By KATHY HANKS

Special to The Hays Daily News

JETMORE -- For more than a year, like an army of ants, orange-colored earthmovers have been driving in a steady procession, moving dirt to the top of an embankment.

Finally, Friday evening workers packed down the last layers of soil to complete construction of the 86-foot high dam at HorseThief Reservoir.

While the inlet tower and even boat ramps have been built, lake enthusiasts will have to wait until Memorial Day weekend 2010 to speed around the lake in motorboats.

That's when Ron Allen, administrator of the Pawnee Watershed District, estimates the park, located in Hodgeman County, 8 miles west of Jetmore, officially will open.

State officials will inspect the dam in early September,.

Once it receives final approval from the Division of Water Resources, the gate on Buckner Creek will be closed. Creek runoff then will begin filling the 440-acre lake, which is surrounded by an 1,100-acre park.

"It's going to be something," Allen said as he watched the last of the dirt be moved on a recent afternoon.

People have asked Jim Hewes, a Pawnee Watershed District board member, how long it will take to fill the reservoir.

"I say, 'Tell me when it's going to rain,' " Hewes said.

Rick Sloan, a service hydrologist with Dodge City's National Weather Service, agreed.

Typically in dry southwest Kansas, it takes a period of time to get to the top of a conservation pool, Sloan said.

"However, in the case of HorseThief Reservoir, if they continue in a regime like the last several months it will contribute into the inflow of the reservoir," Sloan said.

But even without the added rainfall, Buckner Creek has springs and other inflow to the reservoir. Still, it could take up to five years for the lake to be full.

What they need is more months like June, when 7 inches of rain fell at the construction site.

The largest watershed district in the U.S., it contains more than 1.5 million acres in parts of nine Kansas counties -- Edwards, Finney, Ford, Gray, Hodgeman, Lane, Ness, Pawnee and Rush.

Back in the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps explored the site but decided it was too large an area to build the lake it wanted. Then, more than 50 years ago the Army Corps of Engineers explored it as a potential lake site, but at that time, Hewes said, it was considered too small.

About 20 years ago, board members talked about the possibility of building a recreational lake that would also be a good location for flood control, Hewes said.

"Our original intent was that the site be a flood-control structure," said Hewes, who is excited to see the dream come to fruition.

In 2005, voters in Ford, Finney, Hodgeman and Gray counties, all in the HorseThief Benefit District, agreed to the implementation of a sales tax to help pay for a portion of the $21 million project.

The benefit district, which is the recreation management portion of the project, has contracted with the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks to stock and manage fish in the lake.

Named after the original HorseThief Canyon, not far from the site of the dam, it was a box canyon where horse thieves would hide their loot, back in the Old West days.

Located 20 miles north of Dodge City, the reservoir could benefit from the traffic to and from the Boot Hill Casino, due to open in December.

But that's not all, said Allen.

"We can benefit from people going to Lee Richardson Zoo, in Garden City, or traveling to Fort Larned.

"It's part of an area-wide collaboration of tourism," Allen said.