In 1933 the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District decided that tappan was cosidered expendable to save other towns from flooding. So the dam was built by the army corpes of engineers for flood control along with many other dams around the state. The 50 plus families were forced to move and were paid small sums of cash to leave. Some families couldnt afford to leave on such short notice and didnt have the time to gather all of there belongings before the town was flooded. The damn was completed in 1938 it cost more than 35 million dollars to build the dam.