1962 Turtle Creek Dam on Big Blue River near Manhattan, KS

Dam and Outlet Conduit: (Satellite)

Spillway: (Satellite)

I found USACE information on the lake, but not the dam. I was looking for information such as length, height, outlet & spillway capacities and storage capacities.

Street View, Apr 2026

dam-foolishness
"Flooding in Manhattan, Kansas, 1951."
There were 25 floods between 1903 and 1959. The USACE started buying land for this dam a year after the 1951 flood.

Kansas Historical Society posted
In the mid-1950s, construction began on Tuttle Creek dam. Built by the Army Corps of Engineers, the purpose of the earth and rock structure was to control flooding along the Big Blue River. The dam created on of the largest reservoir in the state and is located in Riley and Pottawatomie counties. The dam was completed in 1962. See this and other photos of the dam construction at www.kansasmemory.gov/item/214783

Lanny Mong: More people drowned in this Kansas dam than any other! Its location made it difficult for dis to see storms coming. Then as the winds came down through the narrow lake; the waves got so high so quickly; that fishermen had no chance to get to shore!

Brian Robben: Heck of a bedrock key.

Jim Swink: Yep, with an ancient earthquake fault line running right through it.

Comments on the above post

KansasMemory, photo 6 of 7

The emergency spillway is gated.

S, May 2021

10cfs release in Jun 2026. I've seen comments in this and other posts for the 1993 flow of 30, 60 and 100 kcfs. Some comments mentioned that the whole dam shook during that release. It sounds like they had a lot of erosion problems after the 1993 flow.

Companion Projects Media, LLC posted
10,000 cfs is a lot water getting pumped out but it’s not the max. If you have a chance go check it out!

Another view of a 10kcfs flow. The "tubes" are horseshoe shaped, see a photo below.

Facebook Reel

Tuttle Creek Lake, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers posted six images with the comment: "We get some great questions from our visitors about everything from wildflower identification to the height of the dam. A common question is what is under the water at the stilling basin also known as the tubes? The stilling basin slowest water as it is released from the lake and enters the stream channel. It helps reduce downstream erosion. This is a cross section of the dam and a few pictures from past dewaters. Share your favorite picture from the tubes or your best catch at the tubes."

Josh Gramp: Just missing a picture of in the tube.

1

2, cropped

3

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6

Tuttle Creek Lake, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers commented on Josh's comment

And another view of the Jun 2026 10kcfs flow. This helps explain the capacity difference between 1993 and 2026, namely only one tube was used in 2026. But 100kcfs still seems far fetched. You can tell that not everyone was carrying a camera in their pocket thanks to smartphones in 1993 because I haven't seen any photos or videos of that flow.

Companion Projects Media, LLC posted

They had another big flow in 2019.

John Fiebich, Jul 2019

Daniel Win, Jul 2019

They dewater the stilling basin every five years for inspection. This is from 2020.

KSNT News

As a result of the 2020 inspection, they did significant repairs in 2024.

USACE_repairs
The dam is 7,500' (2.3km) long with a total capacity over 2.1m acre-feet. Because of a lot of snowfall and the near-record rainfall in the spring and summer, "The Great Flood of 2019" caused high flow releases from March to December. The prolonged releases caused the damage discovered during the 2020 inspection.

In 2025 and 2026, the USACE is experimenting with using Water Injection Dredging to improve the capacity of the reservoir. The capacity has been significantly reduced because of sedimentation. [USACE_dredging]

WaterPowerMagazine
"A demonstration of the Water Injection Dredging jet bar. Image by Christine Reinhardt"
"WID is a process by which a barge with a special jet bar produces low-pressure, high-volume jets of water drawn from the lake. The jet bar is lowered into the water and when it’s activated, sediment is stirred up to form a mixture of sediment and water. This mixture joins the underwater current flowing toward the dam’s outlet and works its way into the downstream channel."

This shows the water jet boom down in its operational position.

klcjournal, credit: Jeff Tuttle
"Pre-dredging, active, and post-dredging monitoring is being done at five locations on the Big Blue and Kansas Rivers, along with continuous monitoring of water quality and sediment quality, and other analyses. The primary goals of the demonstration are to quantify how much sediment can be moved, the cost per cubic yard of sediment moved, and the short-term downstream effects. Long-term downstream effects are among the secondary questions, along with how the findings can be generalized for sediment management at other lakes."