Red Bluff Dam

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just the voice carrying the tale down the road. Now, three miles northeast of where you're sitting, out there on the Pecos River, eight miles south of the Texas-New Mexico state line, something big was built. Real big.

We're talking about Red Bluff Dam. Construction ran from 1934 all the way through 1936, and the purpose was twofold: irrigation and electrical power. Two good reasons to move a whole lot of dirt and pour a whole lot of concrete in West Texas.

And move it they did. The main embankment stretches nine thousand, two hundred and thirty feet long. Let that settle in a moment.

That's a wall of earth and structure rising up to a hundred and five feet above the stream bed at its highest point, with a top width of twenty-five feet. This isn't a little stock tank, folks. This is a serious piece of engineering sitting right out there in the Chihuahuan desert.

When the dam was finished, the world waited on the Pecos. Then came June of 1937, when floods first filled that reservoir, and the lake behind the dam came to life. That lake now covers eleven thousand, seven hundred acres, spreading itself across parts of Reeves and Loving counties here in Texas, and reaching up into Eddy County, New Mexico.

One lake, three counties, two states. Its capacity sits at three hundred and ten thousand acre feet of water. And all that water does real work.

It irrigates about a hundred and forty thousand acres of land, stretching for a hundred miles along the Pecos River. A hundred miles of farmland that would otherwise be thirsty caliche and dust. That's what Red Bluff Dam means out here.

Not just a structure, but a lifeline drawn in water, a hundred miles long.

What the marker says

(Three miles northeast) Constructed for irrigation and electrical power purposes during 1934-36, dam is located on Pecos River 8 miles south of Texas-New Mexico state line. It impounds an 11,700-acre lake occupying parts of Reeves and Loving counties, Tex., and Eddy County, N. M. Floods first filled the reservoir in June 1937. Capacity is 310,000 acre feet of water. Main embankment -- 9,230 feet long -- rises 105 feet above stream bed at highest point. Dam has top width of 25 feet. These waters irrigate about 140,000 acres, which extend for 100 miles along the Pecos River. (1972)