Lockington Dam: Engineering the End of Floods

The Lockington Dam, completed in nineteen nineteen, is one of five dry dams built by the Miami Conservancy District to protect the Great Miami River valley from catastrophic flooding. It stands about sixty-nine feet high and more than six thousand four hundred feet long, with a base four hundred fifteen feet wide. The project was a direct response to the Great Dayton Flood of March nineteen thirteen, which killed nearly four hundred people and caused over one hundred million dollars in damage across the Miami Valley.

Rather than building traditional reservoirs, the Miami Conservancy chose retarding basins: enormous earthen dams with no gates, designed to temporarily hold floodwater after major storms and release it slowly downstream. The system was engineering on an unprecedented scale for its era. Since completion, it has held back floodwaters dozens of times without a single loss of life.

The Lockington basin sits along Loramie Creek, one of the quieter tributaries of the Great Miami, waiting for the next flood that may never come.