Arizona republican., 1908-07-17

ivalley which gradually widens as it
 hears the sea. At Gatun this valley f Is about g. mile wide. It terminates
 entirely here, the hills which form il losing themselves in a coastal plain. It
 is across the valley at this point that
 they are building the Gatun Dam and
 its accompanying locks. This dam Twill be a veritable mountain of mud
 more than mile long and half mils
 wide at the base. It will be 135 feet
 high, ready to dispute the passage of
 the grim old Chagres, taking from it's
 murky waters such toll as Uncle sam
 and the commerce of the world may
 exact This toll will be big enough to
 fill the largest artificial lake in the world-a lake whose water surface area will be about 165 square miles. After the Chagres and its smaller lneighbOrs have filled the lake to the l required height the dam will allow the rest of the water to pass through it's spillway and on to the sea, without further interruption, the only demand being that it shall not approach the line Of the canal again. In other words, its vagrant waters will be sen fenced to the canal worllhouse and
 when that is filled to overflowing. they will be invited to leave town" at once
 by the spillway route. es
 After we have the lake, the problem
 is to get ships up into it and down out
 of t. They cannot go over the dam spillway like a piece of drift wood,
 neither can they get up into it as a
 fish wiggles himself up over mill dam. Here is where the locks come in. They are nothing more complex than a sort Of Brobagandian marine stairway for ships to climb. At Cat un there are three of these gigantic steps 1000 feet wide in the clear. And
 as ships do not like to pass on a single stairway 'they have put a partition in the middle of the big staircase so that they do not need to run into one an other. This partition is no small boarded up affair either It is of con crete and is fifty feet across at the i base and tapers up to twenty feet.
 Even with this big partition in the
 middle of the staircase they will not
 have to rub against the wall, since
 they have no feet in the clear.
 | When a ship comes in from the At lantic and wants to get into the Gatun
 lake in order to make her way across the isthmus she will steam into the flower lock. The big water gates will
 be closed behind her and water will be admitted into the lock from the dam above through innumerable holes in the floor. When she has been lifted to the level of the next lock she goes into that one and the operation is re- peated, until she finds that she has
 climbed up eighty-five feet in three isteps. A ship desiring to go down has the topmOst locks gates opened and
 she goes into it. Then the water is iallOwed to flow itno the next one un-
 til they have a common sea level Then
 the gate ahead is opened and the ship ,goes into this lock where the perform ance is repeated until she finds her self at sea-level again.
 If anyone has any doubts about the success of the Gatun Dam project, let him come down here and see what is being done and how they are doing it Doubling Thomas would have believed on less evidence that one sees here. With that thorOughness and attention to detail which has made the army en- gineers the peers of any lot of engin- eers on earth, Colonel Goethals and Major Sibert have indeed eliminated all the elments of chance by innumer-