The Ashfork Bainbridge Steel Dam, the first large steel dam in the world, and one of only three ever built in the United States, was constructed in 1898 by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (ATSF) to supply water for railway operations near Ash Fork, Arizona.

Ash Fork had been such a town from when the ATSF first arrived some years earlier although it had been a way point for stagecoach lines previously.

The dam's light weight and prefabricated components must have made assembly easy relative to the laborious job of quarrying and setting stone.

Construction of the dam began in 1897 and was completed March 5, 1898, at a total cost of US$63,519 (equivalent to $2.3 million today).

No spillway was provided; instead, the dam was designed to withstand overtopping of six feet (1.8 m) of water pouring directly over its crest.

A professional journal wrote in 1902 that Ash Fork Dam "has so many novel features of an experimental character that it is specially interesting and instructive to the engineering profession.