Lake McConaughy and Kingsley Dam

Lake McConaughy is the largest reservoir in Nebraska, 22 miles long on the North Platte above Ogallala, and it was built for farms well over a hundred miles downstream. The idea belonged to C. W. McConaughy, a Holdrege grain merchant and mayor, who began arguing in 1913 for putting Platte River water on south-central Nebraska farmland in spring and fall so the soil would carry the crops through summer. George P. Kingsley, a Minden banker, heard him speak and worked for the project until his death in 1929.

The Legislature created the Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District on July 1, 1933, and the Tri-County project won federal approval in 1935. Private power companies fought it, and a lawsuit kept the district from sending water outside the Platte basin, taking away almost two-thirds of the planned acreage. The district moved its storage to a larger site north of Ogallala, where it could sell more electricity. Kingsley Dam went up from 1936 to 1941 on a PWA grant and a federal loan, loess and water pumped into a hydraulic fill 162 feet high and more than three miles long, faced with about 180,000 Wyoming limestone jackstones. McConaughy died on April 15, 1941, months before the dedication.

The lake irrigates about 109,000 acres through more than 500 miles of canals, and a hydro plant at the dam has run since 1984. The visitor center, a quarter mile south of the dam on Highway 61, has aquariums and films of the dam being built.