[5] Silver Lake Basin is a naturally occurring body of water near the head of the Dead River.
[6] This, combined with warm weather and an unusually large frost depth,[6] led to the dam's failure.
On May 14, 2003, the earthen fuse plug spillway of the dam failed and released nine billion gallons of water from Silver Lake Basin.
The flood waters forced the closure of the Steel Bridge carrying CR 510 over the river.
[11] The failure forced the evacuation of 1800 people from 485 acres (196 ha) on the north side of Marquette.