12 Facts About Shasta Dam

Shasta Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam across the Sacramento River in Northern California in the United States.

However, bonds did not sell due to the onset of the Great Depression and Shasta Dam was transferred to the federal Bureau of Reclamation as a public works project.

The bypassed segment of the railroad from Redding to the Shasta site was re-appropriated as a branch line for construction trains, and was routed through a tunnel beneath the south abutment of the dam.

Shasta Dam built a 2, 000-man mess hall, hospital, recreation center and other amenities at the dam site.

However, some generators originally intended for Shasta ended up in the Grand Coulee Dam in northern Washington because of the enormous demand of electricity from that dam to power aluminum smelters in the Northwest.

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Water storage at the Shasta Dam began in February 1944 when the diversion tunnel was sealed.

When Shasta was completed, it was the second highest dam in the world – surpassed only by Hoover Dam on the Colorado – as well as the highest man-made structure in California.

Shasta Dam serves mainly to provide flood control and carryover water storage for the dry season, contributing greatly to irrigation in the Sacramento Valley and navigation on the Sacramento River, as well as keeping freshwater levels in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta high enough for diversion into the California Aqueduct and Delta-Mendota Canal.

Shasta Dam Lake has arms of the McCloud River, Squaw Creek, Salt Creek, and scores of other smaller streams that feed it.

Downstream Keswick Dam would be raised and its power station retrofitted to accommodate the greater peaking releases from Shasta.

Shasta Dam has had a severe negative effect on populations of Pacific salmon in the Sacramento River watershed ever since its gates were first closed in 1943.

Shasta Dam Lake has a surface of 30, 310 acres at full pool and is surrounded by the Shasta Dam-Trinity National Forest.