Navajo Dam Map
Navajo Dam is an earthen dam on the San Juan River, a tributary of the Colorado River, in northwestern New Mexico in the United States. The dam and its reservoir, Navajo Lake, lie in the arid western foothills of the Rocky Mountains about 30 miles (48 km) east of Farmington.
This dam was built as part of the Colorado River Storage Project, a massive system of dams and reservoirs across the upper Colorado River Basin, by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Although the first studies for a dam on the San Juan were made as early as 1904, it was not considered seriously until the 1930s with the onset of heavy water use in the Colorado watershed. Construction started in 1957 and was completed on September 15, 1962. Today it is one of four major storage facilities for the project – Glen Canyon, Blue Mesa and Flaming Gorge are the three others.
The construction of the dam and the resulting lake flooded and destroyed one the Navajos' most sacred sites.
Nearby cities include Bloomfield, Aztec.