The dam and the 134-mile-long (216 km) lake are owned and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and exist for the purposes of hydroelectric power generation, flood control, and water quality management.

The river bed at the site consisted of approximately 160 feet (49 m) of alluvial deposits, varying from coarse, pervious sands and gravels to impermeable clays.

The topmost layer of soft clay was removed from the alluvium in order to found the dam on the stable sandy deposits beneath, at an elevation of approximately 2,050 feet (620 m).

These deposits had many interconnecting layers of coarse sands and gravels, necessitating the installation of a steel sheet pile wall down to the firm shale, from the left to the right abutment.

These dredges would pump material from nearby borrow pits to the dam site where it was discharged by pipes along the outside edges of the fill.

Part of this alarm system involved monitoring the elevations of the core pool and the pipelines carrying the dredged fill.

The west end of the slide mass broke away from the dam near station 27+00 and the core pool water rapidly poured out of the breach that was created in the shell.

A pump barge moored near the dam at the east abutment was swamped by the slide and was lost along with several tractors, loadmasters, and draglines on the slope.

The dead were:[10] In the testing and analysis done by the Corps of Engineers and others to determine the cause of the slide, several modes of failure were considered.

Extensive laboratory testing of the shale, both weathered and unweathered indicated strengths leading to a factor of safety greater than one.

As of March 2013, "more than $42.9 million in repairs to Fort Peck Dam have been approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

"[11] Fort Peck Dam is probably best known for being the subject of a photograph of the spillway taken by Margaret Bourke-White while still under construction that was the cover photo of the first issue of Life magazine on November 23, 1936.

The novel tells the story of the fictional Duff family and their various roles in the mammoth dam project, and in the process describes the working conditions and way of life of the thousands of workers hired to construct the Fort Peck Dam, many of them homesteaders from upriver farms destined to disappear under the waters of the newly formed Fort Peck Lake.

Built by the Army Corps of Engineers, PWA Project #30 provided thousands of jobs during the Great Depression.

The book includes the history of the boomtowns that sprang up in the area, and the "project people" who lived and worked at Fort Peck during the "dam days."

Montgomery, Personal History, "Impalpable Dust," The New Yorker, March 27, 1989, p. 94 was written by the son of an engineer who worked at the dam during its construction.