Northern California’s Shasta Dam is a keystone of the Bureau of Reclamation’s huge Central Valley Project, which involves 35 of California's counties and two major watersheds: those of the Sacramento River on the north and the San Joaquin River on the south. Together, these watersheds extend for nearly 500 miles, feeding the heart of California’s long, flat Central Valley, one of the most fertile and productive garden spots in the world. Grown here are more than 250 varieties of crops, including the almonds, artichokes, avocados and wine grapes that make California famous for more than movie stars.

Shasta Dam, dwarfed only by Hoover and Grand Coulee dams when it was completed on the Sacramento River in 1945, is breathtaking not only for its great size, but for its majestic setting in the southern range of the Cascades. The 602 foot-high, concrete, curved gravity dam holds back an immense blue reservoir, Lake Shasta, which boasts a 365-mile shoreline nestled amid evergreen hills and the snow-covered volcanic peak of Mount Shasta. - http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/ReclamationDamsIrrigationProjectsAndPowerplants/Shasta_Dam.html // 602 ft. high & 3,640 ft. long. Shasta Dam is the 2nd largest dam in the U.S. with highest center overflow-spillway in the world.