Photos: Parker Dam, February 2021

This page features photos of Parker Dam, located along the Colorado River on the Arizona-California border.  

Built between 1934 and 1938 by the Bureau of Reclamation, Parker Dam is a 320-foot-tall concrete arch structure. Engineers had to dig deep to find bedrock under the Colorado River, so 73 percent of the structure is not visible, making it the deepest dam ever created.

In 1934, construction of the dam was temporarily halted by Arizona, which declared martial law, called up National Guard troops and deployed its “navy” of two ships. Arizona claimed California was stealing its water, but the project eventually resumed.

Parker Dam impounds the Colorado River 155 miles downstream from Hoover Dam and creates Lake Havasu. This reservoir has a total capacity of 646,200 acre-feet and serves as the water source for the Central Arizona Project and the Colorado River Aqueduct, two diversions that provide drinking water to large portions of Southern Arizona and Southern California, including the metropolitan areas of Phoenix and Tucson, and the greater Los Angeles, San Diego and San Bernardino areas.

Learn more:

DateFebruary 2021
LocationParker Dam, along the Arizona-California border (map)
CreditTed Wood/The Water Desk
RightsFree to reuse under Creative Commons license.

Selected images from the gallery

Click to enlarge

To use these images

Please read and consent to the terms and license below for access to the download page.

The Water Desk’s photo and video resources are part of our efforts to aid and enrich news coverage of Western water issues. Our imagery is shot by professional photojournalists and is available for free reuse under a Creative Commons noncommercial license.

To help us continue to offer this free material, we ask that you please:
  1. Credit the original photographer and the Water Desk as the source
  2. Email us a link to the published story at waterdesk@colorado.edu
  3. Consider sending The Water Desk your ideas for future content that we could add to the library
  4. Keep supporting professional photojournalists by hiring them for assignments

I understand and consent

< Show related galleries

Explore aerial, drone and ground-based imagery from The Water Desk