Menzies Dam, built in the mid-1860s by David Stewart and John Menzies, is a large water storage reservoir located above the gold sluicings at Bannockburn (List Entry No. 5612). Menzies dam is a fine example of a substantial, hand built, water storage reservoir. The reservoir is one element within a complex of sites associated with the hydraulic sluicing of the alluvial terraces near Bannockburn.

David Stewart , a stone mason, and miner John Menzies built the dam in the mid-1860s, enabling them to sell water to local gold miners. Menzies Dam sits adjoining the settlement of Stewart Town (List Entry No. 5610) overlooks the spectacular sluicing faces of Pipe Clay Gully. The land on the south bank of the Kawarau River, stretching up to the Carrick Range, was subject to extensive mining, particularly hydraulic sluicing. Water and the rights to it were crucial to gold mining. Stewart and Menzies held substantial water rights and therefore controlled miners’ access to water. Stewart secured the water right from Long Gully, cut a race and built this dam. Access to water allowed previously unworkable areas to be mined.

Menzies died in 1894 and his house, race, claims and effects were sold. Stewart Town was occupied from about 1865 until the early twentieth century. Menzies and Stewart were in Bannockburn by the mid-1860s and there is a record of an application for a residence area in both their names in 1873. David Stewart died in 1883. William Roy mined with David Stewart and John Menzies from the 1870s. As mining declined, the land around Stewart Town and Menzies Dam became part of the landscape of small holdings and allotments characteristic of the subdivisions between Bannockburn and the Kawarau River.

Menzies Dam is a large water storage reservoir located on a flat spur and fed by a large water race. Approximately 2 hectares, it is earth-walled, with its inner surface stone-faced for protection from wave erosion. The shape is approximately square with walls on three sides – north, east and west. The inlet race feeds into the southern, slightly uphill side, where no wall is necessary. There are water races leading out from the north and east walls of the reservoir in the direction of nearby mine workings. The water was used for sluicing overburden away from the hillside to allow miners to get at the gold bearing gravels underneath. Related sites include the huts and remnants of the Stewart Town settlement, supply races, paved tailraces, forge sites, mine drives and the sluice workings.

The land on which Menzies Dam stands was included in the Bannockburn Sluicings Historic Reserve gazetted in 2000. In 2015, Menzies Dam remains part of the Bannockburn Sluicings Historic Reserve.