Then into the clayrock, a trench was cut to a depth of forty to sixty feet in places, or until it wras believed that the excavation was below any possible seams in the formation. In this trench was built a concrete core for the dam. The length of the dam is 4,000 feet and the maximum fill is sixty-five feet. The top oi the dam is twenty feet wide making a maximum width of 350 feet, for the slope is about two and one-half to 1. The embankment contains a half million yards of earth and 150,000 yards of gravel. A tunnel twelve by fifteen feet extends through this tunnel at the rate of 450 cubic feet per second. Nearly seven hundred thousand pounds of steel wrere used in the construction and outlets. There were over eighty thousand sacks of cement used and the total cost was nearly $600,000. At high water line the lake covers 2,230 acres.

For some time after its completion there were extensive springs bubbling up on the lower side of the dam. It was known that these must go down through the rock formations, and there was no danger to the dam. How ever a diamond drill made test holes along the dam, and finally located the under-rock passages. Into these by hydraulic power were forced several carloads of concrete, and ultimately effectively stopped the leads. During this process, the force of the hydralic machinery caused bubbling out in the lake a quarter of a mile from the dam showing the points at which the water had found the subterranean channels. The historian has gone extensively into the details of this, which is only one of the many structures of the tremendous irrigation system that now covers such a wide acreage of Scotts Bluff county.