Harlan County Lake

On May 31, 1935, a storm dropped as much as 24 inches of rain on the Republican's watershed, and the river came down the valley running bluff to bluff. The National Weather Service lists it as the worst flood in Nebraska's history. It killed more than ninety people, did more than $26 million in damage and wiped out Republican City. The answer, in time, was a dam. The Army Corps of Engineers built Harlan County Dam across the valley for flood control and irrigation, and Republican City was rebuilt in 1952 about two miles north, on the higher ground above the new lake.

At normal pool the lake covers about 13,250 acres with some 75 miles of shoreline, the second largest body of water in the state. Full, it can hold more than 840,000 acre-feet, and more than half of that is reserved for flood control. Below the dam, Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado divide the river's water under the Republican River Compact, and the Corps works with Kansas on releases.

The Corps runs the lake and the land around it. The Hunter Cove and Methodist Cove campgrounds are open May through September, Gremlin Cove and the North and South Outlet areas mid-May to mid-September, and Cedar Point is day use only. People come for walleye, white bass, wipers, catfish and crappie, for ice fishing in winter and for hunting in the river bottoms. In dry summers low water has closed boat ramps, and the Corps posts closures on its lake page.