Two Mile Dam
New Mexico
When Two Mile Dam rose across the Santa Fe River in eighteen ninety-three, it was a major new dam, and it helped turn an old Spanish town into a modern city.
It was an earthen dam built by tamping the soil so tightly that workers reportedly drove goats across it to pack the fill. The reservoir behind it held many times the water of the little stone dam it replaced, finally giving Santa Fe a dependable supply.
Bigger reservoirs upstream eventually made it unnecessary. The dam was breached in the nineteen nineties, and in two thousand the land was donated to the Nature Conservancy. Today it is the Santa Fe Canyon Preserve, a quiet trail where the old waterworks have given way to cottonwoods and birdsong.
