There have been a variety dams built on the Susan River, and there just as many that were proposed but never built. The earliest dams were for manufacturing, i.e. lumber mills. By the late 1880s the focus was on reservoirs for irrigation. These will all be explored in future posts.
One of the last dams proposed occurred in 1987. The Tudor Engineering of San Francisco released a preliminary study for a hydroelectric power dam on the Susan River. The site selected was Crazy Harry Gulch, about eight miles west of Susanville. The firm proposed to construct a 170-foot high dam, at a cost of $30 million. For whatever reason, the project was never undertaken.