Elmore County Republican. [volume] (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1910-1915, 1915-09-25

Boise, Ida, Sept. 23.-C0uld BenJa
min Franklin have seen the effect tn,
little key he tied to his kite had In
revolutionizing Irrigation project con
struction, as it has reyolutioonizet
almost everything else, he woult
have witnessed human beings work
ing like ants in great cavity al
night above this city boring into the
very bowels of the mountains under
the powerful play of searchlight. The.
were helping to make great exca
yation below the Boise river bed sc
that the highest dam in the world, the
Arrowrock, could be anchored to a
solid granite base. His discovery oi
electricity, made it possible to build
this dam in record time or In fouI
years at a cost of five millions OF
dollars. 1t stands completed today
a masterpiece to the engineering pro.
fession and its formal dedication i'm
which Boise and all Idaho will joy
fully participate, will take place Oc.
tober 4 with proer ceremony. Its
construction means the irrigation OF
an empire, 5000 acres of land in
western Idaho.
A coal mime not being available i'm
1912 when work on the dam was
started, the Reclamation Service
engineers in charge, f. e. Weymouth,
supervising engineer, G. III. Paul, com
structing engineer and James Mum,
superintendent of construction, to
whom credit is due for the project
and dam building, proceeded to har-
ness the Waterpower going to waste
in the Boies river 16l miles below the
dam site, to provide power for the
great steam shove's which had to be
operated, for other power purposes as
we'll as for lighting. Coal would have
been too expensive for this purpose
and the supply uncertain. Water was
plentiful and close at hand.
They erected the Boise hydro-elec-
trio power plant primarily for con-
struction puroses at what is known
as diversion dam, the point where
the water released from the great
lam above is diverted into the main
canal leading to the lands of the
project 80 and 40 miles below. The
dam and project finished, the elec-
sric plant stands a valuable asset for
both. 1t is built of concrete and
5-eel at a point ON the river where
a 25-foot fall is secured. 1t consists
of three Allis Chalmers 725 horse
over hydrolic turbines, each with
direct connections to an EVA gener-
ator. It's capacity is from $500 to
5000 horsepower. The output is 3-phase
60 cycle alternating current at 2300
volts which is transmitted from the
station at $4,000 volts.
Without this power, construction Of
the dam would have been made doubly
difficult. With it the power question,
an important one i'm their construction,
was quickly solved. Transmission
lines were built to both the dam
and to project points. 1t kept dred-
ges at both places busy for several
years. When the problem of build
ng bitches for the drainage district
came up, the power from the plant
supplied the electric dredges.
A record was made in the dam
construction. Credit for the record is
largely due to electricity for with 1t
feeding into powerful searchlghts 1t
was possible to keep a night Shift
on the job, and so we'll was the light
distributed that the men worked as
we'll as i'm the daytime. Two other
shifts proceeded the night shift which
went ON at 6 O'Clock P. M, having
had breakfast at 4:30 p. M. From
two to three hours after they had
been at work, the searchlights were
turned ON. Their powful rays carried
across the deep canyon tightening up
the cableways, struck the hoppers
where the concrete buckets dumped
and played about and on every aven a
of occupation. Arc lights were pulled
out over the works on cables stretch
ed overhead. Clusters of incandescent
with an arc here and there, lighted
up the railway. There were no dark
corners within the limits of activity
for the artificial light was apparently
as good as Old Sol himself could pro-
vide. When it is realized that close
to 500 men composed the shift and
had almost as many difficult duties to
perform while dnager to life and limb
was always possible, the advantage
of electrical energy so used can be
appreciated. Without abundance of
electrical energy for the searchlights,
third shift would have been impossi-
BILE and the great dam would not
stand completed today. The pant a'so
furnished all the electricity for light
ing the town of Arrowrock which
sprung up below the dam and had
a population of 1900 eo,e for four
years. Today it has practically dis
appeared.
The Arrowrock dam stands 1885
feet high, 80 feet of which is below
the bed of the river anchored to
solid granite, through which a series
of holes were bored to a depth OF
from 30 to 40 feet and grouted with
concrete under pressure to prevent
possible seepage. The river was di-
verted from it's normal channel in
which the dam sits into a tunnel put
through a cliff. A Golfer dam left the
river bed dry and in 1t were placed
70-ton Atlantic shoyels. derricks.