Pathfinder Dam was among the United States government's earliest efforts to develop major river basins for irrigation, water storage, power production, and recreation. Authorized under the Federal Reclamation Act of 1902, the Reclamation Service began work on Pathfinder Dam on the North Platte River and Buffalo Bill Dam on the Shoshone River west of Cody. Built between 1905 and 1909 at a cost of over two million dollars, Pathfinder Dam rose in a narrow canyon cut through Precambrian basement rocks as a masonry arch made entirely of huge blocks quarried from those same formations. Cutting, transporting, and fitting those massive blocks severely tested the engineering skills of the day, and the dam became a civil engineering landmark. It stands 214 feet high and 432 feet across its crest, and the reservoir behind it holds over a million acre-feet, creating a water sports area in central Wyoming's high, dry desert. Pathfinder was followed by Seminoe, Kortes, Alcova, Grey Reef, Glendo, and Guernsey dams to further control and use water from the North Platte. The dam was named for General John C. Fremont, the Pathfinder of the West, who in 1842 returned from a Rocky Mountains mapping expedition and tried to float through the North Platte's white-water canyons near this point, failing and barely escaping with his life while losing most of his records. Pathfinder Dam was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.