Paradise Dam was a proposed dam on the

Clark Fork River The Clark Fork, or the Clark Fork of the Columbia River, is a river in the U.S. states of Montana and Idaho, approximately long. It is named after William Clark of the 1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition. The largest river by volume in Montana, it ...

Montana Montana ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota to the east, South Dakota to the southeast, Wyoming to the south, an ...

. It was proposed by the

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is the military engineering branch of the United States Army. A direct reporting unit (DRU), it has three primary mission areas: Engineer Regiment, military construction, and civil wor ...

as an alternative to the construction of Glacier View Dam on the western boundary of Glacier National Park, to capture the flow of the

Flathead River The Flathead River (, , ), in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Montana, originates in the Canadian Rockies to the north of Glacier National Park and flows southwest into Flathead Lake, then after a journey of , empties into the Cla ...

. The earth embankment dam was planned to be about high, impounding a reservoir of . While it was viewed as a desirable power generation and water storage project by the Corps of Engineers, it was opposed by those it would displace from towns and productive agricultural lands, and was never built.

Proposal

The dam was proposed in the 1940s as an alternative to the controversial Glacier View Dam, which was strenuously opposed by the

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an List of federal agencies in the United States, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government, within the US Department of the Interior. The service manages all List ...

and conservation organizations as an intrusion into national park lands. It would have inundated of already-irrigated and farmed lands, with the reservoir extending up the Clark Fork and up the Flathead to the base of

SKQ Dam The Seli’š Ksanka Qlispe’ Dam, also known as SKQ Dam, (formerly known as the Kerr Dam) is a concrete gravity-arch dam located at river mile 72 of the Flathead River (116 river kilometer). Built in 1938, it raises the level and increases the ...

. The project required the relocation of roads, rail lines and houses and businesses in several communities. The cost in 1950 was estimated at $265,569,000. Alternative sites at The Plains, five miles downstream from

Plains, Montana Plains ( Salish: ncc̓kʷi) is a town in Sanders County, Montana, United States. The population was 1,106 at the 2020 census. It was founded as ''Horse Plains'' and sometimes called ''Wild Horse Plains'', as the local Native Americans would wi ...

, and the Weeks site, three miles downstream from the Plains site, were examined but rejected on grounds of poor foundation conditions. Three other sites, Knowles (river mile 4), Perma (river mile 11) and Oxbow (river mile 41) were rejected on similar grounds.Corps of Engineers 1950 Columbia River and Tributaries Report, p. 156

Reception

While the project was supported by some local organizations, local opposition was intense, focusing on displacement of productive agriculture and populations and intrusion on Indian rights. Land replacement compensation for the

National Bison Range The CSKT Bison Range (BR) is a nature reserve on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana established for the conservation of American bison. Formerly called the National Bison Range, the size of the bison herd at the BR is 350 adult bi ...

was considered likely. As a result, planning was not pursued and the project remained an alternative to other project farther upstream. In the event, none of the proposed reservoirs in the area were built, apart from

Hungry Horse Reservoir Hungry Horse Dam is an arch dam in the Western United States, on the South Fork Flathead River in the Rocky Mountains of northwest Montana. It is located in Flathead National Forest in Flathead County, about south of the west entrance to Glaci ...

Description

The complex arrangement placed a earth embankment across the main channel of the river, diverting the flow to the west, where a straight intake dam structure extending parallel to the riverbed on the riverbank would receive water for the powerplant. A separate curved spillway dam would be located downstream from the intake dam. At the end of the diverted channel an embankment saddle dam would seal the channel. The powerplant was planned to have an initial capacity of 576 MW with eight 72MW units, expandable to 1000 MW with six more generators in the future.Corps of Engineers 1950 Columbia River and Tributaries Report, Paradise Dam schematic plan

References

{{authority control United States Army Corps of Engineers proposed dams Buildings and structures in Sanders County, Montana