Fort Peck Dam, located 59 miles north, is the largest hydraulically-filled earthen dam in the United States. Nearly four miles long and 250 feet high, it contains 130 million cubic yards of earth, gravel, and rock, and its one-mile-long spillway can discharge 250,000 cubic feet of water per second. The dam impounds a reservoir 135 miles long with 1,520 miles of shoreline, longer than the coastline of California, and the reservoir is the fifth largest man-made lake in the United States. In 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt authorized construction of Fort Peck Dam during the Great Depression to provide flood control, assist navigation on the Missouri River, and supply water for irrigation; beginning in 1943, it also functioned as a hydroelectric facility. Construction began in 1934 and was completed in 1940. At its peak in 1936, more than 10,500 workers labored on the dam and many lived with their families in eighteen shanty towns around the site. One resident later wrote, "Here we are out where there is nothing but thistles, black widow spiders, ticks, rattlesnakes, and heat. We're living in pasteboard boxes and eatin' dirt, with nothing to do when we're not working but guzzle beer and wake up with a headache."