4 TH ee A UD UB ON Bit Te ee 
A Protected Waterway 






In the summer of 1920 the city of Decatur began work on the 
construction of a water impounding project, the object of which 
was to secure an ample supply of water for the growing city. 
After careful surveys had been made it was decided to construct 
a concrete and earth dam just above the present pumping station 
in the Sangamon river and to flood the valley of that river above 
this dam for a distance of about thirteen miles, creating a lake 
of that length varying in width from the width of the river it- 
self at the upper end to a width of about a mile and a half at the 
widest part. 
For this purpose nearly 4,000 acres of land were bought, the 
dam built, the land cleared, bridges and roads raised or rebuilt, 
with one handsome new bridge constructed outright, the total 
cost of the whole project running to about $2,250,000. 
By the fall of 1922 the dam had been finished, the basin 
cleared of timber, six bridges and the approaches to them raised, 
one bridge abandoned and a new one built, and with the advent 
of the spring rains in January 1923 the long visualized lake be- 
came an actual fact, the water running over the spillway of the 
new dam and the sheet of water above covering the basin. 
About a year ago lovers of birds and others who were inter- 
ested in the saving of the waterfowl! took up the project of mak- 
ing Lake Decatur a refuge for these birds and a campaign of 
education was started to create sentiment in favor of such a plan. 
This met with considerable opposition, the old frontier theory 
that wild birds are everybody’s property and live only to be shot 
