In 1908, after leaving the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Idaho Division, Savage began an eight-year association with A. J. Wiley, an engineer in Boise, Idaho. Their engineering practice boomed because of increased water use by the private sector for agriculture. Savage spent the majority of his time in the association inspecting and consulting on projects. During his time with Wiley, Savage worked on the Salmon River Dam, the Swan Falls Power Plant on the Snake River, the Barber Dam on the Boise River, the Twin Falls North Side Canal System, and the American Falls Power Plant. Savage also designed the gates for the Arrowrock Dam on the Boise River.
A. J. Wiley Engineering Association
John L. Savage
John L. Savage | A. J. Wiley Engineering Association
Salmon River Dam, the Swan Falls Power Plant on the Snake River, the Barber Dam on the Boise River, the Twin Falls North Side Canal System, and the American Falls Power Plant. Shasta Dam, Parker Dam and Grand Coulee Dam in the United States Yes, he introduced the trial load method of arch analysis; while designing the Grand Coulee Dam, Savage and his assistants solved an engineering problem of "twists" by leaving gaps in a dam structure called "twist adjustment slots". Grand Coulee Dam
who was president when the hoover dam was built
user
Franklin D. Roosevelt.
assistant
where is this dam located?
user
Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona.
assistant
did anyone try to find resources on this dam?
user
An initial attempt at diverting the Colorado river for irrigation purposes occurred in the late 1890s, when land speculator William Beatty built the Alamo Canal just north of the Mexican border; the canal dipped into Mexico before running to a desolate area Beatty named the Imperial Valley.
assistant
how the climate like in this valley?
user
It often has summer temperatures well over , but from late October until mid-April the temperature is relatively mild and can sometimes even reach low temperatures not expected in a desert.
assistant
is there any fort situated here?
user
Yes, Fort Yuma
assistant
and who was it built by?
user
Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context.
assistant
who is the design of the dam attributed to?
user
John L. Savage.
assistant
where is he from?
user
Cooksville, Wisconsin
assistant
was a part of any association?
user
After leaving the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Idaho Division, Savage began an eight-year association with A. J. Wiley, an engineer in Boise, Idaho.
assistant
can you name some other works of his apart from the dam?
user
In 1908, after leaving the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Idaho Division, Savage began an eight-year association with A. J. Wiley, an engineer in Boise, Idaho. Their engineering practice boomed because of increased water use by the private sector for agriculture. Savage spent the majority of his time in the association inspecting and consulting on projects. During his time with Wiley, Savage worked on the Salmon River Dam, the Swan Falls Power Plant on the Snake River, the Barber Dam on the Boise River, the Twin Falls North Side Canal System, and the American Falls Power Plant. Savage also designed the gates for the Arrowrock Dam on the Boise River.
John L. Savage | A. J. Wiley Engineering Association
After working with A.J. Wiley and buying a cattle ranch in Idaho, Savage returned to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in the office of the Chief Engineer. There he became the first designing engineer of the Bureau and later, between 1924 and 1945, served as the chief designing engineer in charge of all civil, electrical, and mechanical design. While in this position, Savage's supervisor, the Chief Engineer, allowed him to work in an independent capacity because of his abilities. With this, Savage was responsible for the designing of large projects, such as the Hoover Dam, the Parker Dam, the Shasta Dam, the All American Canal System and the Grand Coulee Dam.
John L. Savage | U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Chief Engineer Office
In 1903, Savage took an engineering aid job with the United States Bureau of Reclamation, Idaho Division. Before leaving that position in 1908, Savage worked on his first dam, the Minidoka Project. In Idaho, Savage also worked on the Payette-Boise Canal System, the Boise River Diversion Dam and the Upper and Lower Deer Flat Dams.
John L. Savage | U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Idaho Division
John Lucian Savage (December 25, 1879 – December 28, 1967) was an American civil engineer. Among the 60 major dams he supervised the designs for, he is best known for the Hoover Dam, Shasta Dam, Parker Dam and Grand Coulee Dam in the United States along with surveying for the future Three Gorges Dam in China. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the recipient of numerous awards including the John Fritz Medal.
John L. Savage | Introduction
They also studied the behavior of concrete and rolled-earth dams as well as the seismic and land subsidence effects caused by the weight of large reservoirs.
John L. Savage | Contributions to civil engineering
That summer job began a 20-year career with the reclamation service that would change the face of the American west. In 1924, Frank Crowe left the United States Bureau of Reclamation to join the construction firm of Morrison-Knudsen in Boise, Idaho. Morrison-Knudsen had recently signed a partnership with the larger Utah Construction Company to build dams. While working on the Arrowrock Dam in Idaho, Crowe pioneered two practices that are crucial to the construction of large dams. The first was a pneumatic delivery system to transport concrete and the second was a system of overhead cables to allow the pneumatic concrete to be pumped at any point on the construction site.
Frank Crowe | Introduction
When designing the Hoover Dam, Savage introduced artificially cooled mass concrete, which dramatically reduced the setting time of concrete, allowing for faster construction. He also introduced the trial load method of arch analysis, which removed theorized and actual stresses in a finished structure. While designing the Grand Coulee Dam, Savage and his assistants solved an engineering problem of "twists" by leaving gaps in a dam structure called "twist adjustment slots" in order to provide "give" as hydrostatic pressure amounted on a concrete dam, preventing cracking. Savage and his associates developed methods and equipment that determined the stress on penstocks — pipes responsible for directly transferring water to generators in hydroelectricity power plants.
John L. Savage | Contributions to civil engineering
Eastwood designed seventeen dams in his career: one in Utah, one in Arizona, one in British Columbia, two in Idaho, and the other twelve in California. Eastwood's work includes:
John Samuel Eastwood | Work
John L. Savage was known as an exemplary and diligent worker among his peers, often seeing engineering problems before they arose. Savage's peers often referred to him as the first "billion dollar" American engineer because of the costs of the projects he designed and supervised. He was also known by some as "Jack Dam" Savage. Savage never saw money as an object of his work and once said that he took pleasure in joining "enterprises that have as their objective the development of human relations." During Savage's 1945 John Fritz Medal award ceremony, the following was said: "Among Savage's major satisfactions is that of having seen the West grow and thrive as a result of the Bureau of Reclamation program for power and irrigation.
John L. Savage | Legacy
Following the initial construction of Mountain Dell Dam, Eastwood continued his career in water resource development and dam design, becoming involved in projects in California, Idaho, Arizona, Mexico, and British Columbia.
John Samuel Eastwood | Multiple arch dams
His landscapes evoke the world without industrialization.
The Dam | Analysis
In Australia, Savage was consulted during the construction of the Upper Yarra and Warragamba Dams. Savage consulted on several dams in Afghanistan for the purpose of irrigation. In Switzerland, he consulted on the design and construction of the Grande Dixence Dam. He also consulted on numerous projects in India, Palestine and Spain. In 1944, the Chairman of the Nationalist Government of China, Chiang Kai-shek invited Savage to China where he surveyed and designed his "dream dam". At the time, the project was known as the Yangtze Gorge Project and would help irrigate of land and control the Yangtze River, which was prone to deadly floods.
John L. Savage | Official overseas consulting
With this technique, Crowe built some of the largest dams in the American west, including the Hoover Dam, Parker Dam downstream from Hoover; Copper Basin and Gene Wash Dams on the Colorado Aqueduct system; and Shasta Dam in Northern California. All these dams were important but none approached the mythic scale or mystique of Hoover Dam.
Frank Crowe | Introduction
Working for the B. F. Sturtevant Company in Hyde Park, Boston, Massachusetts, in 1903, Ambursen developed an innovative concrete slab and buttress dam for an industrial client in Theresa, New York. Ambursen promptly filed a patent on his own behalf and organized the "Ambursen Hydraulic Construction Company", based in Boston. From 1903 through 1917, the company used the technique to construct more than one hundred dams in North America, most in New England. The record-breaking La Prele Dam in Converse County, Wyoming used 43 percent less concrete than an equivalent concrete gravity dam. The structure allowed an interior hollow under the spillway; the 1907 Bloede's Dam on the Patapsco River in Maryland housed its hydroelectric power plant inside that hollow and therefore "under water".
Nils F. Ambursen | Career
Following this abrupt separation from the Big Creek project at the age of 53, Eastwood was left with only modest financial holdings and, as a means of survival, he began actively pursuing a career devoted to the design of multiple arch dams.
John Samuel Eastwood | Big Creek Complex
Freeman is noted for his work designing and building the Charles River Dam in Boston, advising the US government on dam and lock foundations for the Panama Canal, and influencing the design of MIT's new campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Freeman was the design engineer for the Lake Spaulding Dam, the Holter Dam, the Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct, the Charles River Dam, the Keokuk Dam, the Los Angeles Aqueduct, and portions of the Panama Canal.
John Ripley Freeman | Work
A dam outside a town is filling up with water due to heavy rains. David Powell, the disgraced architect of the dam building project, comes back to town to reunite with his estranged family, however he is rejected, with his wife claiming that he came back purely to see the dam. David then visits the dam and reveals that the project manager cut corners in order to take money himself and framed the architect to hide his own corruption. The dam's resident engineer, Frank, David's son, Garth and David himself set out to relieve the growing pressure on the dam wall, however the pressure release does not work, as corner cutting had led to this portion not being completed.
Killer Flood | Plot
Despite the economic depression which had hit the nation, Hagerman poured money into reconstruction and repair of the structures, completing the dams in 1894. Similar to the Avalon structure, the McMillan Dam was a rockfill dam, long and high. The Mcmillan Dam served as a water storage facility, while the Avalon Dam served as a water distribution center for the irrigation system. The Avalon Dam, meanwhile, was raised by five feet and extended by . The flume was also rebuilt.
J. J. Hagerman | Irrigation projects
When Savage returned, he published his report titled "Yangtze Gorge and Tributary Project" in which he stated in the preface: "The Yangtze Gorge Project is a ‘CLASSIC'." He also stated that it would bring employment and a higher standard of living in China. On June 3, 1946, the first of the dams he suggested, the Upper Tsing Yuan Tung, began but was halted on August 15, 1947 because of the Chinese Civil War. His dream, would be a reality almost 60 years later; standing as the Three Gorges Dam, one of the largest dams and supplying the largest power plant in the world.
John L. Savage | Official overseas consulting
Smith worked with Barnes on the Panama Canal project; they had both resigned in 1907 to go to work for the New York Board of Water Supply. Together the two men also formed a general hydraulic and construction engineering firm.
Starved Rock Lock and Dam | Design
He left the Army Corps in 1907 to become the division engineer and later the design engineer for the New York Board of Water Supply, where his responsibilities included design and construction projects for the Catskill water system. In 1910, the Albany Society of Civil Engineers published his work, "The Design of Masonry Dams." In 1914 he left the New York Board of Water Supply to form a general hydraulic and construction engineering firm with Mortimer Grant Barnes, with whom he had worked on the Panama Canal and at the New York water supply board. The two designed a hydroelectric plant at Waterloo, New York.
Walter Mickle Smith | New York and Ohio
In the early 20th century, Salt Lake City regularly experienced severe water shortages in mid-winter and late summer. To alleviate this, bonds were floated in 1914 to finance the construction of three storage dams, the largest being Mountain Dell Dam in Parley's Canyon, ten miles east of the city, that was built in two stages from 1914 to 1925. Earlier, Eastwood had built four dams in California and his reputation as dam designer was growing. He had written several articles in "Western Engineering" describing his Big Bear Valley Dam, Los Verjeles Dam (in Yuba County, California) and Kennedy Dam (in Jackson, California), and had also published a four-page promotional "supplement" distribution with copies of the March 1915 "Western Engineering".
John Samuel Eastwood | Multiple arch dams
While with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Savage became a renowned expert on dams and civil engineering; he consulted in 19 countries on hundreds of projects. In 1938, the Government of New South Wales asked Savage to consult on the Burrinjuck Dam in Australia after fears that the dam wall was unstable. Initially, Savage was not allowed to go because of a U.S. law forbidding federal employees from accepting money from foreign powers. Savage refused any payments and offered his services anyway, writing his superiors: "Any assistance will be gratis and I shall not accept any reimbursement for expenses. An overdue vacation will be sufficient gratuity." After serving Mexico, in 1941, the United States Congress unanimously passed legislation allowing Savage to officially consult in India, Australia, and other countries.
John L. Savage | Official overseas consulting
The Salmon Falls Dam was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009. The listing included a contributing building and six contributing structures in addition to the dam itself, on . The dam's engineer was Andrew J. Wiley. The historic listing includes the dam, one building, and seven other structures.
Salmon Falls Dam | Historic site
Since the dam no longer had the integrity of the design, materials, workmanship, feeling, or association that it had when it was originally listed, the National Historic Landmark designation was withdrawn on March 10, 1999. The Theodore Roosevelt Dam National Register District contains other resources that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but the dam itself is no longer a contributing property to the district.
Theodore Roosevelt Dam | Later expansion
With the assistance of the National Laboratory of Anthropology, True researched authentic decorative motifs from Indian sand paintings, textiles, baskets and ceramics. The images and colors are based on Native American visions of rain, lightning, water, clouds, and local animals—lizards, serpents, birds—and on the Southwestern landscape of stepped mesas. In these works, which are integrated into the walkways and interior halls of the dam, True also reflected on the machinery of the operation, making the symbolic patterns appear both ancient and modern. With the agreement of Kaufmann and the engineers, True also devised for the pipes and machinery an innovative color-coding which was implemented throughout all BOR projects.
Hoover Dam | Architectural style
The initial plans for the facade of the dam, the power plant, the outlet tunnels and ornaments clashed with the modern look of an arch dam. The Bureau of Reclamation, more concerned with the dam's functionality, adorned it with a Gothic-inspired balustrade and eagle statues. This initial design was criticized by many as being too plain and unremarkable for a project of such immense scale, so Los Angeles-based architect Gordon B. Kaufmann, then the supervising architect to the Bureau of Reclamation, was brought in to redesign the exteriors. Kaufmann greatly streamlined the design and applied an elegant Art Deco style to the entire project.
Hoover Dam | Architectural style
In 1931 Khosla was deputed to the US and Europe to study soil reclamation, water logging and the latest techniques in dam design. On his return he was posted to the Panjnad Head Works of Sutlej Valley Canals. Between June and September 1936 while in charge of the Hafizabad Division, he wrote his magnum opus, "The design of weirs on permeable foundation". This publication revolutionised the design of such structures in India and abroad.
Ajudhiya Nath Khosla | Career
True's consulting artist job lasted through 1942; it was extended so he could complete design work for the Parker, Shasta and Grand Coulee dams and power plants. True's work on the Hoover Dam was humorously referred to in a poem published in "The New Yorker", part of which read, "lose the spark, and justify the dream; but also worthy of remark will be the color scheme".
Hoover Dam | Architectural style
Ambursen's designs include: "(all dams listed located in the United States)"
Nils F. Ambursen | Work
Louis Rea "Doug" Douglass (March 2, 1888 – January 13, 1979) was an American civil engineer. He spent more than 20 years with the United States Bureau of Reclamation and was in charge of Hoover Dam and the surrounding park land for four years. From 1933 to 1954, Douglass worked for the Bureau of Reclamation. He prepared construction drawings for Hoover Dam and other aspects of the Boulder Canyon Project. During the mid-1940s, he was an Assistant Regional Director with responsibility for the Davis Dam 67 miles downstream from Hoover Dam. In 1949, he was sent to Japan where he prepared a study and recommendations for the design and construction of dams and irrigation works.
Louis R. Douglass | Introduction
Harvey Slocum (October 23, 1887 – November 11, 1961) was an American civil engineer and dam-building expert, known primarily for his part in the construction of Grand Coulee Dam in the United States and the Bhakra Dam in India. Slocum started out as a labourer in a steel mill and rose to the position of construction superintendent of the Grand Coulee Dam. Harvey Slocum was then Construction Superintendent of the Bull Shoals Dam built between 1947 and 1951. Slocum joined the Bhakra Dam construction project as chief engineer in 1952 and imprinted on it his own distinctive style of working.
Harvey Slocum | Introduction
While at Rand Corporation, Hirshleifer wrote a report which tore apart the Department of Water and Power's feasibility report for the Oroville Dam, noting among other things that the report failed to include the cost of building the dam. The dam ended up being built. (Cadillac Desert, Chapter 10).
Jack Hirshleifer | Introduction
The collection includes a large number of documents, photographs and maps pertaining to numerous Bureau of Reclamation dam projects.
Robert E. Glover | Introduction
Late in his career, Hazen concentrated on ways to statistically describe the recurrence interval of flood flows in rivers. His book on the subject was published the year he died.
Allen Hazen | Hydraulics and dams
In 1917, Utah Construction Company was awarded the $7 million O'Shaughnessy Dam contract, a controversial project that impounds the Tuolumne River in the Hetch Hetchy Valley of California's Sierra Nevada mountains. Success with the O'Shaughnessy Dam convinced the Wattis Brothers to bid on more dam projects. In 1922, Utah Construction Company formed a partnership with the Morrison-Knudsen Company of Boise, Idaho. With Frank Crowe as the chief engineer, the MK UC partnership successfully built dams throughout the American west.
William Henry Wattis | Building dams
Fort Peck Dam is probably best known for being the subject of a photograph of the spillway taken by Margaret Bourke-White while still under construction that was the cover photo of the first issue of "Life" magazine on November 23, 1936. Later, the photograph by Bourke-White was used on a United States postage stamp in the "Celebrate the Century" series. The dam is also center-stage in "Bucking the Sun", by the Montana-born writer Ivan Doig, published in 1996. The novel tells the story of the fictional Duff family and their various roles in the mammoth dam project, and in the process describes the working conditions and way of life of the thousands of workers hired to construct the Fort Peck Dam, many of them homesteaders from upriver farms destined to disappear under the waters of the newly formed Fort Peck Lake.
Fort Peck Dam | Representations in art and literature
Keswick Dam was named after Lord Keswick, the president of the Mountain Copper Company Limited. The project contract, with the Guy F. Atkinson and Kiefer Construction companies, was entered into by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation; and construction started in August 1941. There was a labor shortage due to problems in the Central Valley, but the Bureau of Reclamation gave it the go-ahead. By the end of 1941, despite labor issues, the Guy F. Atkinson Company completed the foundations. During construction, weather was another issue. In the hot summer months, the workers had to spray water to cool the aggregates.
Keswick Dam | Construction
Walls started work at the Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company, located in Niagara Falls, New York. He became assistant engineer of the Montreal Shawinigan Water and Power Company, located in the Canadian city of Montreal, Quebec, in 1901. Walls was named chief engineer of the Pennsylvania Water and Power Company. As chief engineer he was involved in dam construction. He was later president of the company.
John Abbet Walls | Career
Construction of the dam, spillway, and outlet works began in 1960, and was completed by 1964. The dam is high and long. The earth-filled dam is constructed of rock with a central clay core, which prevents water from passing through the dam. A lake is formed behind the dam with almost of shoreline. South of the dam is the emergency spillway. The spillway contains six gates used to control high water and prevent the lake from flowing over the top of the dam. The outlet works consist of an intake structure and an outlet tunnel. The -high intake structure is located north of the dam, and contains gates which control the amount of water released into Russell Fork River.
John W. Flannagan Dam | Construction
Work was halted for over nine months beginning in late December 1942. The Reclamation Act of 1902 had racial exclusions on labor which were strictly adhered to until Congress changed the law in 1943. This allowed Japanese American internees to work on Reclamation projects; Anderson Ranch utilized internees from the Minidoka War Relocation Center, northeast of Twin Falls.
Anderson Ranch Dam | Introduction
To further help the structure cope with the climate, engineers placed one-inch steel reinforcing bars within the upstream and downstream faces of the dam. The concrete's strength in compression was initially 4,500 lbs. per square inch to meet an estimated 1,500 PSI within the structure. The upstream face of the dam was also coated in asphalt for protection against water. Despite the strength of the dam's concrete, two parallel inclined cracks were discovered on one of the arches shortly after construction.
Daniel-Johnson dam | Dam
The company sued to preserve its patents fairly aggressively but with mixed success. In some cases, the Ambursen dam became a more generic "Ambursen type", for instance at the 1911 Lock and Dam No. 1 on the Upper Mississippi River between Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota. Civil engineer George Freeman received his own November 1912 patent on a modified version of the concrete buttress dam used there.
Nils F. Ambursen | Career
The force of the logs and cut lumber and the subsequent fires practically destroyed the city. The flood waters traveled west along the route of the Henrys Fork of the Snake River, around both sides of the Menan Buttes, significantly damaging the community of Roberts. The city of Idaho Falls, even further down on the flood plain, had time to prepare. At the older American Falls Dam downstream, engineers increased discharge by less than 5% before the flood arrived. That dam held and the flood was effectively over, but tens of thousands of acres of land near the river were stripped of fertile topsoil.
Teton Dam | Deaths, damage, and property claims
While designing the Big Creek project, Eastwood had devised an inexpensive type of reinforced concrete dam design which minimized the amount of material required and, consequently, reduced construction costs. In 1908, while waiting for work on Big Creek to begin, he designed and built the Hume Lake Dam for the Hume-Bennett Lumber Company. This structure is located in the Sierra Nevada about forty-five miles south of Big Creek. The first of its kind, its completion in 1909 demonstrated the practicality of the multiple-arch design. Shortly thereafter, Eastwood received the contract for the design of a multiple-arch dam to supersede the 1884 Big Bear Valley Arch Dam near San Bernardino in Southern California.
John Samuel Eastwood | Big Creek Complex
The Bureau of Reclamation has been severely criticized for the permanent alterations it made to natural waterflows throughout the western United States. Works like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", by novelist Ken Kesey, lament what they see as the destruction caused by the dams and reservoirs constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation and its sister agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, during this period. On the other hand, the electrical power generated by the new federal dams constructed during this period has become an essential element in the lives of millions of people in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and neighboring states.
Michael W. Straus | Criticism
"Fifty Cents an Hour: The Builders and Boomtowns of the Fort Peck Dam", by Montana author Lois Lonnquist, published in 2006, is an overall history of the Fort Peck dam and spillway construction. Built by the Army Corps of Engineers, PWA Project #30 provided thousands of jobs during the Great Depression. The book includes the history of the boomtowns that sprang up in the area, and the "project people" who lived and worked at Fort Peck during the "dam days."
Fort Peck Dam | Representations in art and literature
Before closing on Ruff's purchase, Congressman Reilly had crucial discharge pipes removed and sold for their value as scrap metal, so there was no practical way to lower the level of water behind the dam should repairs be indicated. Ruff, while he was not a civil engineer, had a background that included being a railroad tunnel contractor and supervised the repairs to the dam, which did not include a successful resolution of the inability to discharge the water and substantially lower the lake for repair purposes. The five cast iron discharge pipes, each with an inside diameter of two feet, had previously allowed a controlled release of water.
South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club | Major flaws regarding the dam
The Diversion Dam and Deer Flat Embankments is the collective name given in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places program to a set of three dams near Boise and Nampa, Idaho. The dams are components of the United States Bureau of Reclamation's Boise Project, and were designed to provide irrigation water to of Idaho farmland in conjunction with the New York Irrigation District (New York Canal). The Diversion Dam also provides hydroelectric generation capacity. The dams were listed on the National Register in 1976. The three dams that make up the Diversion Dam and Deer Flat Embankments are:
Diversion Dam and Deer Flat Embankments | Introduction
C. Hermann, chief engineer for the SVWC, were "so intensely conceited that they imagine all they might do should be immune from criticism." Indicating construction details or practices that he thought incorrect, O'Shaughnessy wrote of what was, in his view, sloppiness and recklessness at Calaveras dam site; he said "another feature which made objectionable impressions" on him was "the flippant manner in which the young college boys in charge of the work and Mulholland, with his swollen ideas of accomplishment, have undertaken this very serious engineering project." On March 24, 1918, the dam suffered a partial collapse of the upstream slope.
William Mulholland | Calaveras Dam
The dam was built in 53 sections called monoliths. A grouting tunnel or gallery was built in order to fill gaps between the dam and foundation with concrete. The spillway consists of 22-tainter gates for overflow and at the base of the dam, 6-sluice gates were installed to maintain downstream flows. Construction was completed and the dam was opened in 1953.
John H. Kerr Dam | Background and construction
It was feared the dam would fail and there would be a flash flood in Sullivan Creek. The cause of this fracturing is a process known as "exfoliation".
Twain Harte Dam | Introduction
de Burgh (Supervising Engineers). The successful completion of the dam and its continuation of use as a water supply dam are a lasting testament to the professional capabilities of the late Victorian/Edwardian era generation of engineers of the Public Works Department. The association of Thomas Keele with the initial dam proposal, and the subsequent problems associated with the cost and the ongoing Royal Commissions into the project was immortalised through Banjo Paterson's satirical ballad "The Dam that Keele Built".
Cataract Dam | History
The name John S. Rowell, founder and president of the J. S. Rowell Manufacturing Company, makers of the Tiger Seeders and Grain Drills, hay rakes, and cultivators, should occupy a high place in the list of inventors of practical agricultural implements. Like a number of men of his time, he achieved success in the agricultural implement world with no opportunity other than those produced by his own efforts. In addition to founding the JS Rowell Manufacturing Company, he was also one of the 1881 incorporators and a Director of the Beaver Dam Cotton Mills, as a founding incorporator and director of the Beaver Dam Malleable Iron Works which grew to titanic proportions, Beaver Dam Electric Light Company, and President of the Old National Bank in Beaver Dam from 1896 until his death in 1907.
John Samuel Rowell | Career and Accomplishments
Francis Trenholm Crowe ( – ) was a civil engineer and employee of Morrison-Knudsen, who later became in 1931, the General Construction Superintendent of the Boulder Dam construction contract. Born in Trenholmville, Quebec, Crowe attended the Governor Dummer Academy, matriculating to the University of Maine where he graduated in 1905 with a degree in civil engineering. The University's Francis Crowe Society is named in his honor. Crowe became interested in the American west during a lecture given by Frank Elwin Weymouth (1874-1941), a civil engineer with the United States Bureau of Reclamation. He signed up for a summer job before the end of the lecture.
Frank Crowe | Introduction
Success with the O'Shaughnessy Dam convinced the Wattis Brothers to bid on more dam projects. In 1922, Utah Construction Company formed a partnership with Morrison-Knudsen of Boise. With Frank Crowe as the chief engineer, the MK-UC partnership successfully built dams throughout the American west. In 1931, the Wattis Brothers spearheaded the formation of Six Companies to build the Hoover Dam which was the largest construction project ever tackled by the US Government up to the time. Including the Hoover Dam, Utah Construction built 58 dams between 1916 and 1969.
Utah Construction Company | History
After completing his undergraduate degree, Danny Fread worked six years for Texaco, where he was promoted to Senior Engineer, specializing in the design of gravity and pressurized piping systems. He then returned to University of Missouri-Rolla to complete his Ph.D. in civil engineering in 1971. His studies focused on hydraulics / hydrology / mathematics, and his research was centered on unsteady flow and numerical / experimental simulation of breached dams. After earning his degree, he became a research hydrologist with the National Weather Service, where he spent 29 years. Inspired by the tragedy of the failure of the Grand Teton Dam in 1976, he undertook research on the development of computer models to forecast the flow of flooding rivers and dam failures.
Danny Lee Fread | Career
J. Augustine DeSazilly ("fl." mid-19th century) was a French engineer. In the early 1850s, DeSazilly published a paper postulating the "profile of equal resistance," a major theoretical advance in the technology of masonry gravity dams, based on the hydrostatic force exerted by a given height of water in relation to the weight of masonry used in the dam's construction (estimated at 150 pounds per cubic foot). DeSazilly considered two extreme conditions, a filled reservoir and an empty reservoir, and created a model for equalizing stresses on the masonry across every horizontal cross section. He developed a vertical cross section in which the stresses at the upstream face of a masonry gravity dam with the reservoir empty are equal to those at the downstream face with the reservoir filled.
J. Augustine DeSazilly | Introduction
John agreed to sell part of his land to the Miami Conservancy District for the Englewood dam to be built. It was the largest of the five dams that were designed by Arthur Morgan to prevent future flooding of the Miami Valley. John Aull was more than happy to help finance such a project because he knew the safety of his farm depended on its development. This farm eventually became the heart and soul of himself and his future wife Marie Sturwold.
Aullwood Audubon Center and Farm | History
Brett returned to Montana and a hero's welcome. In 1936, the Montana Power Company restarted the project and completed it in 1938. The dam raised the existing Flathead Lake by 10 feet, and enabled control of the lake's level to generate electricity and for irrigation and recreational uses. The dam's hydro power plant consists of three units that receive water from three different penstocks, located 865 feet upstream. In March 1927 Senators Burton K Wheeler, Lynn Frazier and Robert La Follette blocked a bill that would have denied tribal ownership of the dam. "Senator Wheeler was always proud of the royalties he secured for the Flatheads."
Kerr Dam | Construction
John Ripley Freeman (July 27, 1855 – October 6, 1932) was an American civil and hydraulic engineer. He is known for the design of several waterworks and served as president of both the American Society of Civil Engineers and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
John Ripley Freeman | Introduction
As DA, he oversaw a huge reorganization to combine the two.
Paul Van Dam | Introduction
There were 112 deaths reported as associated with the construction of the dam. The first was surveyor John Gregory ("J.G.") Tierney who drowned on December 20, 1922 in a flash flood, while looking for an ideal spot for the dam. The official list's final death occurred on December 20, 1935, when Patrick Tierney, electrician's helper and the son of J.G. Tierney, fell from one of the two Arizona-side intake towers. Included in the fatality list are three workers who took their own lives on site, one in 1932 and two in 1933. Of the 112 fatalities, 91 were Six Companies employees, three were Bureau of Reclamation employees, and one was a visitor to the site; the remainder were employees of various contractors not part of Six Companies.
Hoover Dam | Construction deaths
After the disastrous Great Dayton, Ohio Flood in 1913, Morgan proposed a system of dry earthen dams to control the river systems above Dayton. His concepts were challenged because of his lack of formal engineering training, but eventually his plans were adopted and constructed, and the subsequent years proved the effectiveness of his concepts. Because of this success, he was chosen in 1933 to design and deploy the Tennessee Valley system of dams for flood control and electrification.
Arthur Ernest Morgan | Engineer
The dam has a total length of with its concrete section making up 1,904 feet of that length. The concrete section is flanked on both sides by earthen-embankment dams that total long. The concrete section houses the power plant and spillway of the dam. The spillway contains ten- tainter gates that help regulate the reservoir level along with controlling flooding.
Richard B. Russell Dam | Dam characteristics
They lacked sufficient resources even in combination with their longtime partners, Morrison-Knudsen, which employed the nation's leading dam builder, Frank Crowe. They formed a joint venture to bid for the project with Pacific Bridge Company of Portland, Oregon; Henry J. Kaiser & W. A. Bechtel Company of San Francisco; MacDonald & Kahn Ltd. of Los Angeles; and the J.F. Shea Company of Portland, Oregon. The joint venture was called Six Companies, Inc. as Bechtel and Kaiser were considered one company for purposes of Six in the name. The name was descriptive and was an inside joke among the San Franciscans in the bid, where "Six Companies" was also a Chinese benevolent association in the city.
Hoover Dam | Design, preparation and contracting
Savage. In December of that year, unusually heavy rainfall filled the reservoir behind the incomplete dam, very nearly causing its failure. Over the following few months, construction was hurried in order to keep up with the rising lake, which was only held back by wooden flashboards as the water level actually exceeded the height of the poured concrete for most of the construction period. Temporary sluiceways had to be maintained in order to drain excess water from the lake, which consistently threatened to overtop the dam. By the time the dam was completed in 1923 it was said that "the value of the water stored behind Barrett Dam by the time the structure was completed exceeded the entire cost of the dam".
Barrett Dam | History
John L. Savage retired from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in 1945 but continued to consult in countries such as Afghanistan, South Africa, India, Singapore, Formosa, Japan, Mexico, Canada and Australia.
John L. Savage | Retirement
Associated with the dam is a small corrugated iron clad pumping shed, which contained three pumps. In 1993, these were rated as being of some significance, with two dating from 1927 and the third from the mid-1930s.
Medlow Dam | Description
Even before Congress approved the Boulder Canyon Project, the Bureau of Reclamation was considering what kind of dam should be used. Officials eventually decided on a massive concrete arch-gravity dam, the design of which was overseen by the Bureau's chief design engineer John L. Savage. The monolithic dam would be thick at the bottom and thin near the top, and would present a convex face towards the water above the dam. The curving arch of the dam would transmit the water's force into the abutments, in this case the rock walls of the canyon. The wedge-shaped dam would be thick at the bottom, narrowing to at the top, leaving room for a highway connecting Nevada and Arizona.
Hoover Dam | Design, preparation and contracting
The dam's opponents cried foul, but the bill nevertheless passed the Senate and was signed into law, allowing TVA to finally close the dam's gates.
John Duncan Sr. | Congressional career
Savage, surveyed the area and drew up a dam proposal for the 'Yangtze River Project'. Some 54 Chinese engineers went to the U.S. for training. The original plans called for the dam to employ a unique method for moving ships: the ships would enter locks located at the lower and upper ends of the dam and then cranes would move the ships from one lock to the next. Groups of craft would be lifted together for efficiency. It is not known whether this solution was considered for its water-saving performance or because the engineers thought the difference in height between the river above and below the dam too great for alternative methods.
Three Gorges Dam | History
In the 1820s and 30s, Lieutenant-Colonel John By supervised the construction of the Rideau Canal in Canada near modern-day Ottawa and built a series of curved masonry dams as part of the waterway system. In particular, the Jones Falls Dam, built by John Redpath, was completed in 1832 as the largest dam in North America and an engineering marvel. In order to keep the water in control during construction, two sluices, artificial channels for conducting water, were kept open in the dam. The first was near the base of the dam on its east side. A second sluice was put in on the west side of the dam, about above the base.
Dam | Industrial revolution
Water released from the dam is diverted into a water purification facility 3 miles (5 km) downstream for civil consumption.
Howard A. Hanson Dam | Characteristics
However, in 1916, heavy rains supposedly brought on by Charles Hatfield, a "rainmaker", hired by the city of San Diego to put an end to a drought, caused the dam to burst. The failure sent a wall of water high downstream, destroying buildings and bridges, and washing thousands of tons of sediment and wreckage into San Diego Bay. Eleven Japanese American farmers were killed. The dam was rebuilt as Savage Dam in 1918, and has functioned properly since.
Savage Dam | Introduction
On June 5, 1889, five days after the dam breach flood, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) appointed a committee of four prominent engineers to investigate the cause of the disaster. This committee was led by the esteemed James B. Francis, a hydraulic engineer best known for his work related to canals, flood control, turbine design, dam construction, and hydraulic calculations. Francis was a founding member of the ASCE and served as its president from November 1880 to January 1882. The ASCE committee visited the South Fork dam, reviewed the original engineering design of the dam and modifications made during repairs, interviewed eyewitnesses, commissioned a topographic survey of the dam remnants, and performed hydrologic calculations.
Johnstown Flood | Investigation of the cause of the 1889 dam breach and flood
During this time Eastwood pioneered the design of the multiple-arch dam; he would later become renowned for the building of this type of dam across the West.
Big Creek Hydroelectric Project | Background
In 1892, newly-elected House of Representatives member from Nevada, Francis G. Newlands, began advocating for more irrigation in the western United States in order to further the United States' agricultural growth. His advocacy had begun when he first moved to Nevada in 1888 and began to dream up a new irrigation system for the west. Newlands called his project the Truckee Irrigation Project, which ultimately was unsuccessful as a private venture. However, although Newlands did not find success in his short career as an entrepreneur, his quest for more irrigation became part of the reason Newlands was voted into office.
Lake Tahoe Dam | Newlands Reclamation Act
He then attended the Army War College from 1925 to 1926. From 1926 to 1930 he was District Engineer, Washington, D.C. Engineer District. As such he became involved in a conflict between proponents of the development of hydroelectric power through damming the Great Falls of the Potomac River and the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission. Despite his advocacy, the falls remain undammed to this day. On 1 September 1930, Somervell was transferred to the Lower Mississippi Valley Division as Assistant Chief Engineer. The next year he became assistant to, and then the District Engineer of the Memphis District. In 1933, he teamed up with Hines again, for an economic survey of Turkey, which culminated in a seven-volume report.
Brehon B. Somervell | Between the wars
The Six Companies board selected Frank Crowe, an employee of Morrison-Knudsen as the General Construction Superintendent of the Boulder Dam construction. Crowe also drafted the bid, hired each of the men who were employed during the course of the project, lived in Boulder City with his wife and two daughters and was on the dam site every day of the week until the project was completed. He was rewarded a bonus percentage of the profit for completing virtually every portion of the job well ahead of schedule. Six Companies, Inc. started working in late spring, around June of 1931. Six Companies Inc.
Six Companies, Inc. | Hoover Dam
In 1890 Waldo joined E. Jersey Water Company, where he became assistant of Clemens Herschel. In the first two years they designed the dams of the Pequannock watershed in the Pequannock River. Still with the company in 1892 he was put in charge of the Passaic Water Company, Paterson as Principal assistant engineer, and later served as engineer at the Montclair Water Company, and at the Acquackanonk Water Company until 1900. In 1900 Waldo was appointed chief engineer at the E. Jersey Water Company. Here he directed the design and construction of a "mechanical filterstation plant at Little Falls, the largest and most modern plant of its kind in the United States at its completion." From 1903 to 1905 he was chief engineer in the aqueduct commissioner of New York, where he assisted in the completion of the construction of the New Croton Dam.
J. Waldo Smith | Further career and recognitions
In 1930, McKay left Bend to take a job with the Oregon Highway Department. He worked for the highway department for four years before taking a career position as a construction engineer with the United States Bureau of Reclamation. His first assignment with the bureau began in 1934 at Parker Dam on the Colorado River located on the border between California and Arizona. In 1936, McKay married Melba T. McKay. Prior to her marriage, she worked at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios in Hollywood, California. After their marriage, Melba joined her husband at the Parker Dam site. Together they had two children. McKay worked at Parker Dam for a total of four years before transferring to Marshall Ford Dam near Austin, Texas.
Gordon W. McKay | Construction career
Frederick Haynes Newell (March 5, 1862 – July 5, 1932), served as the first Director of the United States Reclamation Service, was born in Bradford, Pennsylvania. He graduated in 1885 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and after field experience in Colorado and other states was appointed on October 2, 1888, as Assistant Hydraulic Engineer of the United States Geological Survey, being the first aide designated under Major John Wesley Powell to investigate the extent to which the arid regions of the United States might be reclaimed by irrigation. He was subsequently appointed Chief of the Hydrographic Branch. At the same time, he actively assisted Representative Francis G.
Frederick Haynes Newell | Introduction
Shortly before he died, he had won a Pew Charitable Trusts Fellowship to support efforts to restore Pacific salmon habitat through dam removal.
Marc Reisner | Dam removal
Westergaard worked as technical expert to the Bureau of Reclamation on the design of Hoover Dam. In 1936 professor Westergaard was appointed to the Gordon McKay professorship for structural engineering at Harvard University. Between 1937-1946 acted as dean of the Graduate School of Engineering.
Harold M. Westergaard | Biography
The existing dam is the second structure to be called the American Falls Dam. Core samples taken in the early 1960s of the concrete of the original structure revealed deterioration resulting in impaired durability and strength caused by a chemical reaction between components of the concrete. The solution was to replace the original dam with a second dam built downstream in 1978. Replacement of the original dam was authorized by a congressional act of December 28, 1973 (87 Stat. 904, Public Law 93-206). In 1976, the Idaho Power Company built the dam's current power plant which consists of three generators with a capacity to produce 112,420 kilowatts (112 MW) of hydroelectricity.
American Falls Dam | 1960–1978
This work culminated in the 1900 founding of the Twin Falls Land and Water Company and the subsequent completion of Milner Dam in 1905.
I. B. Perrine | Idaho
From 1887 till 1890 he worked as superintendent and chief engineer of the Walnut Grove Dam on the Hassayampa River north of Wickenburg. As the dam was nearing completion, in February 1890, a flood caused the dam to collapse, causing 70 deaths and millions of dollars in damage. Brodie himself was held innocent of wrongdoing in the failure as he had publicly called for higher construction standards on the project. In 1891, Brodie was appointed commander of the Arizona Territorial National Guard by Governor John N. Irwin, a position he held till May 1892.
Alexander Oswald Brodie | Background
Large examples of lava dams from the geologic record include those repeatedly developed from the western side of the Grand Canyon, with the largest remnant now termed Prospect Dam, and in several locations within the Snake River drainage. The former 'Lake Idaho', which existed for more than 6.5 million years, filled the western portion of the behind such a structure and created the western section of the Snake River Plain, and accumulated 4000 ft of lake sediments. Other locations include near American Falls, Idaho, and numerous others. Many of these were overtopped, washed out, or skirted by the outburst flood originating from ancestral Lake Bonneville.
Volcanic dam | Lava dam
There was increased predation of young fish in the seasonal reservoir pool created by the dam and after juveniles pass through the dam's bypass systems. There was a loss of 3.5 miles of fall chinook salmon spawning habitat that could be reclaimed from the elimination of the seasonal reservoir pool when the dam was removed.
Savage Rapids Dam | Reasons for removal
A related project, the Paradise project on the Clark Fork River just below its confluence with the Flathead, was opposed by local interests. The Paradise project was considered by the Corps of Engineers to be a more desirable project than Glacier Point, but was considered by the Corps to be difficult to develop compared to Glacier View, given the developed nature of the flooded area proposed at Paradise versus the relatively unpopulated Glacier View region. Other proposed dams were the Smoky Range, Canyon Creek and Spruce Park dams, none of which were built. Hungry Horse Dam was, however, completed in 1953 by the U.S.
Glacier View Dam | Related projects
One project he worked on for about five years was a campaign to build a dam on the Colorado River. He founded an entity called "West Anvil Water & Power Company". He established it with family members to develop the Webster Hill reservoir and hydropower project on the Colorado River. In 1982 this entity applied for a permit to build a dam on this river, submitting an environmental assessment and resource management plan for Glenwood Springs Resource Area, but the application was ultimately rejected by the relevant regulatory agencies. It was after this time, circa 1984, that Savage began to write what would become The Millennial Project, in his spare time.
Marshall Savage | West Anvil Water & Power Company
In 1947 he departed civil service and started his own consulting firm, Coyne et Bellier. Other dams he later designed in France include the Grandval and Roselend Dams. Overseas he designed the Kariba Dam on the Zimbabwe-Zambia border and the Daniel-Johnson Dam in Quebec.
André Coyne | Introduction
He was president of the American Engineering Council from 1930-1931. He played a significant role during the St. Francis Dam expedition. Grunsky and his co-worker John C. Branner announced that the dam was working properly right before the St. Francis dam broke. The breakage of the dam marked the end of William Mulholland's career.
Carl E. Grunsky | Introduction
The construction was canceled and the project is abandoned. Much of the preliminary work on the dam can still be seen today. In 2005, Doolittle secured funding for studies to move the project forward.
John Doolittle | Auburn Dam Project
G.R. Schneider. The construction contracts for the dam were awarded to the Morrison-Knudsen company and the Utah Construction Company. Both companies had participated in the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam and Hoover Dam. Construction began in the spring of 1941 with the removal of of earth to expose the bedrock foundation and an additional had to be removed to stabilize it. This was accomplished using draglines and power shovels. Most of the smaller aggregate used in construction was removed from the sand and gravel bars of a twenty-mile (32 km) section of the White River. A quarry and crushing plant was required to create nearly 800,000 tons of larger aggregate.
Norfork Dam | Construction
Lars Jorgensen evolved the specific first design of the constant arch dam. However, AEL&P gives design credit to their then Chief Engineer Harry L. Wallenberg for the Salmon Creek Dam. The idea for building such a dam had been thought about 30 years earlier to economize on the use of construction material for building the dam. However, it was only in 1913 that the concept was transformed on ground by the pioneer mining engineer Thane.
Salmon Creek Dam | Evolution of the arch dam design
The American Society of Civil Engineers established in 1960 the Karl Terzaghi Award to an "author of outstanding contributions to knowledge in the fields of soil mechanics, subsurface and earthwork engineering, and subsurface and earthwork construction." The Terzaghi and Peck Library, which is managed by the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, in Oslo, Norway, holds an extensive collection of his papers. The Mission Dam in British Columbia, Canada, was renamed in his honor as the Terzaghi Dam in 1965. As Professor Goodman describes him, Karl Terzaghi was a remarkable man and an impassioned engineer. As he put it himself, "All the modest achievements which I have to my credit can be described by a simple formula… Guided by common sense and casual observations, I recognized weak points in traditional procedures and tried to make them less weak.
Karl von Terzaghi | Legacy
He was Chief Engineer for the Waterworks Department 1857–1858, and responsible for the Torrens Gorge weir near Campbelltown which failed in July 1858, its first year of operation. Hamilton was called as a witness in 1859 when it was discovered that the contractors Frost & Watson had skimped on materials for the dam wall, but came in for a share of the blame and resigned, to be replaced by John England. The partnership of (Thomas) Frost and (Edward) Watson was dissolved in 1860.
George Ernest Hamilton | History
Dubois gained national attention when he chained himself to a rock beside the rising reservoir behind New Melones Dam in May 1979 to force the Army Corps of Engineers to stop the filling or kill him. He was at least temporarily successful, as they stopped filling the dam and he came out of hiding.
Mark Dubois | Honors, decorations, awards and distinctions