Lake Delton - The Dam

The Dam

In 1926, Chicago construction company owner William J. Newman decided to build a resort area in the tiny Delton, Wisconsin area (as the community of Lake Delton had been known at the time). Newman engaged a local land agent to purchase tracts of land along both banks of a stretch of Dell Creek. After taking title to the tracts, Newman brought engineers and construction crews to the area, who built a 30 feet (9.1 m) high dam near the confluence of Dell Creek and the Wisconsin River. They built a 1,000 feet (300 m) long dike along the dam. They also created 1,000 acres (400 ha) of artificial shoreline for the resort area.

Newman was particularly knowledgeable about dam and dike construction as his companies had done a majority of the caisson work that downtown Chicago skyscrapers are built upon. Caisson work involves building retaining, watertight structures used, for example, to work on the foundations of a bridge pier or for the construction of a concrete dam.

On July 27, 1927, they closed the dam's sluice gates and allowed Dell Creek to fill up the lake basin that had been excavated and graded behind the dam. This resulted in a large pooling of water from the flow of Dell Creek, which was named Lake Delton. Newman had spent $600,000 on the construction by that date and expected to spend another $400,000 to build the resort. They built a lock between the lake and the Wisconsin River to allow small boats and canoes to travel between the bodies of water.

To decorate his own summer home on Lake Delton, Newman transported several sculptures and concrete blocks he saved from the rubble of Midway Gardens (1913, Chicago, Illinois; demolished 1929), the last of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie Style buildings, which had stood near the Lake Michigan shoreline in downtown Chicago. Newman's company had been hired in 1929 to demolish the structure. Years later, when Wright heard of the survival of the sculptures and blocks, he purchased them and they remained with his estate. As recently as 1999, a block was found buried on the property of Newman's old summer home on Lake Delton and was donated to the Chicago Historical Society.

Newman ran the resort until the Great Depression caused him to file for bankruptcy protection. The Lake Delton enterprise was barely able to survive, and in the 1940s Newman's interest was sold to an investment group, called the Lake Delton Development Corporation. The Lake Delton resort area was more successful after World War II, when tourism increased in the Dells area with Tommy Bartlett's water show.

By the 1980's, the Lake Delton strip had become home to waterparks, resorts and other recreational facilities that made it a mecca for travelers from across the United States. In fact, the local village website boasts that "1.5 million visitors come to the Wisconsin Dells-Lake Delton area each year."

The lake level was drawn down 8 feet (2.4 m) for repairs on the dam in 1983. The inflow recharged the lake in 15 days.

Much of the shoreline of Lake Delton has been developed with summer homes, year-round homes and condominiums. About 20 resorts surround the lake. Prior to the 2008 dam washout, the lake had poor water quality, which is common to impoundments in southwest Wisconsin. Some of the water quality problems may have been due to construction site erosion, as well as rural nonpoint source pollution. The lake also had nuisance aquatic weed growth that has required chemical treatment. The fishery of the Lake Delton was northern pike, walleye, largemouth bass, channel catfish and panfish.