The Rampart Dam or Rampart Canyon Dam was a project proposed in 1954 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dam the Yukon River in Alaska for hydroelectric power. The resulting dam would have created a lake roughly the size of Lake Erie, making it the largest man-made reservoir in the world. Though supported by many politicians and businesses in Alaska, the project was canceled after objections were raised.
About Rampart Dam in brief
The Rampart Dam or Rampart Canyon Dam was a project proposed in 1954 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dam the Yukon River in Alaska for hydroelectric power. The resulting dam would have created a lake roughly the size of Lake Erie, making it the largest man-made reservoir in the world. Though supported by many politicians and businesses in Alaska, the project was canceled after objections were raised. Native Alaskans in the area protested the threatened loss of nine villages that would be flooded by the dam. Fiscal conservatives opposed the dam on the grounds of its large cost and limited benefit to Americans outside Alaska. The project got beyond the planning stages before the war ended, and the idea was scrapped. The Yukon Flats National Wildlife Sanctuary formally protected the area from development and disallowed any similar project. The gorge is named for the nearby village of Rampart, Alaska, a former gold-mining community now home to subsistence fishermen. It is located 31 miles downstream of the village and 36 miles upstream from the village of Tanana. The U. S. Bureau of Reclamation listed 72 potential hydroelectric sites in Alaska as potential power plants in a report in 1948. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter created the YukON FlatsNational Wildlife Sanctuary, which formalized the protection of the area in 1980. The area is seismically active. An earthquake measuring 6. 8 on the Richter Scale struck the region in 1968, and a 5. 0 earthquake hit the area in 2003.
Hydrologically, the portion of the river upstream of the proposed dam drains about 200,000 square miles. The river is 1,300 feet wide and has an elevation of 183 feet above sea level. On average, the river flows at a rate of 118,000 cubic feet per second through the canyon, with the fastest flow occurring in the later part of May and the first part of June. The slowest flow occurring after the river has frozen over occurs no later than November and lasts until mid April. The proposed power facilities would have consistently generated between 3. 5 and 5 gigawatts of electricity, based on the flow of the River as it differs between winter and summer. In 1944, the Army Corps. of Engineers considered building a bridge across Rampart Gorge as part of a project to extend the Alaska Railroad from Fairbanks to Nome to facilitate Lend-Lease shipments to the Soviet Union during World War II. A report by Joseph Morgan, chief of the Bureau of Investigations for the Alaska Office of the Reclamation, declared that Alaska’s new hydroelectric installations are so rapidly expanding that new power plants are needed in Alaska. In 1948, officials eyed the Rampart hydroelectric site for its potential as a hydroelectric potential for its 72 hydroelectric plants. The site is located just 31 miles southwest of the Village of Ramparts and about 105 miles west-northwest of Fairbanks, Alaska. It has a total elevation of 1,500 feet.
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This page is based on the article Rampart Dam published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 01, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
