05/11/2026
Frank and Charles Springer
CS Cattle Co.
Proud of our ancestors and their vision for the future.
Eagle Nest Lake NM Dam:
Back in 1907, two wealthy ranchers—Frank and Charles Springer—along with the Cimarron Valley Land Company, secured a permit to store water from the Cimarron River by building a dam for irrigation. Construction didn’t start until 1916, and it wrapped up two years later in 1918.
The dam itself is pretty impressive. It stands 140 feet tall and stretches about 400 feet across in a graceful arc. At the top, it’s just under 10 feet wide, but it broadens to over 45 feet at the base. It’s actually considered the largest privately built dam in the United States.
The project created Eagle Nest Lake, which covers about 2,500 acres. The lake is roughly 5 miles long and 2 miles wide, and when it’s full, the water sits at an elevation of 8,172 feet above sea level. Altogether, the reservoir can hold more than 79,000 acre-feet of water.
The dam was built by laborers from the Taos Pueblo, and it gets its name from the eagles that made their homes along its sides. It’s tucked between two granite walls, and as part of the project, the Springers even had to reroute U.S. Route 64 to its current path over McAvoy Hill.
