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.
Construction deaths
Hoover Dam
Hoover Dam | Construction deaths
There were 112 deaths reported as associated with the construction of the dam. Yes, there were 112 deaths reported Yes, there were 112 deaths reported as associated with the construction of the dam. There were 112 deaths reported as associated with the construction of the 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
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.
assistant
did anyone die during the construction of the dam?
user
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
Ninety-six of the deaths occurred during construction at the site. Not included in the official number of fatalities were deaths that were recorded as pneumonia. Workers alleged that this diagnosis was a cover for death from carbon monoxide poisoning (brought on by the use of gasoline-fueled vehicles in the diversion tunnels), and a classification used by Six Companies to avoid paying compensation claims. The site's diversion tunnels frequently reached , enveloped in thick plumes of vehicle exhaust gases. A total of 42 workers were recorded as having died from pneumonia and were not included in the above total; none were listed as having died from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Hoover Dam | Construction deaths
No deaths of non-workers from pneumonia were recorded in Boulder City during the construction period.
Hoover Dam | Construction deaths
The workers onsite lived in temporary camps built around the Portage Mountain site with more workers in the summer and fewer in the winter. Much of the construction occurred inside the dam which was claustrophobic, full of exhaust fumes, and occasionally subject to cave-ins. In total, 16 men have lost their lives working on the dam.
W. A. C. Bennett Dam | Construction
Seven lives were lost during the dam's construction. In late 1918, three men were killed in a cave-in. Another four died in two separate blasting accidents in 1921. A memorial to all seven men was erected at the picnic area near the embankment in 1982.
Tod Reservoir | Fatalities
While suspended from the top of the canyon with ropes, the high-scalers climbed down the canyon walls and removed the loose rock with jackhammers and dynamite. Falling objects were the most common cause of death on the dam site; the high scalers' work thus helped ensure worker safety. One high scaler was able to save a life in a more direct manner: when a government inspector lost his grip on a safety line and began tumbling down a slope towards almost certain death, a high scaler was able to intercept him and pull him into the air. The construction site had, even then, become a magnet for tourists; the high scalers were prime attractions and showed off for the watchers.
Hoover Dam | Groundworks, rock clearance and grout curtain
At 8 A.M. on Thursday morning of 19 October 1950, 9 men plunged to their deaths after a platform collapsed unexpectedly. The men were pulled into the spillway. They were pulling wires to open the southern spillway in order to alleviate floodwaters when the platform they were working from collapsed. 8 out of 9 of the men's bodies were found. Mr. Frank Lloyd Barton's body was found a mile down the river from the dam. The other 8 men were Frederick Rule, Frederick Basham, James Chant, James Fillery, Robert Elliott, Reginald Lippiatt, Peter Steinmanis, and Eugene Podusteanu. There was a 10th man, Bruce Grieves, working as well but he survived the accident because he had one leg off the platform and managed to pull back when the platform gave way.
Burrinjuck Dam | Deaths
On March 23, 1931, "Time Magazine" wrote: However, he did not live to see Hoover Dam completed; W.H. Wattis died in California, on September 13, 1931 of cancer. Shortly before his death on June 9, 1931, the University of Utah honored him with a Doctorate of Law degree. Wattis loved life, family and friends. He was an avid golfer, hunter and traveler.
William Henry Wattis | Death
A total of of concrete was poured to form a dam standing above the riverbed and above foundations. The last concrete was placed in February 1922 and the dam was completed in May 1923. At the time, it was the second tallest dam in the United States, after Idaho's Arrowrock Dam. On May 24, 1923, the reservoir filled for the first time. A peak labor force of five hundred worked on the project, which claimed the lives of 67 men and one woman.
O'Shaughnessy Dam (California) | Construction
Workers building the dam received an average of 80¢ an hour; the payroll for the dam was among the largest in the nation. The workers were mainly pulled from Grant, Lincoln, Douglas, and Okanogan counties and women were allowed to work only in the dorms and the cookhouse. Around 8,000 people worked on the project, and Frank A. Banks served as the chief construction engineer. Bert A. Hall was the chief inspector who would accept the dam from the contractors. Orin G. Patch served as the chief of concrete. Construction conditions were dangerous and 77 workers died. To prepare for construction, housing for workers was needed along with four bridges downstream of the dam site, one of which, the Grand Coulee Bridge, exists today.
Grand Coulee Dam | Labor and supporting infrastructure
Construction would ultimately claim eighteen lives and injure numerous other workers, but contrary to popular myth, no workers were buried alive in the concrete. Cement needed to make concrete for the dam came from the Phoenix Cement Company plant constructed for the purpose in Clarkdale, south of Flagstaff. A huge concrete plant capable of putting out 1,450 tons per hour was installed, and a pair of cableways with movable towers (with capacities of 50 and 25 tons respectively) spanned the canyon, carrying the concrete buckets to their final destinations on the steadily rising crest of the dam. The concrete was poured into modular high wooden blocks or "forms", the largest measuring up to by ; more than 3,000 of these blocks made up the main structure of the dam.
Glen Canyon Dam | Concrete placement and completion
Each five-foot form contained a set of steel pipes; cool river water would be poured through the pipes, followed by ice-cold water from a refrigeration plant. When an individual block had cured and had stopped contracting, the pipes were filled with grout. Grout was also used to fill the hairline spaces between columns, which were grooved to increase the strength of the joints. The concrete was delivered in huge steel buckets and almost 7 feet in diameter; Crowe was awarded two patents for their design. These buckets, which weighed when full, were filled at two massive concrete plants on the Nevada side, and were delivered to the site in special railcars.
Hoover Dam | Concrete
The memory of these men will always be alive." More than 250 people gathered at the installation of the monument. Six wreaths were placed on the memorial, one for each of the victims. The monument was unveiled by the Gaspe councilor Nelson O'Connor, Irvin Levesque, as well as by a survivor of the bridge collapse who still resides in Gaspe, Dean Patterson.
Beaver Dam Bridge | Memorial
By January 1930 Wyangala had become a bustling center with 450 workers and their families in the village, and 74 children attending the new primary school. In the words of a district resident This major undertaking was not without incident. Four men died during the construction of the dam, the first being Leslie Jeffrey, falling into the Lachlan River and drowning in 1929. His death was followed by that of Walter Watt, a laborer (1931), Wickliffe Brien, a dogman (1931) and Patrick Lewis, a carpenter (1933).
Wyangala | 1928–1935 dam construction
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
He served as the Director of the Reclamation Service (now the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) from 1914 to 1923. Boulder Dam (later called Hoover Dam) was fundamentally the conception of Arthur Powell Davis. A month before he died, Arthur Powell Davis was appointed Consulting Engineer on the dam project. Mr. Davis had his vision back in 1902. He died in Oakland, California, on August 7, 1933, and is buried in St. Paul’s Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C., along with his wife, Elizabeth B. Davis. The Davis Dam is named after him. Arthur Davis brought more to his job than ambition.
Arthur Powell Davis | Introduction
Workers with families were left to provide their own accommodations until Boulder City could be completed, and many lived in Ragtown. The site of Hoover Dam endures extremely hot weather, and the summer of 1931 was especially torrid, with the daytime high averaging . Sixteen workers and other riverbank residents died of heat prostration between June 25 and July 26, 1931. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or "Wobblies"), though much-reduced from their heyday as militant labor organizers in the early years of the century, hoped to unionize the Six Companies workers by capitalizing on their discontent. They sent eleven organizers, several of whom were arrested by Las Vegas police.
Hoover Dam | Labor force
Treshow was hired as a designer of construction tools, to work on the Hoover Dam. During the construction of the Boulder (now Hoover) Dam between 1930 and 1936 he designed and supervised the installation of the equipment that pumped concrete - more than 8 million tons of it - from where it was mixed to the dam site. "Something over a mile as I recall," says his son, Ken. Treshow switched to nuclear reactor design and engineering after World War II.
Mike Treshow | Hoover Dam
The final episode focuses on the construction of the Hoover Dam during the Great Depression of the 1930s, focusing in particular on the ruthless pace set by Frank Crowe, the builder, whose eagerness to complete the project well before schedule and subsequent exploitation of the workforce (who were desperate for any employment and were forced to accept conditions of extreme hardship in the process) resulted in many deaths and the eventual construction of a new city to house the workers.
Seven Wonders of the Industrial World | The Hoover Dam
He innovated the use of movable safety netting beneath the construction site, which saved the lives of many otherwise-unprotected ironworkers. Of eleven men killed from falls during construction, ten were killed on February 17, 1937, when the bridge was near completion and the net failed under the stress of a scaffold that had fallen. The workers' platform that was attached to a rolling hanger on a track collapsed when the bolts that were connected to the track were too small and the amount of weight was too great to bear. The platform fell into the safety net, but was too heavy and the net gave way.
Golden Gate Bridge | Construction
As the city grew, it gathered additional features, including numerous stores, a hospital, and even a jeweler. It was intended to serve a maximum population of eight thousand, accounting for the workers' families; the peak workforce would eventually exceed 2,500 in the busiest phases of construction. The engineer in charge of the project would be Lem F. Wylie, who had worked on Hoover Dam and had previously designed six other USBR dams. Prior to and during construction, three separate grants were issued by the National Park Service to document and recover artifacts of historical cultures along the river. These went to University of Utah historian C.
Glen Canyon Dam | Site preparations
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
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
Concrete placement continued until November 15, 1962, when workers topped out the dam. By the end of 1962, both the river outlet works and the spillway tunnel were completed, and the diversion tunnel was closed, allowing water to begin rising behind the dam. The dam's hydroelectric generators were installed by mid–August 1963 and the first unit went into operation on September 27 at the press of a switch by President John F. Kennedy. The dam was officially dedicated by Lady Bird Johnson on August 17 of the following year.
Flaming Gorge Dam | Construction
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
The 1927 Mississippi flood made Midwestern and Southern congressmen and senators more sympathetic toward the dam project. On March 12, 1928, the failure of the St. Francis Dam, constructed by the city of Los Angeles, caused a disastrous flood that killed up to 600 people. As that dam was a curved-gravity type, similar in design to the arch-gravity as was proposed for the Black Canyon dam, opponents claimed that the Black Canyon dam's safety could not be guaranteed. Congress authorized a board of engineers to review plans for the proposed dam. The Colorado River Board found the project feasible, but warned that should the dam fail, every downstream Colorado River community would be destroyed, and that the river might change course and empty into the Salton Sea.
Hoover Dam | Planning and agreements
Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its construction was the result of a massive effort involving thousands of workers, and cost over one hundred lives. Originally known as Boulder Dam from 1933, it was officially renamed Hoover Dam for President Herbert Hoover by a joint resolution of Congress in 1947. Since about 1900, the Black Canyon and nearby Boulder Canyon had been investigated for their potential to support a dam that would control floods, provide irrigation water and produce hydroelectric power.
Hoover Dam | Introduction
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
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
In the same year, the Yellowtail Afterbay Dam, serving to regulate releases from the main dam was completed downstream of Yellowtail Dam. The Yellowtail Dam was topped out in December 1967 after six years of work. Surprisingly, for such a huge structure, only one death occurred during the entire construction process.
Yellowtail Dam | Construction
Perrine died at age 82 in 1943 and is buried at the family cemetery near his former ranch in Jerome County. The Perrine Bridge, carrying U.S. 93 over the Snake River Canyon, is named for him, and a statue of him is outside the city's visitor center. Also named for him are an elementary school in Twin Falls and Perrine Coulee, which runs through the city and ends as a waterfall on the south rim of the canyon, west of the bridge.
I. B. Perrine | Legacy
At around 7:30a.m. on July 22, 2009, several workers were deep below the reservoir operating flow controls to test a river valve chamber in the Oroville Dam. When the flow reached 85 percent, suction pulled a breakaway wall downstream into a diversion tunnel, cutting lights and nearly sending three workers to their deaths in the roaring current. One of the workers who was badly injured survived by clinging to a bent rail, where he was struck by tools and equipment being sucked into the tunnel. He was hospitalized for four days with head trauma, a broken leg, broken arm, cuts, and bruises.
Oroville Dam | 2009 river valve accident
The construction of the dam resulted in the dislocation of people on the Crow Creek and Lower Brule Reservations. The flooding of the land for the reservoir also resulted in the loss of limited plant life resources used by them for food and medicine. A monument at Big Bend Dam dedicated in 2002, the Spirit of the Circle Monument, honors the more than 1,300 people who died over a three-year period in the 1860s at the Crow Creek Reservation near the present site of the dam.
Big Bend Dam | Native American tribes
The diversion tunnel for the North Platte was completed on January 17, 1937, with one fatality, and by May of that year, a cofferdam was completed to a sufficient height to divert the river into the new channel. Concrete pouring began on January 19, 1938, and the last bucket was emptied on December 21, 1938. Water storage began on April 2, 1939, when the outlet tunnels were closed. The dam's power station was finished and the entire project was declared operational on August 3, 1939. A total of two deaths and several serious injuries resulted from the construction, and a pair of active faults that cut across the canyon near the dam site had to be excavated and filled in.
Seminoe Dam | History
In 1939, superintendent of the Skagit Hydroelectric Project James Delmage Ross has died, so Ruby Dam was renamed Ross Dam in his memory. In 1943 a consortium of contractors including Morrison-Knudsen, which had previously participated in construction of Hoover Dam, began new construction on the dam ultimately raising its height to . Energy demands during World War II coincided with an energy shortage in Seattle, requiring that the dam be constructed quickly, but the dam did not generate any power until many years after the war ended. This third phase was finished in 1949, to . This height would cause the reservoir at full pool to extend slightly past the Washington-British Columbia border.
Ross Dam | Third phase
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
In summer 1941, the labor force reached a peak of 1,500, and the monthly record for concrete placement, at , was set in August. During the dam's construction several Native American burial sites had their graves removed and re-interned.
Friant Dam | Construction
The contractors had little warning but managed to get most of their equipment away from the critical area before the event struck. The conventional and roller-compacted concrete in the main dam were largely undamaged and construction work was resumed within a fortnight.
Toker Dam | The dam
Before the dam could be built, the Colorado River needed to be diverted away from the construction site. To accomplish this, four diversion tunnels were driven through the canyon walls, two on the Nevada side and two on the Arizona side. These tunnels were in diameter. Their combined length was nearly 16,000 ft, or more than . The contract required these tunnels to be completed by October 1, 1933, with a $3,000-per-day fine to be assessed for any delay. To meet the deadline, Six Companies had to complete work by early 1933, since only in late fall and winter was the water level in the river low enough to safely divert.
Hoover Dam | River diversion
Soon after the dam was authorized, increasing numbers of unemployed people converged on southern Nevada. Las Vegas, then a small city of some 5,000, saw between 10,000 and 20,000 unemployed descend on it. A government camp was established for surveyors and other personnel near the dam site; this soon became surrounded by a squatters' camp. Known as McKeeversville, the camp was home to men hoping for work on the project, together with their families. Another camp, on the flats along the Colorado River, was officially called Williamsville, but was known to its inhabitants as "Ragtown". When construction began, Six Companies hired large numbers of workers, with more than 3,000 on the payroll by 1932 and with employment peaking at 5,251 in July 1934.
Hoover Dam | Labor force
Construction of the Little Falls dam resulted in the end of most of the salmon run at Spokane Falls. The Grand Coulee Dam, on the Columbia River, blocked salmon from migrating upriver and ended all salmon runs on the Spokane River.
Spokane people | Post-World War II to present
Work was halted when a Las Vegas construction worker, 48-year-old Sherman Jones, was killed. A jack punctured his chest during construction while adjusting a cable used to align temporary concrete towers.
Mike O'Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge | Fatalities
Although he won the election, he served less than a month before resigning on account of ill health. After recovering, at least partially, he was named to the board of directors for the Grand River dam project and was elected chairman. He did not live to see the project completed, dying in 1935.
J. H. Langley | 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
On May 19, 2013, almost 50 years after the collapse of the bridge, a monument was unveiled to honor the 6 men who died. On the monument is engraved the names of the victims and the survivors. The memorial project was started by Irvin Levesque, the son of one of the victims. "I thought it was important to highlight this accident that marked the history of the cities of Gaspe and Murdochville," said Irvin. "I was always surprised that we didn't do it, so I decided to do it and with the help of the City of Gaspe and our members.
Beaver Dam Bridge | Memorial
The bridge approaches were also prepared. Three men died during the construction of the bridge. On 22 November 1937, Hans James Zimmerman slipped and fell to the ground. On 7 February 1939, Alfred William Jackson fell from the bridge into the river. Although pulled from the water alive, he died 4 hours later in hospital without regaining consciousness. On 6 December 1939, Arthur McKay (Max) Wharton was hit by a piece of equipment on a nerve that made him faint, falling from the bridge to the water; 18 months earlier Wharton had been hailed as a hero for saving another worker from falling from the bridge.
Story Bridge | 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
Mulholland's career effectively ended on March 12, 1928, when the St. Francis Dam failed twelve hours after he and his assistant, Assistant Chief Engineer and general manager Harvey Van Norman, had personally inspected the site. Within seconds after the collapse, only what had been a large section of the central part of the dam remained standing and the reservoir's 12.4 billion gallons (47 million m) of water began moving down San Francisquito Canyon in a -high torrent at 18 miles per hour (29 km/h). In the canyon, it demolished the heavy concrete Powerhouse Number Two (a hydroelectric power plant) and took the lives of 64 of the 67 workmen and their families living there.
William Mulholland | St. Francis Dam collapse
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
On January 10, 1931, the Bureau made the bid documents available to interested parties, at five dollars a copy. The government was to provide the materials; but the contractor was to prepare the site and build the dam. The dam was described in minute detail, covering 100 pages of text and 76 drawings. A $2 million bid bond was to accompany each bid; the winner would have to post a $5 million performance bond. The contractor had seven years to build the dam, or penalties would ensue. The Wattis Brothers, heads of the Utah Construction Company, were interested in bidding on the project, but lacked the money for the performance bond.
Hoover Dam | Design, preparation and contracting
The Hoover Dam is a massive concrete arch-gravity dam, constructed in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the US states of Arizona and Nevada between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression. In 1928, Congress authorized the project to build a dam that would control floods, provide irrigation water and produce hydroelectric power. The winning bid to build the dam was submitted by a consortium called Six Companies, Inc. Such a large concrete structure had never been built before, and some of the techniques were unproven. The torrid summer weather and the lack of facilities near the site also presented difficulties.
Dam | Large dams
Oskar J. W. Hansen (1891 or 1892 – August 31, 1971) was a Norwegian-born, naturalized American sculptor. He is most associated with the design of many of the sculptures on and around the Hoover Dam.
Oskar J. W. Hansen | Introduction
The buckets were then suspended from aerial cableways which were used to deliver the bucket to a specific column. As the required grade of aggregate in the concrete differed depending on placement in the dam (from pea-sized gravel to 9-inch or 23 cm stones), it was vital that the bucket be maneuvered to the proper column. When the bottom of the bucket opened up, disgorging of concrete, a team of men worked it throughout the form. Although there are myths that men were caught in the pour and are entombed in the dam to this day, each bucket deepened the concrete in a form by only , and Six Companies engineers would not have permitted a flaw caused by the presence of a human body.
Hoover Dam | Concrete
After the war, it reopened September 2, 1945, and by 1953, annual attendance had risen to 448,081. The dam closed on November 25, 1963, and March 31, 1969, days of mourning in remembrance of Presidents Kennedy and Eisenhower. In 1995, a new visitors' center was built, and the following year, visits exceeded one million for the first time. The dam closed again to the public on September 11, 2001; modified tours were resumed in December and a new "Discovery Tour" was added the following year. Today, nearly a million people per year take the tours of the dam offered by the Bureau of Reclamation..
Hoover Dam | Roadway and tourism
In 1976, the upstream Teton Dam failed during filling, causing spring snowmelt to race downstream into the Teton River, a tributary of the Snake, demolishing several towns along its path. In an attempt to contain this flood, water was released from American Falls Dam as quickly as possible. If the dam were to fail, the other Snake River dams would experience a flood they were not designed to cope with, although the lower Columbia River dams would most likely survive. The American Falls reservoir filled, but its level did not even rise to its spillway crest. When the second dam was planned, members of the Shoshone and Bannock communities opposed expansion as it would further flood the lands of the Fort Hall Bottoms.
American Falls Dam | 1960–1978
Morrell died four years before the flood he had labored to prevent.
South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club | Major flaws regarding the dam
Once the concrete cured, the wooden scaffolding was removed and shifted upwards to accommodate the next load of concrete. As more efficient methods of concrete pouring were installed, including conveyors and remotely controlled buckets, the workforce gradually decreased. By late 1962, concrete was being poured into the dam at a rate of per day even as the workforce was scaled down to about 1,500. At the beginning of 1963, the dam was high enough to begin impounding water; huge steel gates were closed over the right diversion tunnel on January 21, and Lake Powell began to rise. A minimal flow of was allowed through the dam, to prevent the Colorado River from drying up completely.
Glen Canyon Dam | Concrete placement and completion
He designed sculpted turrets rising seamlessly from the dam face and clock faces on the intake towers set for the time in Nevada and Arizona—both states are in different time zones, but since Arizona does not observe daylight saving time, the clocks display the same time for more than half the year. At Kaufmann's request, Denver artist Allen Tupper True was hired to handle the design and decoration of the walls and floors of the new dam. True's design scheme incorporated motifs of the Navajo and Pueblo tribes of the region. Although some were initially opposed to these designs, True was given the go-ahead and was officially appointed consulting artist.
Hoover Dam | Architectural style
Two men were killed in the construction of the tunnel. A June 1906 flood destroyed the flume. The delay caused the Bureau of Reclamation to suspend the contractor's contract and to call upon the contractor's bonding company, the U.S. Fidelity and Guaranty Company, to ensure the completion of the work. Little work was done until March 1907. Another flood in July damaged the diversion dam again. Working conditions were harsh, leading to the first strike in Wyoming's history in November, in which workers demanded and received three dollars a day from USF&G. USF&G delegated responsibility for the work to two new contractors, Locher and Grant Smith and Company, in March 1908.
Buffalo Bill Dam | Construction
The building of Flaming Gorge Dam started just a few months after the CRSP was approved in Congress, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower pressed a button on his desk in the White House and set off the first blast in Red Canyon. Site preparations and geologic inspections continued as Dutch John, the company town that provided housing for the workers, was completed just northeast of the dam site by 1958. More than 3000 people would inhabit Dutch John at the peak of construction. The main contract for dam construction was awarded to Arch Dam Constructors, a conglomerate of Peter Kiewit Sons, Morrison-Knudsen Company, Mid-Valley Utility Constructors Inc.
Flaming Gorge Dam | Construction
Teton Canyon ends about 6 miles below the dam site, where the river flows onto the Snake River Plain. When the dam failed, the flood struck several communities immediately downstream, particularly Wilford at the terminus of the canyon, Sugar City, Salem, Hibbard, and Rexburg. Thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed. The small agricultural communities of Wilford and Sugar City were wiped from the river bank. Five of the 14 deaths attributed to the flood occurred in Wilford. The similar community of Teton, on the south bank of the river, is on a modest bench and was largely spared. One Teton resident was fishing on the river at the time of the dam failure and was drowned.
Teton Dam | Deaths, damage, and property claims
Many engineers, including Peter Palchinsky warned the USSR not to rush and go ahead with the building of the dam. They argued that the water flow was ultimately going to be too slow and no good studies had been made of the flow patterns of surface and underground water in the area. Ultimately, 10,000 farmers were forced out of their farmland with little or no compensation, and those who did not volunteer to work on the project were forced to do so. As the project proceeded, it fell behind on schedule and grossly exceeded the estimated costs. Worker needs were neglected and they lived and worked under unbearable conditions.
The Ghost of the Executed Engineer | <a href="Dnieper">Dnieper</a> Dam Power Plant
A total of of concrete was used in the dam before concrete pouring ceased on May 29, 1935. In addition, were used in the power plant and other works. More than of cooling pipes were placed within the concrete. Overall, there is enough concrete in the dam to pave a two-lane highway from San Francisco to New York. Concrete cores were removed from the dam for testing in 1995; they showed that "Hoover Dam's concrete has continued to slowly gain strength" and the dam is composed of a "durable concrete having a compressive strength exceeding the range typically found in normal mass concrete".
Hoover Dam | Concrete
One man was impaled by a shield plug and lodged into the ceiling, where he died instantly. The other men died from their injuries within hours. The three men were buried in lead coffins, and that entire section of the site was buried. The core meltdown caused no damage to the area, although some radioactive nuclear fission products were released into the atmosphere. The site has since developed into the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), a national laboratory operated by the United States Department of Energy. INL and its contractors are a major economic engine for the Idaho Falls area, employing more than 8,000 people between the desert site and its research and education campus in Idaho Falls.
Idaho Falls, Idaho | Nuclear reactors
It would take another year and a half before the diversion works were ready to unload into the New York Canal. The company eventually lost $90,000 on the contract. And to make matters worse in March 1909, a log foreman "maliciously" removed the boom above the dam and allowed timber roll over the embankment causing $73,000 worth of damage. Yet when the structure was completed it worked famously. The Diversion Dam is high and in length with an overall capacity of .
Boise River Diversion Dam | Construction
The Sandy Run Dam failure killed five people and was the only other failure to cause deaths.
Laurel Run Dam | 1977 failure
In 1962, the $65 million bond measure for the construction of the Yuba- Bear project was approved. Dr. Rollins would not see the end of the project as he died from a heart attack in 1933 and in 1966 a ceremony was held to dedicate the Rollins reservoir in his honor. Colfax records from the ceremony states:""A giant stride has been taken in providing facilities through which innumerable opportunities for economic development, recreation and a richer life" "will open to the people of the region, and during which the people of the district have assured themselves a great additional reserve of precious water"""."
Rollins Dam | History
At times, excavated areas collapsed from overburden. In order to secure these areas from further movement and continue excavation, diameter pipes were inserted into the mass and chilled with cold liquid from a refrigeration plant. This froze the earth and secured it so construction could continue. Final contract bidding for the dam began , 1934, in Spokane, and four bids were submitted. One bid was from a lawyer with no financial backing; another was from actress Mae West which consisted of nothing more than a poem and promise to divert the river. Of the two serious bids, the lowest bid was from a consortium of three companies: Silas Mason Co.
Grand Coulee Dam | Low dam
In addition to those working directly on the dam, large numbers relocated railroad tracks, paved new roads, and constructed steel towers to stretch the mighty transmission lines toward Philadelphia. This was nearly fifty years before Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which guaranteed the right to a safe job. While these men struggled to earn a living, many suffered disabling injuries handling high voltage electric lines, tumbling from high elevations, managing explosives, encountering poisonous snakes, and much more.
Conowingo Dam | Construction and hydroelectric power generation
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
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
In March 1906, the Utah Fire Proofing Company began work on the Boise River Diversion Dam with the provision that the structure would be completed within one year. It soon became apparent that the dam would not be finished on time. With little experience in such endeavors, Utah Fire Proofing failed to provide adequate foremen for the project. At least nineteen superintendents worked on the dam and their incompetence led to an extraordinary turnover in labor. Inclement weather and flooding caused at least two months' worth of delays and forced the crews to rebuild part of the structure. By April 16, 1907, the dam was only 41% complete.
Boise River Diversion Dam | Construction
The dam was not a large one. The goal was to merely create a pond behind the dam, which would create enough water pressure (or "head") to turn turbines and generate electricity. The dam was built at a cost of about $515,000 (roughly $12,335,000 in inflation-adjusted 2010 dollars) on the upstream brink of the falls (to create the deepest reservoir possible). Construction bids were opened on February 5, 1890, with the request for bids specifying that all work must be finished by December 1, 1890. All the bids were rejected, and mechanical engineer Maurice Parker was employed to design and construct the dam.
Black Eagle Dam | 1890 dam
A memorial plaque sits in the church in memory of 28 staff of Impregilo SPA that died building the Akosombo Dam, 12 of whom died in an explosion. Victims of February 15, 1966 explosion On the February 15th 1966 at 7:15am, there was an explosion at the Akosombo Dam's site. It was suspected that a heavy and unexpected build- up of methane gas or natural gas within one of the tunnels in the dam caused the explosion. The gas was possibly ignited by the lighting of a welding torch. 18 people were in the tunnel at the time of the explosion.
St. Barbara Catholic Church | A Memorial for the Heroes of the Akosombo Dam
To protect the construction site from the Colorado River and to facilitate the river's diversion, two cofferdams were constructed. Work on the upper cofferdam began in September 1932, even though the river had not yet been diverted. The cofferdams were designed to protect against the possibility of the river's flooding a site at which two thousand men might be at work, and their specifications were covered in the bid documents in nearly as much detail as the dam itself. The upper cofferdam was high, and thick at its base, thicker than the dam itself. It contained of material. When the cofferdams were in place and the construction site was drained of water, excavation for the dam foundation began.
Hoover Dam | Groundworks, rock clearance and grout curtain
Concrete was poured day and night, but was halted during the winter because of freezing temperatures. To organize the pouring, the dam was split into plots and each was raised about five or six feet at a time. Workers had about 150 days — before seasonal flooding — to construct the dam to a height of at least . Before flooding began, engineers planned to seal the diversion tunnels and begin filling the reservoir. To speed the pouring process, concrete was poured in casts by buckets that moved along three cableways suspended above the construction site. The deadline was met within the 150 days and a total of of concrete was poured.
Daniel-Johnson dam | Construction
Although this may have been sufficient time to answer what they had been directed to determine, they had been deprived of the sworn testimony at the Coroner's Inquest which was scheduled to be convened March 21, the only inquiry that took into consideration factors other than geology and engineering. The need for nearly immediate answers was understandable, having its roots in the Swing–Johnson Bill in Congress. This bill, which had first been filed in 1922, and failed to be voted on in three successive Congresses, was again before Congress at the time. This bill ultimately provided the funding for constructing the Hoover Dam.
St. Francis Dam | Investigation
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
The first concrete was poured into the dam on June 6, 1933, 18 months ahead of schedule. Since concrete heats and contracts as it cures, the potential for uneven cooling and contraction of the concrete posed a serious problem. Bureau of Reclamation engineers calculated that if the dam were to be built in a single continuous pour, the concrete would take 125 years to cool, and the resulting stresses would cause the dam to crack and crumble. Instead, the ground where the dam would rise was marked with rectangles, and concrete blocks in columns were poured, some as large as and high.
Hoover Dam | Concrete
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
On that day, David Brower confronted President John F. Kennedy in a last-ditch effort to delay Glen Canyon's inundation. Brower later said of that exchange: "On January 2, 1963, the last day on which the execution of one of the planet's greatest scenic antiquities could yet have been spared, the man who theoretically had the power to save the place did not. I was within a few feet of his desk in Washington that day and witnessed how the forces long at work had their way. So a steel gate dropped, choking off the flow of the canyon's carotid artery, and from that moment the canyon's life force ebbed quickly.
Glen Canyon Dam | Concrete placement and completion
Francis Dam. In March 1928, the dam catastrophically failed due to unknown weak bedrock formations. The flood caused much destruction and many deaths downstream along the Santa Clara River. Eaton's finances crumbled, also in 1928, and his ranch was acquired by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, where Crowley Lake was created for the aqueduct system's new storage. Fred Eaton died in Los Angeles in 1934.
Frederick Eaton | Round Valley - St. Francis Dam
Six Companies was not required to complete work on one item, a concrete plug for one of the bypass tunnels, as the tunnel had to be used to take in irrigation water until the powerhouse went into operation.
Hoover Dam | Dedication and completion
Warren Bechtel died unexpectedly in 1933 while in Moscow on business. He was succeeded by his son, Stephen Bechtel, Sr., who became both the head of Bechtel and chief executive of the Hoover Dam project. Under his leadership, the Hoover Dam was finished in 1935. The project was the largest of its kind in U.S. history at the time and Bechtel's first megaproject. During World War II, the United States Maritime Commission invited the company to bid for a contract to build half of their order of 60 cargo ships. The company had no prior experience in shipbuilding, but bid for the entire 60 ships.
Bechtel | WWII, overseas expansion and the nuclear age
With the Colorado River safely diverted around the canyon, construction could begin on the actual concrete arch dam. The contract was given to the Merritt-Chapman & Scott Corporation for an "astoundingly low" $107,955,552, about $30 million less than USBR's own estimate. Then, right before construction began, about 750 workers organized a strike because of a wage reduction due to the completion of public facilities at Page. In December 1959, wages were raised by $4 a day, quelling the strikers. Concrete placement started on June 16, 1960, and started at a sluggish but growing pace. In 1962 the workforce topped out at nearly 2,500 employees laboring on the dam.
Glen Canyon Dam | Concrete placement and completion
Mulholland spent the rest of his life in relative seclusion, devastated by the tragedy. In retirement, he began writing an autobiography but never completed it. Shortly before his death, he consulted on the Hoover Dam and Colorado River Aqueduct projects. He died in 1935 from a stroke, and is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California, in the Great Mausoleum, Memorial Terrace, Sanctuary of Meditation, Mausoleum Crypt 6395, alongside Los Angeles Aqueduct chief electrical engineer Ezra F. Scattergood.
William Mulholland | Later life
Work progressed more quickly, with the first concrete pours in April. Spring floods set the project back once again, causing concrete work to be suspended. Concrete work started again in March 1909, and despite more spring flooding that suspended work from July to September, work moved quickly. Another threatened strike was broken when Italian laborers were replaced with Bulgarian workers. Final concrete was poured in January 1910, with a final cost of $1.4 million. Seven construction workers were killed on the project. Immediately after completion the dam suffered from leakage through the outlet works, leading to low water elevations that exposed mudflats, which soon produced dense blowing dust.
Buffalo Bill Dam | Construction
For the dam to rest on solid rock, it was necessary to remove accumulated erosion soils and other loose materials in the riverbed until sound bedrock was reached. Work on the foundation excavations was completed in June 1933. During this excavation, approximately of material was removed. Since the dam was an arch-gravity type, the side-walls of the canyon would bear the force of the impounded lake. Therefore, the side-walls were excavated too, to reach virgin rock, as weathered rock might provide pathways for water seepage. Shovels for the excavation came from the Marion Power Shovel Company. The men who removed this rock were called "high scalers".
Hoover Dam | Groundworks, rock clearance and grout curtain
The construction of the dam was interrupted by a strike in July 1909. The construction workers were offered a twenty-five cent per day pay increase but demanded fifty cents. Notice of the strike was published in the "Industrial Worker", a weekly newspaper of the Industrial Workers of the World published out of Spokane.
Conconully Dam | History
The Teton Dam was an earthen dam on the Teton River in Idaho, United States. It was built by the Bureau of Reclamation, one of eight federal agencies authorized to construct dams. Located in the eastern part of the state, between Fremont and Madison Counties, it suffered a catastrophic failure on June 5, 1976, as it was filling for the first time. The collapse of the dam resulted in the deaths of 11 people and 13,000 cattle. The dam cost about $100 million to build and the federal government paid over $300 million in claims related to its failure. Total damage estimates have ranged up to $2 billion.
Teton Dam | Introduction
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
A retaining wall was poured on the upstream side to prevent water seepage into the foundation hole, and the granite was scoured and artificially roughened to prepare for receiving concrete. The concrete for the dam was processed in a plant located shortly upstream from the construction site, with sand and rock excavated from abundant alluvial deposits in the Hetch Hetchy valley. This was mixed with cement shipped in on the Hetch Hetchy Railroad and local boulders ranging from to several yards (metres) in diameter to produce a cyclopean construction material for the dam. Beginning in September 1921, the concrete was hoisted up a tower on the south side of the gorge, from which it could flow down movable chutes by gravity to the construction site.
O'Shaughnessy Dam (California) | Construction
152 families, 104 graves, and of roads had to be relocated, and three new bridges were built. The outbreak of the Korean War brought increased support from federal entities, and work progressed without interruption. Boone Dam was completed and its gates closed December 16, 1952. The dam's first generator went online March 16, 1953, its second generator went online June 12, 1953, and the third went online September 3, 1953. The total cost of the Boone project was $27.7 million.
Boone Dam | Background and construction
Gottlieb Charles Wachter died in March 1928. He was 62 years old. Following the death of their father, Eugene (d. 1960) and Paul August (d. 1961) took over the family businesses, with Eugene managing the Wachter Ranch and Paul overseeing the other various business enterprises in and around Bismarck. In 1929, the family created Wachter's, Incorporated to manage the growing business empire. This meant looking ahead to development on the south side of the city, an area plagued at times by flooding from the Missouri River. In 1936 the Wachter-O'Neil construction company was involved in building a dam at the Fresno site in Montana, part of a series of projects along the Milk River.
Charles Wachter | Death and legacy
The Sartell Dam is a dam across the Mississippi River in Sartell, Minnesota in the United States. The dam was used to generate hydroelectric power for the adjoining Sartell Paper Mill before it burned down in 2012. The dam is referred to as the Champion Dam in official documentation. Construction of the structure was begun by the Watab Pulp and Paper Company in 1907 and finished in 1911. Seven workers died during construction, most from drowning as a result of washouts on the site's cofferdam. A cave-in on the dam's west end also killed the son of the project's foreman.
Sartell Dam | Introduction
The dam project was privately undertaken by Rocky Mountain Power to generate hydroelectric power in the area; it started construction in 1930. But, with revenues declining because of the Great Depression, the company halted construction in 1931. Montana State Treasurer James Brett went to a meeting in Atlanta in 1934 to ask President Franklin D. Roosevelt for $5,000,000 to complete the dam. Knowing that the area was in desperate need of jobs, Roosevelt approved the money for the project; this was in keeping with his support of the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps, which provided jobs for infrastructure and public buildings across the country.
Kerr Dam | Construction
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
Gordon Bernie Kaufmann (19 March 1888 – 1 March 1949) was an English-born American architect mostly known for his work on the Hoover Dam.
Gordon Kaufmann | Introduction
Owyhee's construction served as a prototype for the larger Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, including the use of refrigeration to cool the concrete. The dam cost $6,000,000, with the total reclamation project costing $18,000,000. Owyhee was designed by Frank A. Banks, who also designed other dams such as the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River. In the 1980s, electricity-generating capabilities were added to the dam. From 1990 to 1993, the dam was remodeled. Since the height of the dam made a fish ladder impractical, the dam closed off the Owyhee Chinook salmon runs that used to swim as far upstream as Nevada.
Owyhee Dam | History
After the concrete dried, the surface was cleaned and smoothed by sandblasting. At the same time, the railroad that ran through the temporary tunnel on the west side of the river was rerouted. In December 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, prompting the United States to join into World War II. With thousands of men enlisting in the armed forces, the Shasta Dam site soon had a severe labor shortage. During the war years, many of the people who worked at the dam were women and high school students on mostly "non-hazardous jobs". The dam played an important part in World War II even before its completion, supplying much-needed electricity to shipyards and aircraft factories in central California.
Shasta Dam | Concrete placement and river diversion