Milner Dam
Near Twin Falls, Idaho
Fourteen miles upstream from Twin Falls, the Snake River meets Milner Dam, an earthen structure completed in nineteen oh five that set the entire Magic Valley in motion. At more than two thousand feet long, it was one of the longest diversion dams in the American West when it was built. Water backed behind the dam feeds a canal system that once stretched eighty-four miles and watered over two hundred thousand acres of land that had been pure sagebrush desert the decade before.
The dam was the centerpiece of the Carey Act project that developer Ira Perrine sold to investors, to the state of Idaho, and to thousands of settlers who bought lots in the new town of Twin Falls before the dam even finished. More than a century later, Milner still diverts the Snake, still feeds the canals, and the river below the dam remains largely free of the salmon that once ran here in enormous numbers before the diversion cut off their passage.
