East of Bassano, a concrete spillway and a 7,000 foot earthen embankment have held back the Bow River since 1914, and they still do the job they were built for.
Key facts
- The Eastern Irrigation District says work on the Bassano Dam started in September 1910 and finished in spring 1914, with the official opening on May 2, 1914.
- The Eastern Irrigation District puts the spillway at 720 feet across the riverbed, with a 7,000 foot earthen embankment beside it.
- The dam still irrigates more than 279,000 acres, plus 26,000 acres of wetland habitat.
- The Eastern Irrigation District has managed it since 1935, when it took over from the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Poured over four years
Crews started pouring concrete in September 1910 and finished in the spring of 1914. The spillway segment alone took 42,000 cubic metres of concrete, which the Eastern Irrigation District compares to 1,400 basements. The spillway alone stretches 720 feet across the riverbed, with an earthen embankment running another 7,000 feet alongside it.
Still irrigating 279,000 acres today
That single structure still irrigates more than 279,000 acres of farmland today, along with another 26,000 acres of wetland habitat. The Eastern Irrigation District has managed the dam and its canal system since 1935, when it took over from the Canadian Pacific Railway, the company that built the whole irrigation network in the first place to make the surrounding land sellable to settlers.
A hundred and twelve years after the concrete set, the Bassano Dam still feeds the crops of the irrigation district.
The dam went from first pour to opening in under four years
Some infrastructure gets studied for a decade and never breaks ground. Bassano went from first pour in September 1910 to an official opening on May 2, 1914.
Alberta’s engineering history rarely gets the attention its politics does. A structure that has irrigated the same stretch of southern Alberta since before the province had paved highways deserves to be more than a name on a map. The spillway still crosses the Bow River east of Bassano, 720 feet of concrete from bank to bank.
