The Rampart Dam or Rampart Canyon Dam was a project proposed in 1954 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dam the Yukon River in Alaska for hydroelectric power. The project was planned for Rampart Canyon (also known as Rampart Gorge) just southwest of the village of Rampart, Alaska, about west-northwest of Fairbanks.
The resulting dam would have created a lake roughly the size of Lake Erie, making it the largest human-made reservoir in the world. The plan for the dam itself called for a concrete structure high with a top length of about . The proposed power facilities would have consistently generated between 3.5 and 5.0 gigawatts of electricity, based on the flow of the river as it differs between winter and summer.
Though supported by many politicians and businesses in Alaska, the project was canceled after objections were raised. Native Alaskans in the area protested the threatened loss of nine villages that would be flooded by the dam. Conservation groups abhorred the threatened flooding of the Yukon Flats, a large area of wetlands that provides a critical breeding ground for millions of waterfowl. Fiscal conservatives opposed the dam on the grounds of its large cost and limited benefit to Americans outside Alaska.
Because of these objections, United States Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall formally opposed construction of the dam in 1967, and the project was shelved. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers nevertheless completed its engineering study of the project in 1971, and the final report was released to the public in 1979. In 1980, U.S. President Jimmy Carter created the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Sanctuary, which formally protected the area from development and disallowed any similar project.
Site
From its headwaters in the Coast Mountains, the Yukon River flows northwest, across the Yukon–Alaska border, until it intersects the Porcupine River at the settlement of Fort Yukon. At that point, the river turns west and southwest, flowing through the Yukon Flats, a low-lying wetland area containing thousands of ponds, streams, and other small bodies of water. As the river flows southwest, it intersects the Tanana and Koyukuk rivers before looping south, then north into Norton Sound in the Bering Sea.U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Alaska District. Data on Rampart Canyon Project Studies. Anchorage, Alaska. May 27, 1961. p. 3Corps of Engineers, p. A-1
During the river's flow through eastern Alaska, and before it intersects the Tanana River, the Yukon flows through the Central Plateau region of Alaska. During the millions of years of its flow, it has cut through ridges, forming canyons in some places near its juncture with the Tanana.Corps of Engineers, p. 199. One of the deepest of these canyons is known as Rampart Gorge, or Rampart Canyon. The gorge is located downstream of the village of Rampart, upstream of the village of Tanana, and immediately downstream from the mouth of Texas Creek. It is named for the Ramparts of the Yukon, as the early gold miners called the rock formations which created the gorge. The village of Rampart was named for the Ramparts.Donald Orth, Dictionary of Alaska Place Names. retrieved April 30, 2021. U.S. Geological Survey, "Feature Detail Report for: Rampart Gorge", Geographic Names Information System. Retrieved January 19, 2009.
At the proposed dam site, the river is wide and has an elevation of above sea level. On the south bank, the land rises sharply to a ridge high. North of the river, the bank rises to before ascending gradually northwest to the Ray Mountains. Below the surface of the ground are patches of permafrost, and the area is seismically active.Corps of Engineers, p. 200 An earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter Scale struck the region in 1968,Bowling, Sue Ann. "Earthquake Forecasting and the Mogi Doughnut" , Alaska Geophysical Institute. March 28, 1988. Retrieved February 1, 2009. and a 5.0 earthquake hit the area in 2003.U.S. Geological Survey. "Rampart, Alaska Earthquake" , USGS.gov. April 2, 2003. Retrieved February 1, 2009. Geologically, igneous rock predominates, and quartz can be seen in places.Corps of Engineers, pp. 198–201
Hydrologically, the portion of the river upstream of the proposed dam drains about . On average, the Yukon flows at a rate of through the canyon, with the fastest flow occurring in the later part of May and the first part of June, and the slowest flow occurring after the river has frozen over. This occurs no later than early November and lasts until mid April.U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Alaska District. Data on Rampart Canyon Project Studies. Anchorage, Alaska. May 27, 1961. p. 4
Surveying In 1944 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers considered building a bridge across Rampart Gorge as part of a project to extend the Alaska Railroad from Fairbanks to Nome to facilitate lend-Lease shipments to the Soviet Union during World War II. The war ended before the project got beyond the planning stages, and the bridge idea was scrapped.
As early as 1948, U.S. Government officials eyed the Rampart site for its hydroelectric potential. A report by Joseph Morgan, chief of the Alaska Investigations Office for the United States Bureau of Reclamation declared, "The demand for electric power supply in the [Alaska] Territory is expanding so rapidly that new installations of hydroelectric power plants are needed."Morgan, p. 12. Morgan's report listed 72 potential hydroelectric power sites in Alaska, but the Rampart site was one of the few to have a potential capacity of more than 200,000 kilowatts.Morgan, p. 14.
In his report, Morgan addresses the potential of the site:Morgan, p. 177.
Planning The first serious consideration of a dam project was made in a 1954 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers assessment of the resources of the Yukon and Kuskokwim River basin.Special to The New York Times. "Alaskans elated by report on dam", The New York Times. February 28, 1965, p. 54. Engineers considered Rampart Canyon to be a prime site for a hydroelectric dam.Staff report. Alaska Construction News, Fall 1959. "Rampart Dam has great potential". p. 44 In April 1959, four months after President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Alaska's declaration of statehood, junior U.S. Senator from Alaska Ernest Gruening passed a resolution calling for the Corps of Engineers to begin an official study of the project,Special to The New York Times. "Alaska hopeful on Yukon power", The New York Times. June 18, 1961, p. 57. and $49,000 was allocated by the federal government for that purpose.Gruening, Ernest. Many Battles: The Autobiography of Ernest Gruening. New York, Liveright. p. 496. Preliminary estimates said the project would cost $900 million (1959 dollars) and generate 4.7 million kilowatts of electricity. At the time, the largest hydroelectric project in Alaska was the Eklutna Dam, which produced just 32,000 kilowatts.Staff Report. Alaska Construction & Oil, August 1984. "The dam that never was ..." Page 30.
The project competed with the smaller-scale Susitna Hydroelectric Project proposed by the Federal Bureau of Reclamation for south-central Alaska, but thanks to Gruening's support and that of other backers, the Rampart project took precedence. The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1960 passed by the U.S. Congress in that year included a $2 million appropriation to conduct a full four-year feasibility study of the project, including its economic feasibility and the impact it would have on fish and wildlife.Coates, p. 136 In March 1961, a team of engineers from the Corps' Alaska district began drilling operations at the site to determine bedrock depth and gather other data.U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Alaska District. Data on Rampart Canyon Project Studies. Anchorage, Alaska. May 27, 1961. p. 11 To examine the economic feasibility of the dam, the Corps of Engineers created the Rampart Economic Advisory Board (REAB) in February 1961. The REAB hired David E. Lilienthal's Development and Resources Corporation in April to complete the study, and a team of Corps engineers and REAB members arrived in the state in June to study the Rampart project first-hand. At that time, Sen. Gruening estimated that the project would cost roughly $1.2 billion to complete.
As investigation and planning work continued, the Corps of Engineers reached an agreement with the Department of the Interior, the parent agency of the Bureau of Reclamation, in March 1962. The agreement stated the Corps would have responsibility for design and construction of the project, while the Interior Department would be responsible for running and maintaining the dam after completion. In the planning stages, the Interior Department also would be responsible for examining the economic feasibility of the project and its effect upon natural resources.Stahr, Edward V. and Udall, Stewart. "Memorandum of agreement", U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. March 14, 1962. This agreement negated much of the work of the REAB to that point,Coates, p. 141 as the Interior Department promptly began its own three-year study of the dam's economic feasibility and environmental impact. The DRC report, though trumped by the Interior Department's new precedence in such matters, nevertheless released a report in April 1962, stating that the project was economically feasible and would attract new industries to Alaska.Development and Resources Corporation. The Market for Rampart Power, Yukon River, Alaska. Government Publishing Office, Washington, D.C. April 23, 1962. Meanwhile, the Corps of Engineers continued engineering studies. One of these was an investigation by the Corps of Engineers Nuclear Cratering Group into the potential for cost reductions through the use of nuclear explosives to quarry aggregate for the project, and to excavate spillways. Physicist Edward Teller proposed nuclear explosives for the excavation of a diversion channel in 1963.
The interim Corps of Engineers report was released in December 1963, and reported that building the dam was feasible from an engineering standpoint. President John F. Kennedy supported the project, and lobbied for an appropriation of $197,000 (1963 dollars) to continue study of the project. The needed money was included in a House appropriations bill, and studies continued.Davies, Lawrence E. "Alaskans press for a hydroelectric dam on Yukon", The New York Times. December 1, 1963, p. 174. The initial report included some figures about the size of the project. The dam would be a concrete structure high and about long. It would raise the height of the Yukon River from above sea level to approximately . The resulting reservoir would be long, wide, and have a surface area greater than that of Lake Erie. The power facilities for the project would produce a maximum of 5 gigawatts of electricity.Davies, Lawrence E. "Controversy rages over plans for big Alaska power project", The New York Times. August 22, 1964, p. 25. In total, the proposed reservoir was anticipated to cover an area of and have a capacity of .Staff report. "Hydroelectric power for Alaska", The Illinois Technograph. February 1962. Volume 76, No. 5.
In April 1964, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) released its report on the project. Though only a part of the larger Department of the Interior study, the FWS report came down strongly opposed to the dam on the grounds that it would irrevocably destroy the Yukon Flats, a critical waterfowl breeding ground.Coates, p. 148 In January 1965, the Bureau of Land Management set aside almost of land for construction of the dam and reservoir.U.S. Department of the Interior. "Rampart Canyon power site lands in Alaska classified", U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service press release. January 12, 1965. It was a typical process that had been done for other dam projects several times before, but the amount of land to be set aside generated several months of hearings before the decision.Coates, p. 147