Photograph of Swan Falls Dam — Photograph by BLM, Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Swan Falls Dam and Power Plant

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

From the record

“Swan Falls Dam is a concrete gravity type hydroelectric dam in the western United States, on the Snake River in southwestern Idaho, United States. At the dam, the river is the border of Ada and Owyhee counties; it is approximately five miles (8 km) east of Murphy, the seat of Owyhee County.”
Wikipedia article Swan Falls Dam, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 167 National Register listings published here for Ada County · listed in 1976 · category: Structure.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

Address. E of Murphy at Snake River, Murphy, 83641
When was it listed? July 1976
Category. structure
National Register reference number. 76000667 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

40 since 1994

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 40 fires within 5 miles of Swan Falls Dam and Power Plant between 1994 and 2020, burning about 12,177 acres in total. 6 started naturally. 2 were recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	11
Natural	6
Recreation and ceremony	5
Equipment and vehicle use	5
Power generation/transmission/distribution	4
Fireworks	3
Debris and open burning	2
Firearms and explosives use	2
Arson/incendiarism	2

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
7 September 1998	Natural	193 acres	Boise District	COYOTE
4 September 2007	Natural	95 acres	Boise District	SINKER
3 September 2001	Power generation/transmission/distribution	56 acres	Boise District	OLD FERRY
27 September 2006	Recreation and ceremony	17 acres	Boise District	SWAN FALLS
23 September 2010	Power generation/transmission/distribution	1.5 acres	Boise District	BROOKS
2 September 2012	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	182 acres	Boise District	LITTLE BAJA
4 August 2011	Natural	1.0 acres	Boise District	SUNK
4 August 2005	Arson/incendiarism	51 acres	Boise District	SWAN CURVW

Every fire recorded in Ada County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 76000667 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Ada County	All 167 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.