The Teton Dam Disaster of 1976

On the morning of June fifth, nineteen seventy six, a brand new federal dam on the Teton River, about forty miles northwest of here, was filling for the first time. Workers noticed clear water seeping from the rock near the right side of the earthen dam. Within hours the seepage turned muddy, a sinkhole opened on the downstream face, and just before noon the crest gave way.

The reservoir emptied in a rush, releasing water at a peak of more than two million cubic feet per second. The flood swept downstream toward Wilford, Sugar City, and Rexburg. Logs torn from a lumber yard battered buildings, and spilled gasoline ignited on the water.

Roughly eighty percent of the structures in the Rexburg area were damaged, and thousands were left homeless. Eleven people died, along with an estimated sixteen thousand head of livestock, and damage ran into the billions of dollars. Investigators traced the failure to water piping through cracks in the dam's silty core against the rock walls of the canyon.

The Bureau of Reclamation never rebuilt it. The empty notch in the canyon rim still marks where the Teton Dam stood for only a matter of months.