Ford Came To Dedicate Raystown

On Thursday, June 6, 1974, Vice President Gerald R. Ford came to the new Raystown Dam to dedicate it. His schedule for the day lists vice presidential remarks at the Raystown Dam dedication. Juniata College had told its readers that April that Lake Raystown would officially open June 6 and that Ford was expected to take part.

The text of his remarks, with his drafts, survives in his vice presidential papers. It opens on a personal note: in the text, Ford says he had played some small part in the legislative action on the dam during his years as minority leader of the House.

Then the text turns to the people who had paid for the lake in another way. The text says the sacrifices made by hundreds of persons who gave up their cottages, homes and farms so the project could become a reality should be recognized too. "Monetary awards could never repay those who relinquished lands and homes of a lifetime," the text reads. "They gave much."

The text has some fun, too. The executive director of the state Fish Commission had sent him a complimentary fishing license, and the text has Ford joking that he had learned Pennsylvania agents once arrested Ulysses S. Grant for fishing without a license while Grant was president. The text has him admitting he was really more of a swimmer than a fisherman. The text also cites an estimate that some 15 million people in major eastern cities would be within economical driving distance of the lake.

The project, the text says, had been talked about and studied for half a century. Congress authorized it in the Flood Control Act of 1962, and the dam was completed in 1973. The lake was still filling; the Geological Survey recorded that it filled to its normal pool on March 6, 1975.

Checked 2026-10-31 · County histories and primary sources, read in full

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