Presa Chuvíscar

The Chuvíscar Dam is the reservoir Chihuahua City built in the early 1900s to secure its water supply. It opened on September 16, 1908, held five million cubic meters and cost one million pesos at the time. An engineer named Aguilar drew up the preliminary study, Manuel Marroquín y Rivera produced the final design, and the contractors Shepherd and McQuatters built it.

The dam holds back the Río Chuvíscar, which rises to the west in the Cañada del Chivato and runs about 120 km east. Just before the city the river is stopped twice: first by the Chihuahua Dam, then by the Chuvíscar, right on the urban edge. From there it runs in a concrete channel straight through the capital, splitting it in two, picks up the Río Sacramento on the way out, passes Aldama and San Diego de Alcalá, and joins the Conchos at a spot called Babisas.

Today it is a minor storage basin for drinking water, a few meters from the El Rejón dam, and it is usually left off the state's reservoir reports. It fills quickly in heavy rain: it began spilling during the June 2021 downpours and spilled again in August 2022, weeks before the city's other reservoirs came close.

The shore is lined with brown rock bluffs topped by houses, and the water is usually muddy. Come to see a full reservoir after the summer rains and the waterworks that kept the city going more than a century ago; it is not a swimming spot.