Northwest Estate

Lore & Background

The dam replaced a wood crib dam started in 1903 by J.M. Hagerty, a local entrepreneur, and completed a year after his death. That dam fed a generating plant in a wooden powerplant below the dam and falls, sending power to the towns of Nighthawk and Oroville, as well as the nearby Owasco, Ivanhoe, Ruby and Canba mines. Attempts by Hagerty's estate to sell the dam in 1913 met no interest, partly because of the poor state of the crib dam. Eugene Enloe of the Okanogan Valley Power Company secured the rights to the site in 1916, hiring C.F. Uhden to design the dam that year.

Construction did not start until 1919 and was completed in 1920 at a cost of $350,000, $150,000 of it Enloe's money. Enloe sold the dam and powerplant in 1923 to Washington Water Power Company, which added a second penstock. In 1942 the WWPC was purchased by the Okanogan Public Utility District, which then ceased operations at Enloe Dam in 1958, as power was available from the Bonneville Power Administration system at less cost. The dam's reservoir extends 2 miles (3.2 km) up the Similkameen River.

Largely silted up, it is just 9 feet (2.7 m) deep. Storage capacity is only 507 acre-feet (625,000 m3). The concrete powerhouse is in a partly ruinous state, and options have been presented to stabilize or demolish the structure when the proposed new hydroelectric development is undertaken. The powerhouse was fed by two wood stave penstocks, 7 feet (2.1 m) in diameter, running to Pelton wheels driving two 1.6 megawatt generators. The generator hall stands next to a heavily built transformer vault.

Reader's Guide

Enloe Dam was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 18, 1978 as an example of early power development in rural Washington. The dam features an unregulated overflow spillway whose height can be augmented by flashboards. The powerplant replaced a small run-of-river plant, which received water from a diversion channel.