Natrona County WY Archives History - Books .....Dams And Rivers 1923 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/wy/wyfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com May 5, 2005, 7:07 pm Book Title: History Of Natrona County, Wyoming THE PATHFINDER DAM The Pathfinder dam was built under false pretenses and Wyoming was thereby deprived of reclaiming a vast amount of acreage which would have been irrigated had the plans been carried out as the people of Wyoming were led to believe and given to understand they would. General Manager Bidwell and Superintendent Hughes of the Chicago & Northwestern railway, who undoubtedly were secretly working under instructions from the Nebraska delegation in congress, came to Casper in their private car on June 14, 1904, and requested an audience with the representative business men of Casper. About twenty Casper business men were admitted inside Mr. Bidwell's private car, and Mr. Bidwell was the main and about the only speaker. He produced some maps, especially prepared to exhibit to the people of Wyoming which showed the lands proposed to be irrigated by the department under this project amounting to 1,380,000 acres in Wyoming, 207,000 of which were in Natrona county. Bidwell said there were to be three reservoirs, one eight miles above Alcova, the site of the now Pathfinder dam, one fifteen miles above Casper and another eight miles up the river. When this information was presented to our people they readily approved the project, and then Messrs. Bidwell and Hughes went to Douglas, where the same procedure was taken to fool the people of that town and, as at Casper, the people there gave their hearty approval to the project. The result was that the appropriation of a million dollars was made by congress for the project, but only one dam and one reservoir was constructed, and Nebraska has thus far gotten the use of the greater portion of the water that was promised and rightfully belonged to Wyoming, and instead of 207,000 acres of land being reclaimed in Natrona county, about 25,000 acres were inundated and none reclaimed. The scheme was thoroughly studied and investigated by the reclamation service for two years prior to the commencement of the dam's construction. The system was named "Pathfinder" in honor of General John C. Fremont, the great explorer, who made the Platte valley, in what is now Wyoming, the scene of his most interesting travels and investigations, and it was at about where the dam is located that Fremont's boats were capsized. The Astorians gave this canyon the name of the "Fiery Narrows." This wonderful piece of masonry is built on a natural site in a solid granite formation, in the bed rock, and the walls on each side are also of this rock. The geology and topography of the location is remarkable. Here is a tremendous uplift of granite, rent in twain by the titanic forces of nature in the primeval days, creating a mighty chasm in depth and yet so narrow as to make hardly a streak in the landscape. In many places a rider approaching from either side would not see the canyon or know of the existence of the river until he was within a few rods of the perilous chasm with its almost perpendicular walls. Actual construction work was commenced on the Pathfinder project on the 5th day of February, 1905, by Kilpatrick Bros. & Collins, who secured the contract to construct the diversion tunnel on the north side of the river, which runs a distance of 480 feet through a solid mass of granite and is thirteen feet high and ten feet wide. It is connected with the surface by two shafts, each one hundred and eighty feet deep. The emergency gates were installed in the upper shaft with a stone and cement building over them. These shafts, like the tunnel itself, are through solid granite, and every foot of their depth from the top of the precipice to the level of the river had to be drilled and blasted, and their construction in a proper manner was one of the most difficult tasks on the project. The finished shaft in which the gates are installed is surrounded by an iron railing with a ladder running from the top to the bottom. Construction work on the dam proper was commenced in September, 1905, by the Gedis-Seerie Stone company of Denver who was awarded the contract by the government. Before the masonry work could be commenced the water in the channel of the river was turned into the diversion tunnel by a dam made from many thousand sacks of sand and the dam site at the bottom of the river was left bare and free from water. This site for the full width of the canyon and the width of the dam was cleaned of all gravel, sand, earth, fissured and disintegrated rock to a depth of fifteen feet and a clean foundation upon bed rock was prepared for the commencement of the building of the big dam. The base of the dam is ninety-five feet wide and eighty feet across the chasm, and at the top of the dam, 218 feet above the base, it is twelve feet wide and 432 feet across the chasm. In the early spring, after the melting of the snow in the water sheds above, there is impounded by this huge structure more than 1,000,000 acre feet of water, and this would reclaim 350,000 acres of the arid land of Wyoming that at the present time can be used only for grazing, but as mentioned above, Wyoming gets very little benefit from it, for the water is carried into western Nebraska where a great many thousand acres have been reclaimed and are growing wonderful crops of grain and grass. The contractors completed their work on this dam June 1, 1909, but since that time a large dyke has been built south of the structure. The land at the point where the dyke was built was about twenty feet lower than the top of the masonry work of the dam and should the water have risen so high that it would have run over this low ground, it would have washed the soft formation down the channel and thus change the course of the river, leaving the dam high and dry in the canyon. It was thought by the reclamation engineers that the reservoir would not be filled for several years after the dam was completed and that there was no immediate danger of the water's rising to the top of this low piece of ground. But on account of the heavy snows during the winter of 1910 and the heavy spring rains that followed, the water rose almost to the top of this low stretch of ground and only by the most heroic effort was the huge body of water kept from cutting through the soft formation. Men and teams worked night and day for several weeks, piling brush, wood, and sacks of sand and dirt in the low place. The flood gates were turned wide open and arrangements were made to blow out a section of the dam with dynamite if the water could not otherwise be prevented from running over this low land. For three or four days it was a hard struggle between the men and teams and the gradual rise of the water, and at one time it was thought there was no hope except to blow out a section of the masonry in the dam. Just at this time, however, seemingly an act of Providence, the water commenced to recede and then all danger was passed. The permanent dyke, which is about 1,420 feet in length, was then built by first digging down to the conglomerate and then putting in a cement core three feet on the bottom and tapering to about one foot on top. This cement core is about thirty-five feet high and the top of the dyke extends eighteen feet above the level of the spillway on the north side of the dam. In the building of this dyke, dirt and gravel was hauled in and packed with a steam roller; the face of the structure is rip-rapped with stone eighteen inches in depth and there is now no possibility of the high waters doing any damage. When the water rises to a sufficient height, it runs over the spillway and is carried into the channel of the river below. A concrete wing 108 feet long and twelve feet wide at the base and four feet wide at the top, with an average height often feet, has been constructed for the purpose of keeping the water in this spillway. In the construction of the dam 340 carloads of cement were used, a total of 19,000,000 pounds. If this cement had been loaded on one train it would have been more than three miles in length or would have made seventeen trains of ordinary length. All this cement, together with the enormous amount of machinery and supplies, was hauled from Casper by freight teams to the Pathfinder over rough roads, through low valleys and over high hills and in all kinds of weather. The quickest trip ever made from Casper to Pathfinder with a freight outfit was three days, and the longest time required was seventy-six days. These freight teams consisted of from two to four loaded wagons chained together and a covered wagon in which the freighter and his family often lived, the whole being drawn by from twelve to twenty-two horses, which were called string teams and were handled by a single, or jerk line. The three-mile train load of cement, together with the steel, gravel, crushed rock, concrete and granite in the dam would make a train load of material that would be over forty miles in length. It is difficult to imagine the size of a building that could be constructed with this immense amount of material. The granite used in the dam was quarried less than a quarter of a mile from the structure, and large pieces forty feet square were first blown out and then split into smaller squares, averaging in weight eight to ten tons; these after being dressed and drenched were conveyed to the works on a tram and lowered to the dam where they were laid in a heavy bed of mortar with the side joints not more than six inches in thickness, and the concrete rammed into place, the largest proportion of stone and the smallest proportion of mortar and concrete being used. At the base of the dam are two tunnels, each three feet in diameter, and one culvert four by six feet, and through these tunnels and the culvert streams of water went rushing, roaring down the canyon with the force of Niagara. A practically unlimited amount of power could be generated from these three streams that would supply all the needs of ten cities the size of Denver, but up to the present time nothing has been done toward putting this power into service. In the spring of 1911 these tunnels and the culvert were bulk-headed and the flow of water sufficient to keep the river up to the level that will supply the needs of the city of Casper and the refineries here, as well as the other towns and the ranchmen along the stream east from Casper, is supplied from a four-inch pipe extending through the tunnel at the base of the dam, in addition to a stream running through the tunnel on the south side of the dam. In recent years the reservoir has been filled to overflowing in the spring of the year and there has been a heavy flow over the spillway on the north side of the dam. When the water runs over the spillway it is within twelve feet of the top of the dam, giving a depth of 184 feet of water at the face of the dam. Then the North Platte is backed up for twenty miles and [the Sweetwater river for fifteen miles, and the width of the reservoir at the widest point at that time is about four miles. About a half dozen ranches containing an area of fully 25,000 acres, which includes the grazing land, have been covered by this immense reservoir, and the government paid the settlers who were deprived of their land in the neighborhood of $170,000. Since the contract for the building of the dam was completed, on June I, 1909, a great many improvements have been made, in addition to the building of the dyke on the south side. Among these improvements is a tunnel on the south side which was installed in 1910-11. It is sixteen feet deep and sixteen feet wide, sixty feet above the bed of the river. This tunnel was built for the purpose of allowing a greater flow of water through during the spring and summer months when it is used for irrigating purposes and to relieve the pressure on the gates of the north tunnel. In connection with this tunnel an air shaft was built similar to the air shaft into the north tunnel. Another tunnel has been built on the north side of the river above the original tunnel. All these tunnels have been equipped with gates and balance valves which are automatically controlled by the reservoir pressure. A set of two auxiliary gates and two hydraulic-operated balance valves were installed on the north lower tunnel in 1920-21-22 and upon completion of this work the portal of the tunnel was bulkheaded just below the air shaft. At this place a by-pass valve was installed. An average of about twenty men were working at the dam since the original contract was completed in 1909 until the summer of 1922. The government maintains an exclusive telephone line from Casper to Pathfinder which is used only in connection with business pertaining to the reclamation service. H. D. Comstock was the resident engineer during the construction of the dyke in 1910 and until May 30, 1913. S. S. Sleeth was superintendent of the reservoir from 1910 to September, 1911. J. C. Austin was superintendent from May, 1913, to August, 1918, and he was succeeded by S. S. Sleeth who served until December, 1918. Then came H. E. Brown who served until July, 1921, and he was succeeded by T. S. Martin as superintendent of construction. In the spring time when the reservoir is filled to overflowing and the water rushes over the spillway in great volumes, having the appearance of Niagara Falls, there is always some one ready to spread the report that the dam is unsafe and many timid people in Casper do not rest easy until the water commences to recede late in the summer. In regard to the safety of this dam, Director F. H. Newell says: "There is probably no structure in the United States better designed and finished and more deserving of higher commendation for its stability and absolute safety. The absurd stones sent out concerning it cannot fail to do harm in alarming timid people, who have absolutely no occasion for concern." Since the original appropriation of one million dollars for the construction of this dam, up to June 30, 1920, additional appropriations of $10,279,939 have been made for the project, a portion of which was expended on the Guerensey dam and the irrigation ditches in that vicinity, but the greater portion was expended on the ditches in western Nebraska where the main body of the water is carried and where immense crops are raised each year upon the vast amount of land that is irrigated. Several millions of dollars have also been expended on the dam, for the improvements and repairs before mentioned. Through the efforts of the citizens of Natrona county a survey was made in 1920 under the direction of the state engineer of Wyoming for the purpose of ascertaining the number of acres that could be irrigated in Natrona county if a gravity overfall diversion dam 130 feet high were built in the Alcova canyon, so the water could be stored and raised to a level of a proposed canal that would distribute the water over a stretch of land about forty miles in length and then be returned to the river through natural drainage along the forty-mile stretch of territory included in the irrigation district, and it was found that more than 100,000 acres, all in Natrona county, could be reclaimed. From 15,000 to 17,000 acres of this land is in the Bates Hole country, but most of it lies in the valley in which the Burlington and Northwestern railway tracks pass through. A resurvey was jointly made by the state and the United States reclamation service in 1921-22, and the investigations and report made by the state engineer was found correct. This encouraged the people of the county to ask for an appropriation by the government of a sufficient amount to build this project, which it was said would be built when the original proposition came up many years before. This project has advantages supported by few such projects at their inception. Figuring the area to be irrigated at 100,000 acres it is estimated that the acreage can be devoted to production by putting 50,000 acres in alfalfa, 11,000 in sugar beets, 15,000 in small grains, 5,000 in potatoes, 4,000 in corn, 10,000 in pasturage and 5,000 in home grounds, stock corrals, green vegetables and garden truck, etc. Converting to agricultural purposes the idle land now surrounding Casper is designed not only to produce food products to supply the demands of a growing city, but also to make possible several new industries and to bring about a higher development of the livestock industry, which for years has been one of the foundation stones of the prosperity of Natrona county. The development of agriculture and the building up of a market for agricultural products over a period of years will add an element of permanence to the community and a stability to investment by assuring the establishment of a basic industry which will continue indefinitely into the future. When this is done the state of Wyoming and Natrona county, especially, will have come into its own. Natrona county has been brought to the fore through the persistent efforts of its people as much as it has by its natural resources. It has always been the custom of the people of this county to give their time and their money to encourage and foster any laudable enterprise, and although a great deal of time and money have been expended which did not bring the desired results, nevertheless the word "discourage" was not in their vocabulary, and one failure seemed to be a stimulant for them to go after the next enterprise with a more determined effort, and although the Pathfinder dam was constructed in 1909, during the past thirteen years the people have constantly endeavored to convince the United States reclamation service and the congressmen that thousands upon thousands of acre feet of water from the Pathfinder reservoir are going to waste during the summer months and that this vast amount of water would reclaim thousands of acres of land in Natrona county, and as a result of this persistency, on August first in 1922, Chief Engineer F. E. Weymouth of the United States reclamation service, Frank C. Emerson, state engineer, A. Weiss, project manager, and A. T. Strahorn, soil expert, together with a committee of Casper citizens, left Casper and spent several days going over the survey that had been made, for the purpose of determining whether the proposition would be feasible, and even after all these years the people look upon this visit of these men as a sign of encouragement that it will not be many more years until the water from this project will be spread over the land in the eastern part of Natrona county, and instead of the land yielding cactus, grease wood, and sage brush, there will be raised thousands of tons of alfalfa, corn, potatoes, oats, rye, wheat and sugar beets, and this will be one of the richest agricultural sections of the west. THE NORTH PLATTE RIVER Natrona county's largest and most important stream is the North Platte river. It enters the county at its southern boundary about midway from the eastern and western border lines and flows in a northeasterly direction for more than forty miles to the city of Casper, when it makes an abrupt turn and flows in an almost due easterly direction for about fifteen miles, when it leaves the count}^ and enters Converse county, about thirty miles from the southern border line of Natrona county. The Platte is one of the most extraordinary of rivers. Its fall is rapid, and its bed being composed of fine sand, one would expect that the rapid current would erode a deep channel through it. No such result, however. The broad bed of the river stands almost on a level with the surrounding country, while the water flows back and forth in such sinuous and irregular courses as to increase in a marked degree the length of the channel. The sand washed up in one place is dropped in another, and the bed is built up as fast as it is cut down. Thus it results that so unresisting a material as fine sand withstands the action of the current better than a harder material, for it is certain that if this river with its heavy fall were flowing over solid rock it would have carved out a deep and canyon-like bed.[1] To see the Platte in all its glory one must see it during the spring floods. Then it spreads over its entire bed, upwards, in some places, of a mile wide, and rivals the Mississippi itself in pretentiousness of appearance. Washington Irving described the Platte as "the most magnificent and the most useless of rivers." But despite its uselessness as a stream the Platte has won a permanent place in the history of the west. If boats could not navigate its channel, the "prairie schooner" could sail along its valley, where lay the most practicable route across the plains. It led the overland traveler by gradual and imperceptible ascents from near the level of the ocean to the very summit of the Continental Divide. Along it lay the old Oregon Trail, most famous of all the overland trails.[2] In many places the soft banks of the Platte are always undergoing erosion. The shore line here recedes and there advances as the earth which falls into the stream in one place is dropped in excessive bars in another. At certain seasons this action is rapid and destructive, and hundreds of acres in a single locality are frequently washed away in the course of one season. Thus the channel of the river is ever migrating from one side of the valley to the other, destroying extensive and fertile bottoms, and building up new lands. The origin of the name of the Platte river dates back to the earliest occupation of the valleys of this stream by the French settlers, which occurred in the year 1719.3 These Frenchmen discovered that the Indians called the river the Nebraska, which word in their language signified flat, which, interpreted into French, means Platte, carrying out the idea of a broad and shallow river. Hence LaPlatte river, but up to the time Bonneville made his expedition in 1832-5 it was called by most people the Nebraska river. The early trappers made many attempts to navigate this stream, but very few of them were successful. [1] Chittenden, Vol. 2, p. 770. [2] However useless the river may seem to have been in its earlier history, it has been utilized to a remarkable degree in later years for irrigation, and thousands of acres of land in Nebraska and Wyoming have been reclaimed, and during the summer months almost its entire flow is drawn out upon the neighboring lands. In addition to this the stream furnishes 27,000 people in Casper with water for domestic purposes all the year 'round, and one of the largest oil refineries in the world is furnished with water from the "useless" stream. [3] Coutant's History of Wyoming. Robert Stuart, the man who built the first cabin in what is now Wyoming, the cabin being located about fourteen miles west from Casper where Poison Spider creek empties into the Platte, constructed canoes and launched them on the river in March, 1813, near the east line of Wyoming, but the water was low and sandbars and rocks in the bed of the stream were numerous, and after dragging his canoes over the obstructions for several days he abandoned this method of travel and his party pursued their journey on foot down the banks of the stream. In years to follow many trappers attempted the same experiment. Some succeeded in getting the boats down the streams by taking advantage of the high water season. Previous to 1820 Jacques Laramie successfully launched his bull boats, made from the hides of bull buffalo, laden with furs from the lower point of Grand Island, and the other trappers and traders in after years did the same thing. Edward Everett Hale, in his works on Kansas and Nebraska, published in 1854, says that traders sometimes descended the river in canoes, but the "canoes or boats constantly got aground," he says, "and it seems to be regarded, even at the season of the freshets., as a last resort in the way of transfer of goods from above. The steamboat El Paso is said to have ascended the river last year (1853) when the water was high, more than five hundred miles from its mouth, passing up the north fork above Fort Laramie. In token of this triumph she still 'wears the horns,' for it is a custom on the western waters for a steamboat which has distinguished herself by any decided feat like this to wear a pair of antlers until some more successful boat surpasses her in the same enterprise by which she won them. The distance achieved by the El Paso is probably overestimated for at most seasons of the year the river is of little use for navigation." Edward Everett Hale no doubt was correct when he said that the "achievement of the El Paso was overestimated," for even now when the Pathfinder dam raises the water from six to eight feet higher than it flowed in ordinary years, it would be a difficult matter for a steamboat to ascend the river five hundred miles from its mouth. POWDER RIVER Powder river's reputation for being a quiet and peaceful spot was not of the best, even in the early days when the Indians caused the soldiers much trouble. It seems as though the very air, like the old-time forty-rod whiskey, makes a man want to fight. A few years after the Indians finished killing all the white men they could, a feud broke out between the cattlemen and the rustlers. After a number of the rustlers had been killed and some of the cattlemen wounded, it was a war between the sheepmen and the cattlemen. This sore spot was healed over in a few years and then "Powder River" again came into the lime light and was the most popular war whoop in the great world war. But as to Powder river in the early days, Robert E. Strathorn in his "Hand Book of Wyoming," published in 1879, says: "In briefly describing some of the prominent streams and valleys of Wyoming we may be frank in commencing by declaring that we have nothing good to say of Powder River, the southern boundary of the Big Horn region. Its waters arc darkly mysterious and villainously alkalied; its southern tributaries ditto; and it is far from a fitting gateway to the land of beauty and plenty. However, the valley soils are among the richest in all the lands. The stream rises in the Powder River range, flows almost due north to the Yellowstone and in its tortuous windings has a length of over 300 miles. The valley is from one to three miles wide, is well timbered with cottonwood, and shows coal formation almost everywhere. Cantonment Reno, garrisoned by United States troops, is located on Powder River, near the crossing of the Cheyenne and Big Horn road. It is a general outfitting point for Big Horn miners. The most direct and well-traveled road from Deadwood to the Big Horn region strikes the Cheyenne road near here. "Twenty-six miles north is Crazy Woman's Fork of the Powder. Its waters are clear, flowing over a gravelly bed, and it drains a more desirable region than the parent stream. But not until Clear Fork of Powder, twenty miles north of the last named stream, is reached does the visitor feel thoroughly possessed of that enthusiasm we are endeavoring to inspire. The landscape surrounding is perfect in its loveliness, and the broad valley is very nearly our ideal of a spot for the creation of most inviting homes. The valley is four or five miles wide and seventy miles long, and besides being quite well timbered at the point of crossing possesses greater stretches of hay lands than most others in this section. A ranch and trading post, called Murphy's ranch, the first to be located in the Big Horn region, is found here at the crossing. "Twenty miles' travel farther north over grazing lands which are not equaled south of the Platte anywhere, brings the visitor to the Forks of the Piney, the road crossing them just above their union. The ruins of old Fort Phil Kearney, near the road, stimulate disagreeable thoughts about the played-out peace policy, and lead us to think what a shame it was for a powerful government to lose its grip upon such beautiful domain, and to allow the massacre of its subjects by the hundred. These valleys are about as extensive as that of Clear Fork, are just as beautiful and fertile, and undoubtedly will soon teem with the best life our Yankee enterprise can bequeath. A few miles away lies Lake DeSmet, named after the noted missionary. It is about two miles long and nearly a mile wide, and for its shores has a circle of gracefully rounded hills. Myriads of geese, ducks and other water fowl, with evidently little appreciation of danger, float its surface, and in the shallow water of the beaches we noticed innumerable small insects, resembling fish animalculae. But the water is so wonderfully brackish and charged with alkaline salts that it is doubtful whether fish could exist in it." Additional Comments: History of NATRONA COUNTY WYOMING 1888-1922 True Portrayal of the Yesterdays of a New County and a Typical Frontier Town of the Middle West. Fortunes and Misfortunes, Tragedies and Comedies, Struggles and Triumphs of the Pioneers and Illustrations BY ALFRED JAMES MOKLER Publisher of the Natrona County Tribune from June 1, 1897, to October 15, 1914 R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY CHICAGO (1923) File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/wy/natrona/history/1923/historyo/damsandr14gms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/wyfiles/ File size: 29.7 Kb