Dillon Reservoir - History

History

Dillon Reservoir was originally a naturally formed lake that remained unnoticed until the mid-19th century, when gold was discovered in the area. Upon this discovery, the trade post town of Dillon was formed. The town of Dillon was on the bank of the Blue River and was the most populous area in Summit County. In the mid-20th century, ski resorts were becoming popular, outweighing the mines in the economy of the area; the town lost many residents to them. The lake became a target for expansion by the city of Denver, who deemed it necessary to have a water reserve in the high country.

The dam was constructed in 1961, enlarging the small finger lake into the massive reservoir it is today. The original town of Dillon was left to be flooded over and residents were forced to move. Underneath the west side of the lake, the original town is still visible. The original road leading to the old town, seen easily from both the dam road and Swan Mountain Road, is still used as a boat ramp.

Both Dillon and Frisco have marinas on the reservoir.

Read more about this topic:  Dillon Reservoir

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.
    Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)

    The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.
    Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)

    The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.
    Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)