The
Miami Conservancy District is a river management agency operating in Southwest
OhioOhio is a Midwestern state of the United States. The thirty-fourth largest state by area in the U.S., it is the seventh-most populous with nearly 11.5 million residents...
to control flooding of the
Great Miami RiverThe Great Miami River is a tributary of the Ohio River, approximately long, in southwestern Ohio in the United States.The Great Miami flows through Dayton, Piqua, Troy, and Sidney....
and its tributaries. It was organized in 1914 following the catastrophic
floodA flood is an overflow or accumulation of an expanse of water that submerges land. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide....
of the Great Miami River in March 1913, which hit
Dayton, OhioDayton is a city in and the county seat of Montgomery County, Ohio, United States, in the southwestern part of the state. The population was 166,179 at the 2000 census. The Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 848,153 in the 2000 census. Dayton is the fourth largest...
, particularly hard, known as the
Great Dayton FloodThe Great Dayton Flood of 1913 flooded Dayton, Ohio, and the surrounding area with water from the Great Miami River, causing the greatest natural disaster in Ohio history...
of 1913. Designed by
Arthur Ernest MorganArthur Ernest Morgan was a civil engineer, U.S. administrator, and educator. He was the design engineer for the Miami Conservancy District flood control system and oversaw construction. He served as the president of Antioch College between 1920 and 1936...
, the Miami Conservancy District built
leveeA levee, levée, dike , embankment, floodbank or stopbank is a natural or artificial slope or wall to regulate water levels...
s, straightened the river channel throughout the Miami Valley, and built five
dry damA dry dam is a dam constructed for the purpose of flood control. Dry dams typically contain no gates or turbines, and are intended to allow the channel to flow freely during normal conditions...
s on various tributaries to control flooding.
The
Miami Conservancy District is a river management agency operating in Southwest
OhioOhio is a Midwestern state of the United States. The thirty-fourth largest state by area in the U.S., it is the seventh-most populous with nearly 11.5 million residents...
to control flooding of the
Great Miami RiverThe Great Miami River is a tributary of the Ohio River, approximately long, in southwestern Ohio in the United States.The Great Miami flows through Dayton, Piqua, Troy, and Sidney....
and its tributaries. It was organized in 1914 following the catastrophic
floodA flood is an overflow or accumulation of an expanse of water that submerges land. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide....
of the Great Miami River in March 1913, which hit
Dayton, OhioDayton is a city in and the county seat of Montgomery County, Ohio, United States, in the southwestern part of the state. The population was 166,179 at the 2000 census. The Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 848,153 in the 2000 census. Dayton is the fourth largest...
, particularly hard, known as the
Great Dayton FloodThe Great Dayton Flood of 1913 flooded Dayton, Ohio, and the surrounding area with water from the Great Miami River, causing the greatest natural disaster in Ohio history...
of 1913. Designed by
Arthur Ernest MorganArthur Ernest Morgan was a civil engineer, U.S. administrator, and educator. He was the design engineer for the Miami Conservancy District flood control system and oversaw construction. He served as the president of Antioch College between 1920 and 1936...
, the Miami Conservancy District built
leveeA levee, levée, dike , embankment, floodbank or stopbank is a natural or artificial slope or wall to regulate water levels...
s, straightened the river channel throughout the Miami Valley, and built five
dry damA dry dam is a dam constructed for the purpose of flood control. Dry dams typically contain no gates or turbines, and are intended to allow the channel to flow freely during normal conditions...
s on various tributaries to control flooding. The district and its projects are unusual in that they were funded almost entirely by local tax initiatives, unlike similar projects elsewhere which were funded by the
federal governmentThe federal government of the United States is the central government entity established by the United States Constitution, which shares sovereignty over the United States with the governments of the individual U.S. states. The federal government has three branches: the legislative, executive, and...
and coordinated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Historical perspective
The 1913 flood has been ascribed in part to the 1912 eruption of
Mount KatmaiMount Katmai is a large stratovolcano on the Alaska Peninsula in southern Alaska, located within Katmai National Park and Preserve. It is about in diameter with a central lake-filled caldera about 3 by 2 mi in area, formed during the Novarupta eruption of 1912. The caldera rim reaches a maximum...
and its daughter volcano Novarupta in Alaska. In one of the greatest recorded volcanic events, Novarupta emitted enough fine ash into the atmospheric to block sunlight and cool the climate of the Northern Hemisphere that winter.
The success of the Miami Conservancy District helped to inspire the development of the much larger
Tennessee Valley AuthorityThe Tennessee Valley Authority is a federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter in May 1933 to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development in the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly impacted...
during the
Great DepressionThe Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
.
Dams
The district manages five
dry damA dry dam is a dam constructed for the purpose of flood control. Dry dams typically contain no gates or turbines, and are intended to allow the channel to flow freely during normal conditions...
s. They are
hydraulic fillA hydraulic fill is an embankment or other fill in which the materials are deposited in place by a flowing stream of water, with the deposition being selective...
dams constructed from 1919 to 1921 using
fill trestleA fill trestle is a bridge that is built to provide a scaffolding for the construction of a fill or an earthen dam. Typically, the trestle is built across the valley and a railroad track is laid across the trestle. Specially designed side-dumping railroad cars filled with earth or gravel are pushed...
s.
Englewood Dam
Located near
Englewood, OhioEnglewood, a northern suburb of Dayton, is a city in Montgomery County, Ohio, United States. The population was 12,235 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area.-History:...
, Englewood dam is the largest of the
dams maintained by the district. It regulates the flow of the
Stillwater RiverThe Stillwater River is a tributary of the Great Miami River, approximately 65 mi long in western Ohio in the United States. Via the Great Miami and Ohio Rivers, it is part of the Mississippi River watershed....
into the
Great Miami RiverThe Great Miami River is a tributary of the Ohio River, approximately long, in southwestern Ohio in the United States.The Great Miami flows through Dayton, Piqua, Troy, and Sidney....
. It consists of 3.5 million cubic yards (2.7
million m³) of earth, is 110 feet (34 m) high and stretches
4,716 feet (1,437 m). U.S. Route 40 crosses the top of the dam. The dam can contain 209,000