On this day: The Teton Dam Collapsed

Thursday, 5th June 2014 by

June 5, 1976, was a bleak day for engineering history with the collapse of the Teton Dam. This brand new structure  was built over 3 years at a cost of at least $100million, with construction pushing on despite concerns about the stability of the ground beneath it. The reservoir it created had been filling for the first time over a period of 6 months, and was almost at full capacity, before catastrophic failure saw much of the dam breached, with the subsequent flooding leading to the deaths of 11 people and thousands of farm animals.

Teton Dam

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Ian Brown lives in Ottawa, Canada, and spends his spare time perusing maps to find new routes to ride on his orange bicycle.