The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1912-01-08
Years Work at Great
Water Power Dam
Greatest HydroMotye Undertaking in the World Has Be
come Visible Fact Almost Without Popular Reaza-
tion--A Description Of the Work Which Has
Gone Along Like the Magic of GENT Dur
ing 1911.
ing 1911

& hardened, the wooden forms are re
moved, and only the cavities remain
In short the power-house basement Is
a gigantic mass OF concrete contain
7 ing huge holes
4 There are the chambers above the
turbines through which the water
will run from the forebay to reach
the whirling wheels. These cham
bers are being cast around board
walls of forms and are over forty feet
in diameter. Their shape Is the in
teresting thing about them. Every
body knows how water assumes a
spiral form when running out Of q
washbowl into the vertical bowl be
low The concrete chambers above
the turbines, called scroll cases by
the engineers, are given the shape OF
the water in your washbowl--because
| that is the natural form FOR the wa.
/ ter to assume when pouring down
through the turbine tubes. Only this
giant wash bowl is as large as your
front yard.
Everything Of Huge Dimensions.
From the bottom Of these scroll
chambers. wells in the concrete 13
feet in diameter are seen leading
straight down and then curving to.
ward the river. They empty twenty.
six feet below the bottom of the riy-
er In horizontal tube, flared like the
end of a tuba that has been mashed
/ flat by an irate clarinetist, and the
oval ends at the power house base
ment wall away down there are each
big enough to contain a bungalow.
Through these draft tubes, the
water will run away from the tur-
bines into the tail race. This is be-
| ing blasted out of the bottom of the
river. a great excavation in the bed
rock, extending parallel with the
length of the power house and the
river and finally to reach as far
down as the railroad bridge.
There will be thirty OF these huge
tubes leading the water through tn.
turbines from the forebay to the tail
race, and half OF them are completed.
Some of the wash bowl scroll cham
bers are cast and the forms Of the
others are in place.
Around each turbine tube is cir.
Gle of concrete pillars which puzzlo
visitors. They are big and stronA
enough to hold up the Hawk-Eye
building a dozen feet-but they are
merely temporary supports to be
used in setting the turbine and gen.
orator in the center of each circle OF
posts.
The Lock Surprising Panama.
Down at the other end OF the big
Golfer dam, past miles OF railroad
trackage on which ten or twelve loco
motives are darting around hauling
trains of rock, sand and concrete in
buckets, the mixing house, the huge
stone crusher and the rest, the new
lock is well under way.
The east wall is started little.
but it is not much larger than a city
store building now 1t is the west
wall that gives one concrete idea of
the size of this mammoth lock. while
the long distance over to the chunk
OF east wall completes ones appre.
citation Of 1t.
The downstream end OF the wes.
wall is built to it's full height for
distance of twenty or thirty feet. A
broad stairway leads up it's face in
clined at the top to the platform now
there. The solid concrete platform
is about 20x32 feet In size--for the
wall is thirty-two feet thick at the
top-bnt nearly all visitors speak OF
becoming dizzy when up there. so
high is it. The height is actually
little over fifty-two feet, or about five
stories of building. After a gan.
there Is another section of this lock
wall rising high in its wooden forms
Apropos. this lock is as wide as
those at Panama, and at Keokuk the
lift will be forty feet, while the lift
of Panama does not exceed twenty.
three feet in any one of the series Of
locks. Since the gate is the lock
the Keokuk lock surpasses any al
Panama.
Work Coca on In Winter.
Nothing has been done yet on the
dry dock, which will be between the
lock and the Iowa shore. the latter
being over past the present railroad
tracks at the Keokuk bluff.
But on the land side OF the present
burlington route tracks, passengers
see great wall OF concrete rising
nigh, apparently to prevent Reokuk
from slipping into the river. This is
the retaining wall, commonly called
tne sea wall, against which the wa.