North Platte Project

State: Nebraska and Wyoming
Region: Great Plains

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North Platte Project History (93KB)

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Construction

Construction started in 1905 on Pathfinder Dam and the Interstate Canal. By 1915, work on the Interstate Canal and Reservoirs was completed and work had started on Fort Laramie Canal. Lingle Powerplant and the Northport Canal system were started in 1918. All canal construction was completed by 1925. Guernsey Dam was started on June 1, 1925, and completed in July 1927. About 335,000 acres of sagebrush and rangeland have been transformed into productive farmland. Agriculture is the basic income-producing activity. From the first irrigation, the project has produced alfalfa, corn, potatoes, and sugar beets steadily and abundantly. Dry beans also have become an important crop. Guernsey Reservoir has developed foot trails and campgrounds. Many of the facilities are outstanding examples of work performed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930`s. A fine museum, also built by the CCC, houses exhibits pertaining to the area. The dam, powerplant, and all CCC structures are included in the National Register of Historic Places. Other activities enjoyed by visitors to the area are picnicking and boating. Pathfinder Reservoir is used for boating and fishing, primarily for cutthroat, rainbow, and brown trout. Pathfinder Dam, one of the first dams built under the 1902 Reclamation Act, is also listed in the National Register of Historic Places because of its pioneering role in reclaiming arid lands and the innovative engineering required in its construction. The dam is also listed as a Wyoming Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. An information center with exhibits about the dam and surrounding area is maintained near the dam. Picnic grounds, a swimming beach, and boat docks are available at Lake Minatare; fishing is good for walleye, trout, and perch. For specific information about any of these recreation sites, click on the name below. http://www.recreation.gov/detail.cfm?ID=1239 http://www.recreation.gov/detail.cfm?ID=79 http://www.recreation.gov/detail.cfm?ID=78 http://www.recreation.gov/detail.cfm?ID=1246 http://www.recreation.gov/detail.cfm?ID=1558 http://www.recreation.gov/detail.cfm?ID=84 Electricity is supplied to many towns, rural cooperatives, and industries in the project area. Project reservoirs have been effective in reducing damage to property and loss of life from floods. A direct result of flood control is the increased utilization of river valley lands made safe and productive by the regulation of riverflows. Pathfinder Reservoir has a surcharge capacity of 188,493 acre-feet and has prevented $8.7 million in flood damages since its construction. Guernsey Reservoir has no allocated flood control or surcharge capacity; however, it has prevented $439.0 thousand in flood damages since its construction. The North Platte Project has provided an accumulated $9,171,000 in flood control benefits from 1950 to 1999. John C. Fremont got credit for leading the way. Brigham Young, Buffalo Bill Cody, and a generation of pioneers, plainsmen and petit-bourgeois town builders soon followed. Despite cave drawings confirming the presence of Indians thousands of years previous, the parade of history was loudest along the North Platte River during a 25-year window in the nineteenth century. Home to snakes, rodents and locusts, and etched by blizzards, blazing heat and incessant winds, this valley deep in America`s heartland saw many pioneers pass through, but few stay. The river would take the spotlight soon after the creation of the United States Reclamation Service (USRS) in 1902. As a neophyte Federal department eager to create a national image for itself with engineers and the public, the USRS achieved the acclaim it coveted seven years later with completion of the Pathfinder Dam. The 214-foot tall masonry dam was one of the largest structures of its kind in the world at the time of its unveiling. Commencing with Pathfinder, the North Platte Project went on to blaze trails for both Reclamation and the people of Wyoming and Nebraska. For the USRS, the North Platte Project was a testing lab for Reclamation`s earliest attempts at design. A forge for many of the Service`s first generation of engineers and administrators, North Platte tested its builders through brutal shifts of weather, handling an unreliable workforce, and adapting construction to meet the demands of location. For irrigators in two states, access to water ended the cattleman`s monopoly of the land and raised agriculture to equal status in the region`s economy. In this respect, the coming of the North Platte Project is a signpost denoting the end of one era and the onset of an increasingly domesticated West. Compared to most languid western tributaries, the North Platte often runs wild and mighty. But, like other rivers in the West, summer saps its strength. The North Platte is fed by a number of streams east of the Continental Divide from the mountains surrounding North Park in Colorado and the Encampment country of southern Wyoming. As the river climbs north through central Wyoming and east on to Nebraska, the Pathfinder Reservoir gathers an average annual run-off of 1.4 million acre-feet from about 12,000 square miles. When first proposed in 1902, the concept of drawing water from three states for use by two states was unheard of.(1) Bunched along a one-to ten-mile wide area, 390,000 acres of project lands hug the riverbank. Traversing 111 miles along the river`s valley from farm town to farm town, the project starts in Guernsey, Wyoming, before stopping outside of Bridgeport, Nebraska. Water is provided primarily for irrigators gathered along 390,000 acres. The acreage is classified among four irrigation divisions: the Interstate, the Fort Laramie, the Northport, and the Storage. Two-thirds of all the project`s irrigable land are associated with the four divisions, while the remaining third, or some 100,000 acres, are represented by 9 districts and canal companies receiving water under Warren Act contracts. Main features of the North Platte Project include the Pathfinder Dam and its million acre-feet capacity Reservoir southwest of Casper, Wyoming; Guernsey Dam and Reservoir; Whalen Diversion Dam; three regulating reservoirs (Lake Alice, Lake Minatare, Lake Winters Creek); 1,602 miles of canals and laterals; and, 352 miles of open drains. The dam also provides power generation, as 194 miles of electric transmission lines link a region that had only known campfires and lanterns a few years previous.(2) After author Washington Irving visited `the Great American Desert` in the 1830s, his romantic history Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U.S.A., described cliffs of clay and sandstone `bearing the semblance of towers, churches, and fortified cities.` Irving`s description of the future home of Pathfinder Dam is a Frederick Remington painting in words. A niche cut by nature into a fortress of rock, the dam nestles between the canyon walls three miles below the junction of the North Platte and Sweetwater Rivers. Ninety feet wide at the bottom and 200 feet wide at the top, the sides of the canyon`s upper 75 feet are nearly vertical, and the dark, perpendicular cliffs seem to be so close that they appear to be within reach of one another.(3) In the North Platte Valley, teams and plows broke sandy loams to sow potatoes and sugar beets in land that previously supported buffalo grasses and prickly pear cactus. In the Project`s eastern portion (Nebraska), rainfall is sufficient to grow crops, while in the western area (mainly Wyoming), conditions are arid. Ignoring this dichotomy, some pioneer producers believed the North Platte Valley held the potential to become the most productive farmland `outside of the fruit belt in California,` despite North Platte`s fleeting growing season of 180 days. Temperatures vary from lows of -45 degrees to highs reaching 106 degrees Fahrenheit. The approximate center of the project, Scottsbluff, Nebraska, receives anywhere from 9.4 to 20.7 inches of moisture annually, as most of that amount falls between April and July. Engineering and coincidence usually travel on separate plains, but one story about explorer John C. Fremont and a moment of misfortune on the North Platte, would inspire a later generation of American dam builders. An August 24, 1842 entry in his journal placed Fremont and his party passing through a `Big Ca?on` on the North Platte, returning from an expedition to the Rocky Mountains. Making his way through the rapids by boat, he remembered, `we cleared rock after rock, and shot past fall after fall till the boat struck a concealed rock immediately at the foot the fall, which whirled her over in an instant,` consequently losing his surveying instruments near the present dam site. Nearly sixty years later when it came time to christen the centerpiece of the North Platte Project, Fremont`s nickname, `The Pathfinder` was the winning choice.(4) Even before Fremont`s mishap, the North Platte Valley was often unfriendly to outsiders. A land where man struggled `to adapt his living requirements to this somewhat sterile region in order to exist.` At the time of the first contact with whites in the early nineteenth century, the Teton, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians lived near the present site of the town of Guernsey, Wyoming. All of these tribes lived east of the Mississippi before migrating onto the plains in the 1600s, acquiring horses and adapting to the nomadic culture of other Plains tribes.(5) The first recorded visit of whites to the North Platte Valley was in 1812. Trappers in the employ of fur magnate John Jacob Astor ventured down the North Platte back from the Pacific Coast making their first winter camp at a spot 15 miles north of what would be Casper. Later that winter the party stopped near the future site of Mitchell, Nebraska, the USRS project headquarters a century later. The fur traders path, blazed in the name of business opportunities, evolved into a passage for anybody with enough determination to chuck it all and head west. By the 1840s, the 2,020-mile long Oregon Trail, brought thousands from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon, California, and Utah. This push of humanity made the trail `the best known and most travelled route across the continent.` Other ways west -- the Mormon, California, the Pony Express and Overland Trails -- all followed the North Platte River at some point.(6) Stage stops, trading posts and Federal army forts all sprang up in the wake of increasing western migration. Fur traders ran Fort Laramie in 1834 until it was taken over by the government in 1849. Fort Laramie and Fort Casper are probably the two best known outposts of civilization from this time. The trail confirmed that Americans are a transitory people always looking to get someplace else faster. The next advancement in speed transpired in 1869, when the Union Pacific railway established transcontinental rail travel, relegating the Oregon Trail to folklore. Grass now grows over the 200 foot wide trail, distinguished from the general surroundings by the contrasting vegetation, marked occasionally by a pioneer`s grave.(7) A time and a land remembered by a Reclamation official as `the paradise of the cowmen,` the 1860s initiated the next era of the North Platte`s development. The newly opened Indian country south of the North Platte spurred the growth of the open range cattle industry across Wyoming and Nebraska. The cattleman`s control of the prairie was also transitory, as homesteaders, blizzards, drought, improvements in cattle breeding, the rapid progress of sheep raising, and the advent of sod-house farmers, would all marginalize the cowboy and his stock`s freedom to roam.(8) Homesteaders faced their own seperate collection of obstacles on the road toward establishing irrigation. In the 1880s, a handful of pioneers settled the north and south sides of the river, near the towns of Minatare and Gering, Nebraska. Against these pioneers were brutal dry spells, great distances from the railroad and other points of supply, and their own misconception that western Nebraska received as much rain as eastern Nebraska. These first irrigators worked together to dig small ditches to bring the Platte to their lands adjacent to the river. In the century`s last decade, a common method of obtaining of water was by water wheel. The river`s current powered a wheel hung with buckets that lifted water from the river before dumping it into canals. Ranch and cattlemen had the resources to take the next step beyond the water wheel by digging a series of small canals between 1887 and 1900 to irrigate 5,000 to 8,000 acre tracts along the bottom lands of the North Platte. One of their grand projects proposed the irrigation of 60,000 acres of table land on the north side of the river between the state line and Red Willow Creek in Nebraska. The drought of 1890, and financial reverses brought by the Panic of 1893, put an end to these plans.(9) If a large scale irrigation project funded by state, Federal, or private means was ever going to come to the North Platte Valley, many with a stake in the Valley`s well-being felt it would happen at Goshen Park, Wyoming, near the state line with Nebraska. Repeated surveys by private firms were conducted long before the passage of the Reclamation Act of 1902. In 1903, a preliminary canal was run from the town of Guernsey in hopes to divert the river with the help of a proposed 100-foot high dam and an elaborate 140-mile long canal system. An additional plan to build at canal from Fort Laramie was also discussed at this time, but the estimated $35.00 an acre to reclaim these lands killed Goshen Park Dam and stalled the proposed Fort Laramie Canal.(10) A few months after the USRS was established, in the summer of 1902, government surveyors began to study the Sweetwater River as a possible dam site. First sipped and named by an Army officer noting its lack of alkali, the Sweetwater runs east through central Wyoming before emptying into the North Platte River southwest of the town of Alcova, Wyoming. Twenty miles above its mouth, the Sweetwater cut through a granite ridge forming a deep, narrow canyon. The pioneers passing a quarter of a mile away along the Oregon Trail named the geological feature, `Devil`s Gate.` Two years of surveying this niche resulted in Reclamation deciding against Sweetwater, as it did not supply enough water to justify construction of a big dam at that location. In 1903, as Reclamation began to look for other sites, the Wyoming State Hydrographer, A.J. Parshall, told USRS Chief Engineer Frederick H. Newell, about an excellent damsite in the `Big Ca?on` below the junction of the North Plate and Sweetwater.(11) In August, 1903, under the direction of USRS engineer John E. Field, a diamond-drill camp was set where the two rivers flowed through a narrow granite canyon. The remote site was impossible to reach by either road or boat, subsequently slowing arrival of equipment at the canyon. Once the machinery did arrive, drill operations were conducted from a boat. Despite the craft firmly anchored and tied, both boat and drill surged in time with the river`s pulse. However, a month into operations, the crew`s persistence paid off, as a trail of drill holes across the canyon revealed an excellent foundation of granite on which a dam could be built.(12) Despite their reputation for even-tempered fairness, there are a few issues that can rile the citizens of America`s heartland. One contention of the 1880s and 1890s began as a war of words over water rights between the states of Wyoming and Nebraska. When Wyoming entered the Union in 1889, her state constitution claimed all the water in Wyoming belonged solely to the state. Perhaps for the first time, Nebraskans saw red, and it was not out of local sporting fanaticism, but out of indignation that their access to the North Platte was in jeopardy. Acting as peacemaker, Wyoming`s state engineer, Elwood Mead, suggested to Nebraskans in 1893, that both states work together to seek Congressional appointment of a permanent interstate commission of the regulation of priority rights. Mead could add soothsayer to his list of abilities, as the United States Supreme Court later adjudicated both claimants rights. Mead`s talents for stilling troubled waters would earn him the position of Commissioner of Reclamation from 1924 to 1937.(13) The Newlands Act was actively championed by the Nebraska Congressional delegation at the turn-of-the-century, because they believed the federal government would mediate any water rights questions between states. Some in Wyoming grumbled that the construction of any federal dam would be done under `false pretenses` and their state would be deprived of what was rightfully theirs. Eventually, their support grew for the North Platte Project as reasonable way of dividing the waters. Presented to Secretary of the Interior Ethan A. Hitchcock as the Sweetwater Project, operations on the North Platte were authorized under the Reclamation Act of 1902 (32 Stat. 388) on March 14, 1903. The question of which state controls the North Platte has gone before the U.S. Supreme Court at least twice since the 1930s, and yet another case regarding use of the North Platte has been brewing since the mid-1980s.(14) Both Indians and Buffalo had been forced off the Great American Desert by American expansion. Now, it was Reclamation`s obligation to tame one of the last settled places in the West. Foremost among the challenges was the location of the dam. A torturous forty-five miles from the largest nearby town, Casper, workers and material were always hard to come by. In 1905, a few months into construction, a Reclamation engineer lamented the `remoteness of the project, the poor roads, in places little better than trails.`(15) As one of the Reclamation Service`s first projects, the USRS often operated by trial and error at North Platte. Four months before Reclamation accepted bids on the dam, in February 1905, the Service awarded a construction contract for the dam`s diversion tunnel to Kilpatrick Brothers and Collins Contracting Co. of Beatrice, Nebraska. The tunnel served two purposes, to carry the river around the dam site during construction and subsequently perform as an outlet from the reservoir. The tunnel was worked from two headings as crews dug with handtools for 11-and-a-half hours a shift. Fortunately, productivity increased after four electric and two steam drills replaced chisels and hammers. When Kilpatrick Brothers concluded work in August 1905, the 480 foot long tunnel through solid granite entered the canyon wall ninety feet above the upper face of the dam. It passes to the left (north) of the dam at a distance of about 85 feet from the canyon wall and enters the canyon again 230 feet below the lower face of the dam. The tunnel is 13 feet wide and 10 feet high in the center. Two vertical shafts, each about 170 feet, lead to the surface to a high pressure and sluice gate structures. The only major setback during this job came on May 23, 1905, two days after both sides met under the canyon. Spring runoff flooded the tunnel, dumping two feet of silt inside the corridor, marring completion of the project's first milestone.(16) A triumph of early twentieth century design, built to master a century`s worth of elements, the masonry arch Pathfinder Dam rises 214 feet from the bedrock of the canyon floor. Fanning out from top to bottom, Pathfinder tapers from a top width of 11 feet to a bottom width of 97 feet and a crest length of 432 feet. Sharing the same cyclopean rubble design as the Theodore Roosevelt Dam on Arizona`s Salt River Project, Pathfinder does not have the same mystic aura of grit and grandeur, but the circumstances surrounding its completion are just as compelling. The dam is arched in plan to a constant center -- the radius to the axis is 155 feet. The upper portion of the dam is a combination of an arch and a vertical cantilever at the base. The distribution of the load between the arch and cantilever produces equal deflections under assumed temperatures and waterloads. The upper 27 feet of the structure are reinforced with steel on each face. Almost half of Pathfinder`s masonry came from waste rock. There are no contraction joints except at a point near the south end. The attention paid to the dam's resilience was not happenstance, but born of a theory delivered to a gathering of engineers in Utah a few years previous.(17) At a Conference of Engineers of the Reclamation Service in Ogden, Utah in September, 1903, George Y. Wisner, a Consulting Engineer to the USRS, presented a paper arguing the Reclamation Service would have to build masonry dams of great height to provide ample storage in the often parched rivers and reservoirs of the west. Wisner emphasized the importance of accurate data to determine the stresses these structures would undergo. His selection as Pathfinder`s designer provided Wisner the opportunity to put his blueprints where his beliefs were. Wisner and Edgar T. Wheeler, a Los Angeles construction engineer, launched their investigations of the site in early 1905. In their report to the Board of Consulting Engineers of the Reclamation Service, both men emphasized the upper portion of the dam should receive extra protection to avoid cracking brought on by the region`s wild weather. Wisner and Wheeler won the board over with a design that incorporated efficiency, safety, and economy.(18) Finding a contractor and qualified men to execute Wisner and Wheeler`s plans was more perplexing. The search for a contractor willing to assume the job began inside Denver`s Chamber of Commerce building on June 15, 1905. That afternoon Reclamation announced Bradbury & O`Gara of Denver won the right to build the Pathfinder Dam. Later that month, the contractors went out to the damsite to find out what they had gotten themselves into. In two weeks time, Bradbury & O`Gara withdrew their $364,940 bid, explaining by letter to Frederick Newell, `we have made very grave and insurmountable errors in our original figures.` Their price was 25 per cent below the next lowest bidder and was much less than the work could be done for. Now, the USRS faced re-advertising the bidding and throwing the preliminary construction work into the teeth of a high plains winter.(19) The story of the bungled bids had one more chapter to go that summer. The work was re-advertised and the bids opened again on August 16. This time, the lowest bidder, N.S. Sherman of Oklahoma City, came in with a proposal of $459,260. However, Sherman`s financial incapacity and lack of experience to construct a major dam was soon apparent. Their bid was rejected and the contract was awarded to Geddis and Seerie Stone Co., of Denver with the second lowest bid of $482,000. Geddis and Seerie`s estimate would later climb to $626,523.52, due to the added cost of removing unstable rock from the canyon walls and the resulting expense of extra masonry. Geddis and Seerie` most recent triumph was the just completed Lake Cheesman Dam. Built for municipal use by the city of Denver, the gravity arch Lake Cheesman was the first substantial and continual on-stream storage facility of raw water for municipal use in the Rocky Mountain West. After Geddis and Seerie`s selection, Wisner expressed his doubts about the Denver firm, proposing Reclamation should hire force account laborers. Having endured two bidding fiascoes, Wisner was overruled, and by the early autumn of 1905, many of those who built Cheesman picked up their tools and headed to Wyoming.(20) It was the first of September before Geddis and Seerie could safely put the Pathfinder contract in their pocket. Their proposal covered construction of the dam, gatehouse, spillway, and hauling the cement from Casper over paths cut through prairie grasses and sagebrush by men and teams. Scrambling to beat the first north winds of winter, work commenced September 16 on the construction camp. Crews would complete a bunk-house, dining room, a house for the contractor, an office, a meat-house and cellar for vegetables, and two water closets `at a safe sanitary distance from camp.` The month of November brought the plant, and in December, the contractor`s men began building a temporary dam to divert the river while the permanent dam was raised.(21) Starting while the days were warm would have made construction of the temporary diversion dam a quicker and cheaper job. Ice often covered the temporary rock-fill dam in the winter of 1905-06 and, consequently, the dam was not tight enough to stop leaking. A series of dams, each lower that the one above it, were built to control seepage aided by a timber flume and three 6-inch centrifugal pumps. A decision by Geddis and Seerie on where to locate a temporary diversion dam led to a major headache for both Reclamation and the contractor. Directly above the site of the proposed upper temporary dam, located at the edge of the canyon, was a large quantity of loose rock. Blasting the loose rock from the canyon walls would be the simplest way to proceed in the minds of the contractors. Hundreds of tons of rocks were dynamited, but the rock did not fall where intended, subsequently covering much of the river bottom with large stones. The crevices between rocks created an immense sub-drain that was impossible to fill, hampering the first season of construction operations.(22) In spite of falling rock and seeping water, foundation excavation began in January 1906. Fighting to reach bedrock, crews often had to cut through several feet of ice in temperatures that plunged as low as -29 below zero. Advancing despite the cold, progress halted March 25 when the river rose, breaking up the 3-feet-thick ice and flooding the damsite. There was no serious damage to men or machinery, but it was August 15 before the first stone of the foundation was laid. The eventual depth of excavation for the entire foundation was only 10 feet.(23) Pathfinder Dam grew from 55,000 barrels of cement and 60,210 cubic of yards of masonry. Local Newspaperman Alfred J. Mokler recalled the fastest trip by a freight team from Casper to Pathfinder took three days, while the longest lasted a staggering 76 days -- a 45-mile trip made over low valleys and high hills in all kinds of weather. After a day`s work, freight teams were unharnessed and turned loose on the range to feed, and frequently, many subsequent days were lost in search of wayward animals. Average cost of concrete delivered to Casper was $2.68 a barrel, but the contractor paid an additional $3 for the journey out to Pathfinder. Freighting outfits of all kinds and sizes were used, from a sheep wagon drawn by two horses and a mule carrying 24 sacks of cement to a 22-horse team drawing five wagons coupled together hauling 327 sacks weighing 31,000 lbs.(24) Acquiring the stone for the dam was easier logistically, but this job, too, had its own inconveniences. Hard, coarse-grained granite was quarried within a quarter-mile of the dam. Pieces of rock forty feet square were first blown out of the canyon and split into smaller blocks averaging eight to 10 tons. After the blocks were dressed and drenched with water, the granite squares were placed into position by cables. The dam had to be as impervious as possible, meaning all voids filled and no leaks allowed. This was achieved with up to 10 inches of concrete mortar placed between the blocks. The best results came from `rich` concrete mixed very wet in order to fill every crack. Wet concrete was also much easier to work than a slightly stiffer mixture. This method also had economics behind it; use of more stone meant the contractor could use fewer barrels of the expensive cement. Before placing the mortar bed for a stone, the area was swept and wet with a hose, followed by a lot of prying and lifting by the masons to position the stone properly. The attention necessary to make this recipe of concrete, cement and rock to come out right triggered a Reclamation engineer to remember, "Every mason, helper, laborer, and all who took any part in the laying of stone or placing of concrete had it instilled into him at the outset that dirt was an enemy to impervious work and that its presence would not be countenanced."(25) In spite of it being rough and remote, North Platte`s plant was up-to-date by the standards of the first decade of the new century. Estimated to cost over $60,000, the plant`s machinery included 10 guy derricks with 60-foot masts, 55-foot booms, two cableways spanning 350 feet, mixers, and a concrete mixing house designed so that one man could handle over 700 sacks of cement in an eight hour shift while a second man mixed an equal amount into mortar and concrete at the same time. A certain number of strokes on a gong told each worker whether the cement coming down the chute was meant for either the concrete or mortar mixer. Economy also guided the layout of the plant, acknowledging the difficulty of keeping workers. Machinery was placed side by side under a shelter, so when engineers were scarce or work was slack, one engineer could run both hoists. The local scarcity of fuel to run all this machinery led to a separate project to find alternate materials to burn. Kilpatrick burned all the available wood during their tunnel operations, and oil and gas were too costly to obtain. This energy crisis forced Geddis and Seerie to obtain wood from the Pedro Mountains, ten miles south of the dam. Loggers at a mountain side camp sawed pine and cedar into cord wood for the next two years. The machinery burned five cords a day at a cost of $8 to $10 a cord. At construction`s close in 1909, much of the equipment was left at the damsite. It was not worth it to Geddis and Seerie to freight it back to Casper by team and then ship it by rail on to Denver.(26) As the dam rose, the diverted North Platte flowed through the diversion tunnel in the dam`s northern abutment. The tunnel later served as a service outlet for the reservoir once the dam was completed. Two main outlets are part of the completed structure, one through each abutment. The 480-foot long north outlet is partially concrete-lined with two vertical shafts leading to the surface for the high-pressure and sluice gate structures. At the gates, the tunnel divides into two conduits controlled by two balanced needle valves. The south outlet is an arch tunnel also partially lined with concrete. The outlet is 15-feet wide by 14-feet high and 360-feet-long flaring at the upstream end to a width of 40-feet and a height of 30-feet to handle a concrete plug that containing six 58-inch Ensign-type valves. In 1958, the tunnel was abandoned and sealed off with concrete bulkheads. The power outlet works is located in the left abutment and consists of a trashrack protected intake structure; a 18-foot diameter pressure tunnel; a gate shaft and control house, and two 129-inch-diameter penstocks which lead to the Fremont Canyon Powerplant at the upper end of Alcova Reservoir. The power outlet works have a capacity of 2,300 cubic feet per second (cfs), however, no water can be released from the reservoir until the reservoir water surface reaches an elevation of 5,850 feet. Power conduits No. 1 and 2 are 18 feet in diameter and about three miles long. Located approximately 243 feet downstream from the inlet is a control gate structure and shaft with a fixed-wheel gate installed.(27) In the opinion of the man in charge of construction at the damsite, Ernest H. Baldwin, the one task that merited the title of `a nasty job,` was the installation of a grizzly -- a grating preventing driftwood from lodging in the tunnel gate openings. While it `was a small piece of work,` stormy weather and complications transporting equipment to the mouth of the tunnel made it the most exasperating element of construction. Located a half mile up river, the steep and rocky sides of the canyon made it impossible for a team to get near the work. Additionally, the force of the rapids at the canyon`s upper end obstructed construction crews landing by boat. Getting in and around this tight spot, a 185 foot high chute tilted at a 66 degree angle traipsed its way from the top of the canyon to a point where teams could come close to the river bank. A tripod with a pully was built over the upper end of the chute and all materials glided to the riverbank down the chute.(28) A nearly level natural channel lying 400 feet from the north side of the canyon constitutes the spillway. The uncontrolled, flat-crested weir on the dam`s left abutment was widened to 650 feet by construction crews. Economy also guided the spillway`s creation, as the rock used in dam construction formed the wasteway. The crest length is 535 feet at an elevation of 5858.1 feet with its guide wall standing 12-feet high. The spillway can carry 55,000 cfs at a depth of eight feet on the crest. A concrete weir, downstream from the main weir, sits at the low portion of the spillway channel. Located 184 feet above the stream bed, many irregular and large boulders cover the entire the channel.(29) A quarter-mile south of the dam, crews built a dike to close a low gap a fourth of a mile south of the dam in a natural depression to fully develop the reservoir`s capacity. The Pathfinder Dike is 1,650 feet long, 20 feet wide on top with a maximum height of 38 feet, and an 8-inch tile drain laid in a trench downstream from the core wall to collect the dike`s seepage. Paved with granite blocks 18 inches thick, weighing up to 400 pounds, the upstream face of the Pathfinder Dike resembles a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces do not fit. Construction began in March 1910, as 75 men and 50 teams of horses came from Denver that spring. Crews worked in two shifts of 10 hours each and the dike was finished by May of the following year.(30) The Pathfinder Reservoir extends 23 miles up the North Platte River and 15 miles up the Sweetwater River -- a maximum width of four miles. The waters of the North Platte River have to pass the Seminoe and Kortes Dams of the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Project before entering the reservoir. Pathfinder can hold up to 1,016,000 acre-feet of water and covers 22,700 acres; enough to provide storage for irrigation in normal years and keep a large reserve to tide users over from a heavy run-off year into a dry year. Much of the reservoir covers land originally owned by the government, but it was necessary to purchase 6,812 acres of private land at a cost of $205,490 to fill the lake.(31) As work progressed on the main dam, a diversion dam took shape east of the town of Whalen, Wyoming. On-site surveys progressed between January and April 1905. The design of the Whalen Diversion Dam was completed a year later, and the contract awarded to the firm of S.R.H. Robinson and Son in January 1907. Robinson and Son failed to make satisfactory progress on the job, pushing operations into the flood season of 1908. The firm`s initial dam construction was too weak to withstand that season`s highwater and the structure failed in May 1908. After the failure, the firm suspended construction long enough to irritate Secretary of the Interior James R. Garfield. Garfield cancelled the contract and directed further work done by force account. Completed in April 1909 at a cost of $235,010, the gravity, concrete ogee weir, embankment wing structure stands 35 feet high with a 2,460 feet crest. Since it first went into service, Whalen Diversion Dam has redirected the North Platte the south side of the North Platte into the Fort Laramie Canal and the river`s north side into the Interstate Canal.(32) Many of the men guiding Pathfinder`s creation would later influence and direct the engineering and administrative philosophies of the Bureau over the next five decades. Charles E. Wells supervised the North Platte Project from 1905 until December, 1907, until Ira W. McConnell took over as the project`s supervising engineer for the final two years of Pathfinder`s construction. From 1905 to June 1909, Canadian Ernest H. Baldwin was the engineer-in-charge of construction at Pathfinder Dam, succeeded by Harold D. Comstock from October 1910 to July 1913. Future Commissioner Harry Bashore also started his Reclamation career on the North Platte Project in 1906, a short while after receiving his civil engineering degree from the University of Missouri. Bashore was just one of a cadre of young engineers gaining experience at North Platte during 1906 and 1907. While some farmers grumbled the project was a `college` for young engineers, the presence of many young faces in positions of trust, reflected the great demand for engineers across the nation.(33) If Pathfinder was the beginning of many careers in Reclamation, for those laboring to build the dam, it was a harsh job compounded by the isolation of the camp. From the first day Geddis and Seerie came to the Big Canyon, to the last scoop of earth dug out for the canals, finding qualified workers was a constant strain. Those used to hard work were the first to come on board, as one of the earliest contracts for stone cutters went to a group of Italian immigrants working at the Sunrise Iron Mines near Hartville, Wyoming. Recently arrived in America, the poor, working class of Europe, was well represented at Pathfinder. A 1968 article for Reclamation Era magazine remembered, `Unskilled immigrants and sons of immigrants bearing such names as O`Toole, Morelli, Weder, Kajutis, Geko, and Moore alternately sweat and froze for about 35 cents an hour between 1905-09 to erect this unique structure.`(34) The atmosphere of the construction camp was at a crossroads of behavior -- orderly or unruly -- and the possibility of a drift down the wrong road had Reclamation`s management in a constant anxiety. In a July 7, 1905 letter from Newell to Arthur Powell Davis, the commissioner stressed the North Platte construction camp was in need of a good doctor to `aid in promoting efficiency.` Related matters also troubled Newell, as he feared, `There will be many camp followers located in the outskirts of camp who must be watched continually and kept from making nuisances.` Geddis and Seerie hired a doctor to look after the health of the men and be on hand in case of an accident. In addition to the weekly salary paid by Geddis and Seerie, the doctor received $1.50 a month from each employee to retain his services. An arrangement between the Federal government and Natrona County, Wyoming, bolstered the USRS`s master plan of a hygienic, law abiding camp. The federally-appointed Sanitary Inspector did double-duty as the county`s deputy sheriff. As Ernest Baldwin put it, `The two positions blended nicely as it gave the inspector certain authority in his sanitary trips.` At the end of four years, it could be said the camp followed the path of righteousness, as only one arrest was recorded in that period.(35) Reclamation and the contractor believed wages inducement enough for all kinds of workers to rough it for a few months on the prairie. Common laborers received 35 cents an hour during 1906-07, dropping to 30 cents an hour in 1908-09, as work reached completion. The money was also good for skilled laborers, as a driller received 37.5 to 42.5 cents an hour to while masons earned 70 to 85 cents an hour. According to Project Manager Andrew Weiss, `It was necessary to ship almost all men from Denver (300 miles to the south) and on average a poor grade of labor was secured. The force was continually changing, many of the men not staying long enough to work.` Wages were not the only obvious division between management and labor. Housing and living arrangements also reflected the level of society you belonged to outside the camp. The wives and families of USRS and construction officials lived respectably in frame homes downstream from the dam. Laborers, with or without families, lived nearby in dugouts, tents, and shacks in the gullies adjacent to the construction camp. At Pathfinder, most men worked six days a week with hunting and fishing the only diversions on their day off. An occasional Sunday brawl, often triggered by alcohol smuggled by wagon past the vigilant glare of tea-total Reclamation officials, added an occasional reminder that this still was the wild west. Even as late as 1920, help was hard to keep. Of the 240 men working on a Reclamation carriage facility, the Northport Canal, 183 of them quit within 90 days.(36) There were no major mishaps during Pathfinder`s long construction period, but tragedy struck after its completion. On the evening of February 9, 1912, five men crossing the canyon by aerial tramway to go back to camp for dinner, fell 186 feet to their deaths, when the cable carrying their car snapped. The men were installing a concrete ladderway on the canyon wall. According to a doctor at the scene, two of the men were so badly crushed that identification was impossible. The graves of two of those victims remain on a barren shelf overlooking the dam.(37) The last full month of construction, May 1909, was nature`s last revenge on the builders. The weather at Pathfinder alternated between cold, rainy, and windy. There were no great ceremonies marking completion of the $2.2 million project on June 14, but within days of its completion, Pathfinder was in the news. In the days before satellite communication and instant media, the Pathfinder damsite might have been as far away from Denver, Colorado as events in the Balkans, or some other trouble spot in the summer of 1909. The previous winter, snowfall in the mountains of Wyoming and Colorado feeding the North Platte watershed, indicated heavy and dangerous run-off for the spring. Run-off measuring a million acre-feet above and beyond average annual totals had the project office worried. During the last week of June 1909, reports circulated that the top 40 feet of the dam had to be dynamited off to permit rising waters to spill over and relieve the pressure. From the middle to the end of June, almost four feet of water per day had gathered in the reservoir. Rumors soon flowed as swiftly as the North Platte in late spring. The possibility of everything from the dam east to the town of Guernsey underwater prompted many to move to higher ground. These stories got the most play in Denver newspapers, topped with headlines like: `Great Pathfinder Dam Weakens and Puts Hundreds in Peril,` and `Pathfinder Dam is Threatened with Destruction.` That same week, the Denver Post sent one of its reporters to `engage the fastest automobile` and give an accounting of `nothing but absolute facts.` Once at the site, the reporter was relieved to write `the mammoth and costly pile of granite and mortar` was by his own inspection, and the counsel of USRS officials, indeed `safe.` In the summers that followed, the nervous of Casper warily waited through spring until the reservoir receded late in the season. An annual ripple of panic was enough for Frederick Newell to defend Pathfinder in the 1920s, insisting there was no structure in the United States `better designed and finished and more deserving of higher commendation for its stability,` and `The absurd stories sent out concerning it cannot fail to do harm in alarming timid people, who have absolutely no occasion for concern.` Time has proven Newell correct.(38) In the summer of 1995, the Wyoming Water Development Commission and Reclamation studied alternatives to add storage at Pathfinder, as silt clogged the reservoir. A plan to add 2 to 2.5 feet to the top of the dam would be the first tuck performed on the its facade in ninety years. The addition would cost less than constructing a new facility on Deer Creek, a North Platte tributary, Deer Creek. If the addition goes through, it would not alter the engineering mastery of Pathfinder Dam. The skill of those who created the dam was honored in 1971 with a listing on the National Register of Historic Places. A 1986 analysis of the condition of the dam tendered a tribute from a later generation of engineers: `Construction of Pathfinder Dam and Dike was a major accomplishment, especially considering the primitive equipment available at the time.`(39)

Plan

The North Platte River, fed by many mountain streams rising in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Wyoming, is the most important river in southeastern Wyoming and western Nebraska. Its waters are stored and used for irrigation and power development for the North Platte Project, the Kendrick Project, and the Kortes and Glendo Units of the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program. Storage structures for these projects are interspersed along the North Platte River and require close coordination of operations. Project operation is further complicated by agreements and laws governing water rights. The use and quantity of water are allocated for certain defined purposes - some on a priority basis, some on a proportionate share basis, and some on a geographical source basis. Waters of the North Platte River must pass through Seminoe and Kortes Dams before flowing downstream to Pathfinder Reservoir where they are joined by the flows from the Sweetwater River. Pathfinder Reservoir has a storage capacity of 1,016,000 acre-feet and holds much of the North Platte Project water. During the nonirrigation season, a small amount of water is released to satisfy other water rights, enhance fish and wildlife, and operate powerplants downstream. During the irrigation season, water is released as required, including water flowing from Seminoe Reservoir to be diverted at Alcova Dam for irrigation on the Kendrick Project. Pathfinder Dike fills a depression in the natural ground surface about 0.25 mile south of the dam. It is an earthfill structure, 38 feet high, with a concrete corewall. About 180 miles below Alcova Dam and 25 miles below Glendo Dam, Guernsey Dam controls river flow. Water released from Pathfinder Reservoir can be stored at this dam and released to fit varying irrigation demands. Water is released through Guernsey Powerplant. Guernsey Dam is in a rocky canyon 2 miles upstream from Guernsey, Wyoming. It is a diaphragm- type embankment of sluiced clay, sand, and gravel that forms an impervious core. Its slopes are protected by a thick layer of rock riprap. The structural height of the dam is 135 feet. The original capacity of the reservoir was 73,810 acre-feet, but this has been greatly reduced by silt deposits to about 46,000 acre-feet. The powerplant is on the right bank below the dam and has two generators, each of which had an installed capacity of 2,400 kilowatts and was uprated to 3,200 kilowatts in 1993. Power is transmitted to towns and industries down the valley over transmission lines which are operated and maintained by the Western Area Power Administration. Since 1909, water for the North Platte Project has been diverted from the river by Whalen Diversion Dam. Water is diverted on the south side of the river into the Fort Laramie Canal and on the north side of the river into the Interstate Canal. The dam is a gravity, concrete ogee weir with an embankment wing which spans the river about 8 miles below Guernsey Dam. This canal has an initial capacity of 1,500 cubic feet per second and winds its way for 129 miles to an area south of Gering, Nebraska, delivering water to farms along its course. It also originally carried water for operating the Lingle Powerplant, which was retired in April 1956. The canal was constructed during 1915-1924. The Interstate Canal has an initial capacity of 2,100 cubic feet per second. Constructed during 1905-1915, it follows the contour of the land for 95 miles to Lake Alice and Lake Minatare Reservoirs northeast of Scotts Bluff, Nebraska. The 35-mile long High-Line Canal extends from Lake Alice to the southwest. Diversion capacity is 160 cubic feet per second. The Low-Line Canal extends from Lake Minatare southwest. It is 43 miles long and has a diversion capacity of 430 cubic feet per second. Lake Alice, Lake Minatare, Lake Winters Creek, and Reservoir No. 2 are offstream equalizing reservoirs. The reservoirs are fed using water diverted at Whalen Diversion Dam through the Interstate Canal, which ends at Lake Alice. The Reservoir Supply Canal carries water to the other reservoirs, which are usually filled each year before the start of the irrigation season. Natural depressions were made into important reservoirs by building Minatare Dam and the Upper and Lower Dams at Lake Alice. The combined storage capacity of these reservoirs is about 73,000 acre-feet. Water for the Northport Canal is conveyed 80 miles through the Tri-State Canal of the Farmers Irrigation District. The Northport Canal, a continuation of the privately constructed Tri-State Canal, was designed to irrigate 16,170 acres in the Northport Division. The canal is 27 miles long and has a diversion capacity of 250 cubic feet per second. The Tri-State Canal diverts water, stored in project reservoirs, from the North Platte River in Nebraska. The Pathfinder and Guernsey Reservoirs and Guernsey Powerplant are operated and maintained by the Bureau of Reclamation. Whalen Diversion Dam is operated by the Goshen Irrigation District for the other districts on a cost-sharing basis. The distribution systems are operated by the districts which they serve. Pathfinder Dam was one of the first dams constructed by the Reclamation Service. The dam is in a granite canyon on the North Platte River about 3 miles below its junction with the Sweetwater River and about 47 miles southwest of Casper, Wyoming. It is made of granite quarried from nearby hills and is faced with large rectangular blocks laid in horizontal courses. It is an arch dam with a gravity-type section, and has a structural height of 214 feet.

Contact

Title: Facility Manager
Organization: North Platte Projects Field Office
Address: 22122 Kortes Road
City: Alcova, WY 82620
Phone: 307-261-5960

Contact

Title: Public Affairs Officer
Organization: Great Plains Region
Address: 2021 4th Avenue North
City: Billings, MT 59101
Fax: 406-247-7604
Phone: 406-247-7610

Contact

Organization: Beerline Irrigation Canal
Address: Route 2, Box 15
City: Broadwater, NE 69125
Phone: 308-489-5657

Contact

Organization: Browns Creek Irrigation District
Address: PO Box 40
City: Broadwater, NE 69125
Phone: 308-489-5506

Contact

Organization: Central Irrigation District
Address: 130755 C.R. 25
City: Gering, NE 69341
Phone: 308-436-4530

Contact

Organization: Farmers Irrigation District
Address: PO Box 307
City: Scotts Bluff, NE 69363-0307
Fax: 308-632-5085
Phone: 308-632-4921

Contact

Organization: Gering Irrigation District
Address: 981 Rundell Road
City: Gering, NE 69341
Phone: 308-436-5125

Contact

Organization: Lingle Water Users` Association
Address: Route 1, Box 83
City: Lingle, WY 82223
Phone: 307-837-2786

Contact

Organization: Rock Ranch Irrigation Ditch Company
Address: Route 1, Box 518
City: Torrington, WY 82240
Phone: 307-532-5877

Contact

Organization: Chimney Rock Irrigation District
Address: Box 398
City: Bayard, NE 69334
Phone: 308-586-1787

Contact

Organization: Hill Irrigation District
Address: Route 1, Box 117
City: Torrington, WY 82240
Phone: 307-532-4639

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