‘I knew it wouldn’t hold’: Truck driver involved in Teton Dam construction predicted its collapse
April 16, 2026
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12:32Now Playing‘I knew it wouldn’t hold’: Truck driver involved in Teton Dam construction predicted its collapse
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as posted by the channel#eastidahonews #tetondam #flood50
SHELLEY – Fifty years after the collapse of the Teton Dam, Virgil Jonak still gets emotional when he recalls what happened.
The 93-year-old Shelley man was a truck driver who hauled material to and from the dam’s construction site. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation broke ground on the project in 1972 and oversaw its construction over the next four years.
Jonak was hired by the agency as a truck driver and was involved in the project the entire time.
“I went to work the first of April in ’72 and I worked until the day before it broke,” Jonak says. “I kept saying when I went to work there, ‘That dam will never hold water.'”
Just before noon on June 5, 1976, the 3,100-foot-long flood mitigation dam located about 15 miles northeast of Rexburg failed, spilling 80 billion gallons of water into east Idaho. Not only was the city of Rexburg buried under five feet of water, but 11 people and about 13,000 head of livestock were also killed. Beyond that, about 3,000 homes and tens of thousands of acres of land were destroyed or heavily damaged.
Cleanup took months and cost over $2 billion — more than $11 billion in today’s dollars.
Despite concerns about the dam’s design before and during construction — it sat on a foundation of compacted dirt that covered porous and unstable canyon rock — the dam was completed and rushed into operation without any testing.
Between 1950 and 1979, more than 40,000 dams were built across the country, mainly for hydropower and irrigation, and the Teton Dam was no exception. A hydroelectric power plant was under construction in a tunnel at the bottom of the dam, which Jonak says wrapped around the canyon and came out on the other side.
Jonak drove the truck that hauled the dynamite used to blast through the canyon wall to build the tunnel.
“Somebody had to guide you (into the tunnel). You couldn’t have lights, glass or mirrors on the truck (because they were a safety hazard around dynamite), so you were really backing up blind,” Jonak recalls, choking up.
That tunnel, along with a second one that connected to the spillway on the other side of the dam, is still intact today.
When asked why his recollection of this experience made him so emotional, Jonak said he’s always been an emotional person. He never said it, but it’s clear some of his experiences during this time were traumatizing.
WATCH OUR INTERVIEW WITH JONAK IN THE VIDEO ABOVE.
READ THE FULL STORY HERE
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