Photograph by Curt Teich & Co, Public domain. Via
Wikimedia Commons.
Elephant Butte Dam
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
From the record
“Elephant Butte Dam or Elephant Butte Dike, originally Engle Dam, is a concrete gravity dam on the Rio Grande near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, in the United States. The dam impounds Elephant Butte Reservoir, which is used mainly for agriculture but also provides for recreation, hydroelectricity, and flood and sediment control.”
Wikipedia article Elephant Butte Dam, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 16 National Register listings published here for Sierra County · listed in 1979 · category: Site.
National Register reference number.79001556- 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
8 since 1996
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 8 fires within 5 miles of Elephant Butte Dam
between 1996 and 2017, burning about 83 acres in total. 1 started naturally. None was 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
5
Debris and open burning
1
Natural
1
Smoking
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
25 workings within 5 miles of Elephant Butte Dam: 13 past producers, 4 producers, 3 prospects, 3 unknowns.
4 still produce. What was taken out: Manganese, Fluorine-Fluorite, Sand and Gravel, Construction, Gemstone. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Elephant Butte, the town this property stands in, in 5 storm reports between 1999 and 2025: 3 thunderstorm wind, 2 flash flood.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
Storm survey revealed numerous boats damaged at Marina Del Sur on the south end of Elephant Butte Lake. A couple of metal roofs covering the boats were torn off and/or collapsed and concrete slabs anchoring down the structures were pulled out of the water. An eyewitness described a downburst lasting 15 minutes with torrential rainfall and zero visibility. Property damage was in excess of $1 million.
Strong outflow winds from a distant thunderstorm complex produced winds gusting to 50 mph in northern Sierra County. These winds persisted long enough over Elephant Butte Reservoir to produce 4 to 5 foot waves, which caused a marina to break up. Persons in the vicinity of the marina were evacuated.
Mescal Canyon low water crossing at Turtleback Ave was flooded and too dangerous to cross. Discharge from the Mescal Canyon caused a 0.65 foot backwater spike on the Rio Grande gauge below Elephant Butte Dam, upstream of Mescal Canyon. Water levels on the Rio Grande came close to riverside porches in Truth or Consequences but no damage.
Heavy rains from overnight and early morning thunderstorms drenched the Elephant Butte area washing out approximately 250 feet of highway 51 in the region known as Ash Canyon.
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.
Listed places nearby
4 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
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.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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