Detroit Lake
reservoir in Oregon, United States
Detroit Lake is a reservoir impounded by the Detroit Dam on the North Santiam River 46 miles (74 km) southeast of Salem, Oregon, United States.
The lake is adjacent to Oregon Route 22 near the city of Detroit.
This mesotrophic lake stores water for use by the city of Salem and other nearby communities.
History
Detroit Lake is situated over a historical road bed of the former Oregon Pacific Railroad. This route was built by Colonel T. Egenton Hogg as a proposed transcontinental railroad. Because of a lack of funding, the line terminated in Idanha, southeast of the lake. Idanha had rail service until the 1950s, when the track was removed for installation of the Detroit and Big Cliff reservoirs. Detroit Lake was created in 1953 after the completion of the dam. Part of the Willamette Valley Projects, the lake was intended primarily for flood control and power generation but has become one of the major recreation resources in western Oregon.
Details
The reservoir has a capacity of 455,000 acre-feet (561,000,000 m3) of water when full and 281,600 acre-feet (347,300,000 m3) in the summer when drawn down.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Detroit Lake” is reservoir in Oregon, United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Detroit, Lake and reservoir, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1201542. VIAF identifies the subject as 315527278. Authority coordinates are 44.695, -122.207. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1953.
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This entry incorporates text from “Detroit Lake” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.