Monday, August 10, 2026 Search My Trip EnglishChinese
World news · travel · culture
Taiwan The Taiwan Times
Taiwan's window to the world

Oroville Dam

The 6th tallest dam in the world

234.7 m · 770 ft

Oroville Dam is an earthfill embankment dam on the Feather River east of the city of Oroville, California, in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of the Sacramento Valley. At 770 feet (235 m) high, it is the tallest dam in the U.S. and serves mainly for water supply, hydroelectricity generation, and flood control. The dam impounds Lake Oroville, the second-largest reservoir in California, capable of storing more than 3.5 million acre-feet (1.1×10^12 US gal; 4.3×109 m3). Built by the California Department of Water Resources, Oroville Dam is one of the key features of the California State Water Project (SWP), one of two major projects passed that set up California's statewide water system. Construction was initiated in 1961, and despite numerous difficulties encountered during its construction, including multiple floods and a major train wreck on the rail line used to transport materials to the dam site, the embankment was topped out in 1967 and the entire project was ready for use in 1968. The dam began to generate electricity shortly afterwards with completion of the Edward Hyatt Power Plant, then the country's largest underground power station. Since its completion in 1968, the Oroville Dam has allocated the flow of the Feather River from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta into the SWP's California Aqueduct, which provides a major supply of water for irrigation in the San Joaquin V

Dam data from Wikidata (CC0) plus curated additions. Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).

More dams in United States

  1. Hoover Dam · Colorado River221 m
  2. Glen Canyon Dam216 m
  3. Ross Dam164.6 m
  4. Rampart Dam155 m
  5. Anderson Ranch Dam139 m

Other tall dams worldwide

  1. Rogun Dam · Tajikistan335 m
  2. Shuangjiangkou Dam · China312 m
  3. Norak Dam · Tajikistan300 m
  4. Grande Dixence dam · Switzerland285 m
  5. Sayano-Shushenskaya Dam · Russia245 m
  6. Bhakra Dam · India225.6 m
  7. Hoover Dam · United States221 m
  8. Glen Canyon Dam · United States216 m