Qualla: New Exchequer Dam: The Wall That Buried a Town

New Exchequer Dam: The Wall That Buried a Town: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shannon1, CC BY-SA 4.0. On June 23, 1926, President Calvin Coolidge pressed a telegraph key from the White House, and turbines began spinning at a hydroelectric plant on the Merced River in central California. The old Exchequer Dam -- a 326-foot concrete arch -- had just entered service, creating a 14-mile lake and powering a 31-megawatt generating station. Forty years later, that dam would be swallowed whole. The New Exchequer Dam, completed in 1967, rose 490 feet above its foundations (479 feet above the river), encasing its predecessor as structural fill and flooding the town of Exchequer beneath a reservoir nearly four times larger. The town that gave the dam its name now exists only as a word on a map and a ghost visible in drought years, when falling water levels briefly expose the old arch like a fossil emerging from stone.

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Image: Shannon1 | CC BY-SA 4.0

New Exchequer Dam: The Wall That Buried a Town: A Dam Inside a Dam

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bob n' Renee, CC BY 2.0. The engineering is remarkable for what it consumed. When farmers in the Merced River valley outgrew the old Exchequer Dam's 281,000 acre-foot capacity by the 1950s, the Merced Irrigation District proposed something audacious: rather than demolish the existing dam, they would buil...

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Image: Bob n' Renee | CC BY 2.0

New Exchequer Dam: The Wall That Buried a Town: Leaks and Lessons

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bob n' Renee, CC BY 2.0. Pioneering engineering carries pioneering risks. New Exchequer was among the first high concrete-faced rock-fill dams ever built, and the untested design leaked -- sometimes dramatically, with seepage reaching 100 cubic feet per second. For nearly two decades the Merced Irrigatio...

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Image: Bob n' Renee | CC BY 2.0

New Exchequer Dam: The Wall That Buried a Town: Feast and Famine

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bob n' Renee, CC BY 2.0. California's water story is one of extremes, and Lake McClure embodies both ends. The reservoir has never overflowed since the dam's completion, a fact opponents cite when the irrigation district proposes raising the spillway gates to add 70,000 acre-feet of storage. That proposa...

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Image: Bob n' Renee | CC BY 2.0

New Exchequer Dam: The Wall That Buried a Town: The Lake Above the Valley

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bob n' Renee, CC BY 2.0. Today Lake McClure serves double duty as infrastructure and recreation. Named for Wilbur F. McClure, California's State Engineer during the original dam's construction, the reservoir stretches through the Sierra Nevada foothills with 515 campsites, four boat ramps, and two marina...

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Image: Bob n' Renee | CC BY 2.0