The Parker post., 1913-11-29
c. X. CLARKE, THE ENGINEER
WHO tanned THE COLORADO


straight-backed, compactly-built man,
whose gray eyes have the disconcert-
ingly direct, wide-open gaze that
characterizes the eagle and other Gre
atures that are unafraid, reported on
the job. The crevasse was half a
mile wide, and the whole volume Of
the Colorado in unreasonable and
unprecedented flood was pouring
through it. Clarke's JOB was to close
that crevasse with a rock dam, and
when emminent engineers from San
Francisco, the Mississippi, the Recla-
nation Service, and other F'innocent
bystanders" said it was a hopeless
undertaking while the river was in
flood, he looked them steadily in the
eye, said 80 hell" and got busy.
Clarke's first problem was to stop
bankcutting that threatened to de-
stroy 1,400 feet more of levee and
widen the crevasse to more than
three-quarters of a mile. He solved
it by a. simple method that he had
applied on the Puyallup in 1891 and
on the San Pedro later,a method that
is not in the books and therefore was
disapproved by the sceptical eminent
engineers, particularly the Reclama-
ton Service men. The Reclamation
Service, by the way, initiated Clarke's
method since then, and recently one
of it's engineers ON the Yuma project
appropriated the credit, asserting in
a published report that he had ''devel-
oped a method of protection which
appears the only effective one,
And at that he failed to observe
and omitted from his application Of
the Clarke method a detail that is
essential to permanence of the pro
lection
In less than sixty days, fighting
against overwhelming odds, Clarke
built the rock dam across the crew
asse and forced the river back in
to it's old channel. He ignored the
theories of academic engineering,
discarded methods held to be of vi
tai Importance, violated rules of
practice so flagrantly that the Gin
nocent bystanders" threw fits and
''butted in' with frantic protests
to Hartman against permitting the
crazy man to discredit the profess
sion, and calmly confounded all con-
fident predictions of utter failure.
He achieved tn e supposed impossible
feat of throwing an effective barrier
across crevasse half a mile wide
against a flood of more than 49,
900 second feet, flowing with a We
locity of from ten to twenty miles
an hour and a depth in midstream
of thirty-five feet. He was on the
firing line night and day, snatching
three hours sleep in twenty-four and
when the work was done his gray
eyes were still steady but they were
looking out at the world from black
caverns like miners lamps in a tun-
mel
Only once was there an attempt
to induce Clarke to alter his method
and conform to conventinal practice.
''Is that an order?" he asked. eff it
is, put it in writing and add accept
ance of my instant resignation. The
order was not written and the sugges-
ton was withdrawn.
Clarke's accomplishment showed
the way to others. The builders of
Laguna Dam profited by the lesson,
abandoned the original plan and made
the final closure of the channel by
Clarke's method, completing in a few
days work that promised to cover
many months, and saving great
deal Of money. A later attempt to
close a break of the Colorado was an
utter, humiliating failure because the
government engineer refused to fol
low Clarkes advice concerning equip
ment and construction after solicit
ing and obtaining it. The engineer
put his faith in the books, followed
"the we'll established principles of
good engineering, according to the
report of a special commission of
eminent engineers, not one of whom
ever saw the work, and the Colora-
do river wiped out the whole works
with one flirt of it's tail.
Continued Next Week)