This point shapefile portrays major dams of the United States, including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The map layer was created by extracting dams 50 feet or more in height, or with a normal storage capacity of 5,000 acre-feet or more, or with a maximum storage capacity of 25,000 acre-feet or more, from the 79,777 dams in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers National Inventory of Dams. This is a replacement for the April 1994 map layer. This layer is part of the 1997-2014 edition of the National Atlas of the United States.These data are intended for geographic display and analysis at the national level, and for large regional areas. The data should be displayed and analyzed at scales appropriate for 1:2,000,000-scale data. No responsibility is assumed by the National Atlas of the United States in the use of these data.