Ronsdorf Dam

Come down to relax

Always a striking destination along the way, summer and winter alike.

On July 30, 1895, the city council decided to build a waterworks and the associated dam.

Professor Otto Intze from the Technical University of Aachen was commissioned with the planning and subsequent implementation. His investigations showed that the most favorable area for a dam was the Saalbach valley with its wealth of sources.

At the meeting of the city council on April 14, 1897, Intze's proposals were accepted and the construction of the dam was decided. Almost a year later, the necessary land could be acquired and construction of the dam began.

A quarry stone wall was erected, which was built according to the "Intze principle". This principle consisted of creating a wedge-shaped, compacted earthfill on the water side at the foot of the wall, which reached just half the height of the wall. In this way the pressure of the water on the wall could be reduced quite considerably, which enabled a lighter construction method
Pump-operated pumping station and on the upper Kurfürstenstrasse, the highest point in Ronsdorf, the water tower. From here the water was fed into the Ronsdorf supply network.

The dam was inaugurated on November 11, 1899. It had a storage height of around 19 meters and a capacity of 300,000 cubic meters.

Source and more: ronsdorfer-buergerverein.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/2016.08Talsperre.pdf