The dam that sits one and a half miles west from Salida has been an important topic of conversation between Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the Chaffee County commissioners for several years. These two organizations had been trying to come to an agreement on the deconstruction of the dam, which had been officially considered a deadly hazard to those who used the river for recreational purposes. People had to be cautious to avoid going down the dam, which could result in deadly injuries. The two organizations agreed that, for the safety of those who used the river, the dam would be removed to avoid future injuries or deaths.

The dam had been built in 1956 to bring water to the fish hatcheries on the south side of the river, and then rebuilt again in 1988 to create a boat chute to make passing the dam easier. There had been an increase in river recreation and the dam stood as a large obstacle for the public and was incredibly difficult for people to safely pass.  

The dam had not been used since 2000, due to whirling disease that had been detected in the waters.  Whirling disease causes fish to become mutated and to swim in circles, and the disease had moved throughout the young fish and had killed off a large portion of the fish population in the hatchery and in the Arkansas river.  Because of the disease that had spread throughout the river and the hatchery, Colorado Parks and Wildlife had been forced to spend one point five million dollars to clear out the disease that had been still mingling around and to also clean out the hatchery to make sure that the removal of the disease had been successful.

Due to the whirling disease incident, the dam had been sitting as nothing but an obstacle for rafters and kayakers, and no longer was of service to the hatchery.  Because of this, the motivation to take down the dam increased, and had also influenced Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the Chaffee County commissioners to take down the dam and begin the 1.1 million dollar project. 

Plans had been set in motion to remove the dam, and the construction crews began the process of removing the dam and removing a boat ramp that was upstream from the local fish hatchery.

The construction project had taken multiple weeks to complete, and the construction project had actually come to an end weeks ahead of schedule, and the final pieces of cleaning up and adding a few final touches to the end of the project was hoped to be completed by November  23rd, 2023.  The whole project cost around 1.1 million dollars.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife has been a huge help to the effort, and they worked with several partners to help with the project of removing the dam.  They partnered up with the Chaffee County Board of County Commissioners, who had provided one hundred thousand dollars to the construction project, and made the removal of the dam possible with their generous contributions.