Opening date 1901 Surface area 1,525 acres (6.17 km²) Height 33 m Length 351 m Catchment area 108,521 km² | Impounds Snake River Built 1900 Opened 1900 Area 8,000 m² Operator Idaho Power | |
 | ||
Location Ada / Owyhee counties, Idaho Total capacity 7,425 acre feet (9,159,000 m) Similar Snake River, Celebration Park, C J Strike Dam, Brownlee Dam, Milner Dam | ||
Swan Falls Dam is a concrete gravity type hydroelectric dam on the Snake River, in the U.S. state of Idaho. It is located near Murphy, Idaho.
Map of Swan Falls Dam, Murphy, ID 83650, USA
The dam was built in 1901 to generate electricity. It is the oldest hydroelectric dam on the Snake River. In the 1990s the original power plant was replaced with a new one. The dam was built with fish passage facilities, but they proved to be very poor in performance. For this reason, among others, the C. J. Strike Dam, built upriver from Swan Falls Dam in the early 1950s, was not equipped with fish passage facilities. Thus the two dams combined to become the first artificial barrier to anadromous fish migration up the Snake River. Today Hells Canyon Dam is the first total barrier to fish migration on the Snake.
The dam and its reservoir lie within the Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area. The dam and power plant were listed in the National Register of Historic Places.