The big dam

Reprint of this story from the August 22, 1902 issue of The Grand Encampment Herald brought to you courtesy of Grandma’s Cabin, Encampment, Wyoming. Preserving History - Serving the Community.

BUILDING THE DAM

Work Commenced on the Big Dam and Four Mile Pipe Line along South Fork

Twenty-five men are now employed by the North American Copper Company in the construction of the big dam and pipe line on the South Fork of the Encampment River. The new wagon road has been completed and a fine camp established.

Wednesday morning Engineer M. D. Williams, of Saratoga, went out with a force of men to commence actual work on the dam, and the other workmen in the camp are employed in grading for the pipe line. Frank Cramer is making the permanent survey for the pipe line and has it about half done. The construction of the big dam will be pushed to completion as rapidly as possible.

As has before been stated in these columns, the dam is being built for the purpose of supplying water for the 1000-horse power electric plant and for the concentrator, and the water will be brought to the works through a four-foot plank pipe, the Allen Wooden Pipe, built of 2x6-inch staves and bound by iron bands.

The dam will be 23 feet high, including the foundation below the creek bottom, making the dam above the creek bottom eighteen feet high. On either side of the spillway the structure will be made nine feet higher to protect the banks of the stream from washouts.

The dam will be twenty-four feet wide, banked upon an incline with rock and gravel. The length of the spillway, or that portion of the dam over which the water flows, will be sixty feet, and between the extreme ends of the structure the distance across the dam will be 175 feet. The cross section will be built in three steps of seven, sixteen and twenty-four feet, respectively.

The water will enter the four-foot pipe from the east end of the dam, and the pipe will follow the east bank of the stream most of the way to the smelting works.

The timber used in the construction of the dam will be of the large and well selected 10x10 size, and every piece of material used will be put in to stay. The North American Copper Company means to build a dam which will be a permanent structure.

The cost of the dam and pipe line will be not less than $100,000, and it is expected that the work will he completed November 15. The pipe line will be about four miles in length.

Music of the Spheres

Too Much For “Old Mose,” the Terror of the Sierra Madres

“Old Mose” got in his work on the Wernli party Wednesday, when William J. took his two brothers and Dr. Breen from LeMars, Iowa, up onto the Continental Divide. They went to see copper, not to encounter exciting experiences which would make men’s hair turn gray in a night, (notice Bill’s.) They realize now that in this wild and woolly western country there should be no expectations as to what the day will bring forth.

Inadvertently the Wernli party came across the surveyors who are making the geological survey of the district. They stopped about eleven o’clock in the shelter of the camp, and were invited to stay for dinner. Cigars were passed and as they all sat gleefully enjoying the beautiful landscape and the warm bracing air, a sudden rustle was heard in the bushes nearby, and out came the cook from around the tent running at a 2:40 gait, stopping for naught until he had landed safely within the folds of a large spreading spruce. With a cry of despair he swept past the crowd, which was aroused from its reverie, each member of the assembly following the cook’s example.

“Old Mose” had arrived. He had heard that the ranchers of the Snake River valley had offered $500 for his capture, dead or alive, but he was not to be bluffed out on that score. He waded into the cook tent, where he devoured pies, biscuits and everything in the pastry line in sight.

Strutting out in front of the main tent, he picked up the surveyor’s transit and commenced the study of the stars on an extensive scale. He turned it upon Jupiter, who was perched high and dry on a limb well out of reach; and then on Saturn “who sat and sat with an exciting grin until red, white and blue lines enclosed his wonder staring eyes; and again on Mars, from LeMars, who wished to goodness he was drifting toward the Le instead of having such a good start toward the glory land; and then on Neptune, who was right in tune, and who tried to quench the grizzly’s enthusiasm by turning lose everything from “Break the News to Mother” to “Go Way Back and Sit Down,” but failed to interest “Old Mose” until with his large melodious bear-atone voice, which was really only a half-tone, sang in tremelo and falsetto, he opened up on “He May Have Seen Better Days,” when he who held the fort gave up his enviable position and fled “Just as the Sun Went Down.”