Navajo Dam, a four hundred two-foot earthen embankment on the San Juan River in northwestern New Mexico, was built in the nineteen sixties as a major unit of the Colorado River Storage Project to regulate the Upper Colorado River Basin. Authorized in nineteen fifty-six and completed in nineteen sixty-three, it created Navajo Lake, one of New Mexico’s largest reservoirs, for irrigation, municipal and industrial supply, drought storage, and water transfers toward the Rio Grande valley. The project also reflected Farmington’s growing water needs and Navajo Nation water rights, while displacing towns, cemeteries, railroad lines, and Native sites. Its altered releases transformed the downstream river, harming native fish but creating a renowned trout fishery.