REXBURG—This year marks 50 years since the Teton Dam disaster. The dam broke June 5, 1976, killing 11 people, 13,000 head of livestock and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, according to the final report.
Richard Robison, the founder of the Robison Institute and author of the Teton Letters, has always been intrigued by the Teton Dam flood.
Robison is the nephew of Robert Robison who oversaw the Teton Dam Project. He Richard Robison remembers growing up visiting the dam during its construction. He was 13 years old when the dam failed.
“Everyone that was there at the time has a unique, their own unique experience,” Robison said.
Robison later became an engineer and has been studying the history of the flood over the last 40 years. He was particularly intrigued by the oral histories recorded a year after the disaster through the collaborative efforts of Ricks College, Utah State University and the Idaho Historical Society.
“People don't realize now 50 years later that after it broke, they actually wanted to go right back to work rebuilding it,” Robison said.
Robison’s Teton Letters are taken from those oral histories of the flood but written in story form, all published on Substack.
While Robison didn’t interview the people, he did know many of them and experienced the flood himself.
Robison said the reasons why the dam was built in the first place still exist today, and it’s even more important to have it now. Currently Idaho is under a water emergency and there is a push to get the Teton Dam rebuilt, Robison said.
Though Robert Robison, his uncle, was overseeing the project, in an independent panel study the failure was determined to be Denver Design Office and their design. Robison said if things were different, the dam probably would still be standing today.
State Sen. Kevin Cook, R-Dist. 32 in Idaho Falls, has been leading this push for the Teton Dam to get rebuilt with Robison as a technical advisor.
“One of my objectives in [the Teton Papers] is not only to tell the human story, but also to set the record straight 50 years later some of the technical information around what the actual cause was and what really happened,” Robison said.
He hopes people can connect with the histories of the people who survived the flood. He’s turned some of the stories into more kid-friendly versions and has also written some songs to go along with the stories.
“I want it left as a legacy where if people want to go look into the oral histories themselves,” Robison said.
The original oral histories are available on BYU-Idaho's Special Collections website.