After the floods in the 1950s, which raised the water of the Delaware ABOVE the level of the roads alongside it, a controversial project to build a hydroelectric dam and reservoir on the Delaware River in the 1950s and 1960s led to government's seizure of land in northwestern New Jersey and northeastern Pennsylvania under the authority of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The construction of the dam would have created a lake reservoir that would have flooded the Walpack Valley. For political and geological reasons, the dam project was deauthorized and the land transferred to the management of the National Park Service for the establishment of a National Recreation Area. Currently, Wallpack Ridge is located in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area that was established by the National Park Service in 1978.