page_title: Lake McConaughy
section_title: Kingsley Dam
hierarchical_section_title: Lake McConaughy / Kingsley Dam
caption_attribution_description: English: Morning Glory – a large outlet tower structure at Kingsley Dam used to release water from Lake McConaughy.
context_page_description: Lake McConaughy is a reservoir on the North Platte River. It is located 9 miles north of Ogallala, Nebraska, United States, near U.S. Highway 26 and Nebraska Highway 61. The reservoir was named for Charles W. McConaughy, a grain merchant and mayor of Holdrege, Nebraska, one of the leading promoters of the project. Although he did not live to see the completion of the project, his leadership and perseverance eventually culminated in a public power and irrigation project that helped Nebraska become one of the nation's leading agricultural states.
context_section_description: Kingsley Dam is located at the east end of Lake McConaughy and was the second largest hydraulically filled earthen dam in the world (behind Fort Peck Dam) on the time of its completion.  The dam was named for George P. Kingsley, a Minden, Nebraska banker, who worked with C. W. McConaughy to promote the project. The dam was built by pumping sand and gravel from the river bed to form its sides, while pumping a mixture of loess soil and water into the center of the structure to form its watertight core.  Seepage of water under the dam is prevented by a wall of interlocked sheet piling driven 30 to 160 ft (49 m) deep and tied into the impervious Brule clay formation that lies beneath the dam.  The dam's face is protected by more than a million tons of rock in several layers and more than 180,000 "jackstones," (rebar-reinforced concrete tetrahedrons), each weighing 800 lb (360 kg).  The dam is 162 feet (49 m) tall, 3.1 miles (5.0 km) long, and 1,100 feet (340 m) wide at its base.
  The Kingsley Hydroplant, which went on-line in 1984, is situated below the south end of the dam.
caption: The large outlet tower structure used to release water from Lake McConaughy (2002)
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS D60", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2009:09:05 17:10:07", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "220", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1122", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3823", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/180", "EXIF FNumber": "19/2", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2002:11:01 15:55:17", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2002:11:01 15:55:17", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "245493/32768", "EXIF ApertureValue": "26607/4096", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "4", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "28", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1505", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "838", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "1536", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "1024", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "972", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "384000/223", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "204800/119", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}