Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Conchas Dam, NM

Conchas Dam is an unincorporated census-designated place (CDP) in San Miguel County, northeastern New Mexico, named for the dam beside which it grew up.

The 2020 census counted 194 residents in the Conchas Dam CDP, up slightly from 186 in the 2010 census.

The community began as the construction town for Conchas Dam, built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from 1935 to 1939 as a New Deal work-relief project approved by President Franklin D. Roosevelt under the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935.

Conchas Dam was the 17th dam constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and is the Corps' oldest water project in New Mexico.

The dam's concrete gravity section stands 235 feet high and 1,250 feet long across the Canadian River just below its confluence with the Conchas River, about 30 miles northwest of Tucumcari, with earthen wing dikes bringing the structure's total length to about 19,500 feet.

Behind the dam stretches Conchas Lake, a reservoir about 25 miles long and one of the largest lakes in New Mexico.

Water released from the dam feeds the Tucumcari Irrigation Project, whose roughly 300 miles of canals irrigate about 41,400 acres in the Canadian River valley under the Arch Hurley Conservancy District.

Conchas Lake State Park, established in 1955, wraps around the reservoir with nine public boat ramps divided between its north and south areas.

The Conchas Dam Historic District, which includes the dam and a Civilian Conservation Corps-built administration complex, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.

The CDP covers about 8.3 square miles around the dam and the lake's southern shore, reached by New Mexico State Road 129, which began in the late 1930s as the access road from the railhead at Newkirk.