The Teton Dam was constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation, a U.S. federal agency responsible for building more than 600 dams and reservoirs in the American West. The dam was an earthwork construction on the Teton River located eastern Idaho, between Fremont and Madison counties. The failure of the dam caused the deaths of 11 people and 13,000 cattle, and cost the federal government $300 million in claims related to the damage. The dam cost $100 million to build originally.

The images and captions within the collection provide detailed descriptions of the work on the dam, which was subject to lawsuits by environmental groups during construction. The planned dam was to be an earthen structure 310 feet high and .6 miles long, intended to create a reservoir 17 miles in length. The impounded water would be used to generate hydroelectric power.

In 1973, when the dam was only half built, but almost $5 million had already been spent, large fissures were encountered during excavation of the keyway trench near the right end of the dam. Multiple images in this collection show “grout leaks” - cracks that required backfilling and voids that needed to be filled.