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Jointly owned by the United States and Mexico, the dam and reservoir were built for water conservation, hydroelectric power, flood control, and recreation. Named for one of the Spanish colonial settlements inundated by the massive engineering project, the one-hundred-fifty-foot-high, five-mile-long, rolled earthfill and concrete dam impounds 115,000 acres at its maximum fill level. A two-lane causeway sits atop, providing a platform with vistas of the meandering Rio Grande at the international boundary line.