Frenchman-Cambridge Irrigation District

Roy Patterson-Superintendent
P.O. Box 116
West Hwy. 6 &34
Cambridge, NE 69022
(308) 697-4535
Fax: (308) 697-3218

E-mail: fcid@swnebr.net

Business Hours: 8:00am to 5:00pm Monday through Friday

Established: 1957

The various units of the Frenchman Irrigation district were authorized for construction in 1944. The dams and reservoirs built help provide protection from flooding.

Enders Dam and Reservoir were the first to be constructed in 1947 near Culbertson, Nebraska.

In 1948 work began on the Medicine Creek Dam and Harry Strunk Lake on Medicine Creek was the first delivered in 1950 to irrigated land within the Cambridge Unit.

in 1949, construction began on the Trenton Dam and Swanson Lake, located on the main stem of the Republican River. The Meeker-Driftwood Unit benefited from water deliveries in 1954.

Red Willow Dam and Hugh Butler Lake were the last features to be built within the Division. Wok began in 1960 and water was delivered from the reservoir in 1962.

The Frenchman-Cambridge Irrigation District provides water for 66,090 acres of irrigated farmland within the Republican River Valley.

The memory of the damaging floods has hung over the Republican River Valley since the first settlers arrived in the mid-1880s. Construction of the four dams and reservoirs in the Frenchman-Cambridge Division area has provided space to hold more than 264,800 acre-feet of potentially destructive flood waters.

It is estimated that savings from flood damages provided by the four reservoirs have totaled neary $3.5 million!