Rifle Gap Dam
dam in Garfield County, Colorado
Rifle Gap Dam (National ID # CO01692) is a dam in Garfield County, Colorado, about five and a half miles north of Rifle.
The earthen dam was constructed between 1964 and 1967 by the United States Bureau of Reclamation, with a height of 157 feet (48 m) and a length of 1,450 feet (440 m) feet at its crest. It impounds East Rifle Creek and West Rifle Creek about 400 feet (120 m) feet upstream from their previous point of confluence. The dam was built for irrigation water storage, is owned by the Bureau, and is operated by the local Silt Water Conservancy District.
The reservoir it creates, Rifle Gap Reservoir, has a water surface of 359 acres (145 hectares) and a maximum capacity of 12,168 acre-feet (15,009,000 cubic metres). Recreation includes scuba diving in its clear water, fishing (for rainbow and German brown trout, walleye, perch, and smallmouth and largemouth bass, etc.), wildlife watching, boating, year-round camping, and hiking.
The public source identifies “Rifle Gap Dam” as dam in Garfield County, Colorado. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Rifle, Garfield and County.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7333255. Authority coordinates are 39.628, -107.760. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1964 and 1967.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rifle Gap Dam” 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.