Nangal was built from 1948 as the township for the Bhakra project: a planned settlement of engineers, workers and administration at the point where the Sutlej leaves the hills.
The Nangal dam, downstream of Bhakra, regulates the release and feeds the Nangal Hydel Channel and the Bhakra main line canal.
The Naya Nangal fertiliser plant, one of India's earliest, was built here to use the power. It shaped the town for fifty years and its decline shaped it again.
Nangal is one of a small set of Indian towns built entirely by the state in the first fifteen years after independence, alongside Chandigarh, Bhilai, Rourkela and Durgapur. Its architecture and street layout are of that moment and largely intact.
It is also where a great many Punjabi families first encountered piped water, planned housing and an eight-hour working day.
The township was laid out with sectors, wide roads and public housing, designed in the same years and in the same spirit as Chandigarh, on a much smaller scale.
The fertiliser plant used power from the Bhakra system to fix nitrogen from the air. It was among the first heavy chemical plants in independent India and the site has been restructured several times since.
The wetland formed by the barrage holds winter waterfowl and is one of the few bird sites in Punjab outside the Harike and Ropar reserves.