About ReservoirFinder

The problem

"How full is the lake?" sounds like a simple question. The answer is public, but getting it is not:

• It's spread across agencies: USGS stream gauges, Bureau of Reclamation reports, and the National Inventory of Dams, each with its own IDs, units, and name for the same lake.
• The numbers are written for engineers, as elevations and acre-feet, with no hint of how full that actually is.
• Nothing connects the level to your trip: whether the ramp you know is still in the water, or which campgrounds sit on the shore.

ReservoirFinder pulls those sources together into one page per reservoir and shows the level against full pool, in plain terms.

What you get here

• The current water level for each reservoir, shown against full pool.
• The dam behind it, from the National Inventory of Dams.
• What's on the water: boat ramps, campgrounds, and other facilities nearby.

Where the data comes from

Levels and dam facts come directly from USGS Water Services, the Bureau of Reclamation's RISE, and the National Inventory of Dams, the same public sources an agency hydrologist would check. Each reservoir page cites its sources and the date they were last pulled, and when no source says something, the page leaves it out rather than guessing.

Who's behind this

It's just me working on this on the side, no team and no editorial board: one person reading agency records and writing down what they say. ReservoirFinder is one of a group of sites I write and maintain under the Wild Atlas Media network, all built on the same idea: take the federal and state data that's already public, put it in one place, and make it easy to use.

Sister sites: Public Lands DB for who manages the land and its camping rules, closures, and fire restrictions, CampgroundsDB for public campgrounds and how to book them, and Fishypedia for fish stocking reports and lake-by-lake fishing. Boat ramps and swimming holes are next.