It’s been years since I featured a manmade lake, and recently we visited Stockton Lake, created in 1969 from the Sac River in Cedar County.

Pop-up storms were brewing over the lake, so in some directions dark clouds loomed, while in other directions sunny skies prevailed.

It seems like the great era of dam building in the Midwest is over, and I find it intriguing for several decades they were building them left and right. Stockton Lake is huge, and is untouched by development because it is surrounded by a state park.

The rubble dam and floodgates a huge, and perhaps due to a lack of scale, cannot truly be appreciated in their sheer size in these photographs.

Electricity is generated here as well, and Springfield receives water from the reservoir. I find it interesting that these dams and lakes represent a period of optimism in the Twentieth Century that has not carried over into the Twenty-First Century.