This 1936 photo by Volland, Kansas shopkeeper, Otto Kratzer, features a view of the Works Progress Administration barracks building and the construction of the lake’s spillway. Rock was blasted from the spillway bed and crushed to various sizes of gravel, seen in the foreground.

This 1934 Harold Wolfe photograph features workers at the Kansas Emergency Relief Committee’s Lake Wabaunsee construction project seen at the barracks buildings. The mess hall is visible in the background.

This 1934 photograph by Harold Wolfe of Topeka, Kansas features the lake caretaker’s house at Lake Wabaunsee. Clyde Forinash, writes on the reverse of the photo, “I built this in 1934 with transient help. I was there as an instructor on the complete job, and worked more than 60 different men on this one job. It burned down and was rebuilt, then rebuilt again, and the second time, the gables were restored to their present position.”

This 1934 Harold Wolfe photograph, taken at the Kansas Emergency Relief Committee’s Transient Camp at Lake Wabaunsee, shows a group of workers constructing the caretaker’s house, located at the east end of the dam.

Two German prisoners of war from the Lake Wabaunsee camp shovel manure into a spreader while working on a Wabaunsee County farm. Photo courtesy Wabaunsee County Extension Service.

Seventeen German prisoners of war pose for a photograph outside one of the barracks buildings at Camp No. 5 at Lake Wabaunsee, Eskridge, Kansas. This view is rare in that the German prisoners are seen in their military uniforms rather than their normal work clothes marked with the letters P and W. Photo courtesy Penny Clark.