Niagara Dam and Leonora

Niagara Dam provides an unusual welcoming sight for visitors. It is an oasis in the wilderness which is a very popular camping and recreational spot. The concrete dam wall, constructed in 1897-98, is 225 metres across and 18 metres high.

When the dam was being constructed by the Railways Department, there was a nearby mining community called Niagara although flourishing was in desperate need of a fresh water supply. The locomotives that were soon to be steaming along a newly constructed railway heading north from Menzies to Leonora also required a lot of the precious liquid.

The dam construction required vast amounts of powered cement to be transported in barrels by camel train all the way from Coolgardie. Niagara Dam became a white elephant once completed as the town of Niagara was virtually deserted due to the gold having run out. Niagara, only briefly boomed as a gold centre, was unique in that the town’s main intersection had a hotel on all four corners – and each had a female publican! Vast supplies of artesian water had been discovered at nearby Kookynie. 

Camping sites and toilets

Beautiful Doggy

Picnic Area

 

Leonora Town Centre

Leonora High St.

Leonora is primarily a mining town of about 401 residents, about a third of whom are of Aboriginal descent. Although the area is too arid to support intensive agriculture Leonora is the service centre for the mining, exploration and well established pastoral industry. There are a number of major gold mines in the Shire, as well as the Murrin Murin laterite nickel project.The labour Government relocated asylum seekers from Christmas Island to a former mining camp in Leonora in 2010.