 feet (580 m) and rises 210 feet (64 m) above the riverbed, housing a hydro-power plant with an installed 600 megawatts (800,000 hp) capacity. The Richard B. Russell Dam is the final large dam completed by the U.S. Army Corps in the Savannah River Basin and lies 30 miles downstream from the Hartwell Dam (1962) and 37 miles (60 km) upstream from the J. Strom Thurmond Dam (1954).

References

↑ http://carma.org/plant/detail/6208
↑ "Bull Shoals Dam". Ozarkhistory.com. Retrieved 2011-06-12.
↑ "Bull Shoals Dam and Lake". The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. 2011-05-18. Retrieved 2011-06-12.

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[1] ttp://carma.org/plant/detail/6208

[2] "Bull Shoals Dam". Ozarkhistory.com. Retrieved 2011-06-12.

[3] "Bull Shoals Dam and Lake". The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. 2011-05-18. Retrieved 2011-06-12.