The Spavinaw Water Project was established to provide fresh water for Tulsa, Oklahoma from a site on Spavinaw Creek near the town of Spavinaw in Mayes County, Oklahoma. Planning and financing began in 1919, The project scope included site selection, designing and constructing a dam to impound the creek, a 55-mile long pipeline to carry water to a reservoir near Tulsa, where it would be treated and pumped to a network of customers. Groundbreaking occurred in October, 1922. The dam and pipeline were both completed in 1924, and the new Tulsa water treating plant was completed in 1929. At that time, this was the longest gravity-flow water pipeline operational in the United States.