Overview

The Belle Fourche Dam is a dam on Owl Creek in Butte County, South Dakota, approximately eight miles east of Belle Fourche, South Dakota. Its construction created the Belle Fourche Reservoir, the Belle Fourche National Wildlife Refuge, and the Rocky Point Recreation Area.

The reservoir has approximately eight thousand acres of water surface, 6,700 acres of land, and 58 miles of shoreline. It's stocked with walleye, catfish, and white bass. Average depth is twenty-five feet, but it has areas as deep as sixty feet at full capacity. Common activities at Belle Fourche Reservoir include boating, fishing, ice fishing, ice skating, camping, cooking out, and water skiing.

At its 1911 completion by the Bureau of Reclamation, Belle Fourche Dam was the largest earthen dam in the world. The dam is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1989 it was listed among the approximately 250 Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks.

General