Qualla: The Lake They Almost Nuked

The Lake They Almost Nuked: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District, Public domain. In the late 1960s, someone in the federal government looked at a stretch of the Chowchilla River in the Sierra Nevada foothills and proposed building a dam there with a nuclear explosion. A 10-kiloton bomb, roughly two-thirds the yield of the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima, would blast two million cubic yards of aggregate loose for construction material. The proposal, filed under the bureaucratically cheerful name Project Travois, was part of the Atomic Energy Commission's Project Plowshare program, which sought peaceful uses for nuclear weapons. The plan was abandoned. Buchanan Dam was built the old-fashioned way, and the reservoir it created was named for a local judge who had spent his career worrying about water, not fallout.

Image: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District | Public domain

The Lake They Almost Nuked: Plowshares into Dam Fill

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nzeemin, CC BY-SA 3.0. Project Plowshare ran from 1961 to 1973, exploring whether nuclear explosions could dig canals, create harbors, and mine minerals more cheaply than conventional methods. Dozens of proposals were generated. Project Travois envisioned a 10-kiloton nuclear detonation at the Buchanan...

Image: Nzeemin | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Lake They Almost Nuked: A Judge's Legacy in Earth and Water

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carlos Lazo (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District), Public domain. The dam that conventional construction produced is no small feat. Buchanan Dam rises 218 feet above the Chowchilla River, stretching 1,746 feet at its crest. It impounds up to 150,000 acre-feet of water, enough to submerge 150,000 football fields under a foot of water. The U.S. A...

Image: Carlos Lazo (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District) | Public domain

The Lake They Almost Nuked: Foothill Quiet

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District, Public domain. Eastman Lake occupies a fold in the Sierra Nevada foothills where the terrain transitions from the flat agricultural grid of the San Joaquin Valley to the rolling, oak-studded grasslands that rise toward Yosemite. The reservoir sits primarily in Madera County, though a small slic...

Image: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District | Public domain

The Lake They Almost Nuked: Water Politics in a Dry State

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District, Public domain. Every reservoir in California is a political statement. Buchanan Dam and Eastman Lake sit within the labyrinth of water infrastructure that keeps the Central Valley productive, a system that channels Sierra snowmelt through dams, canals, and irrigation districts to feed one of th...

Image: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District | Public domain