The Manchester journal. [volume] (Manchester, Vt.) 1861-current, 1915-09-16
FORCING COLORADO
RIVER INTO ITS BED
Marvellous Dam Constructed in Rec
ord Time TO Save 900, 600 Acres

| Marvellous Dam Constructed in Rec
ord Time TO Save 100000 Acres
Word came 10 Tucson in the still Of
the winter Of 1907 that the Colorado
river was keeping an old threat and
was sweeping into the dry Salton sink
1f Lower California at the rate Of
1000 cubic feet 10 the second. AL
ready there was a lake so miles in
length, Is miles wide, 100 feet deep
in the center.
Washington was alarmed. 1t looked
as if the entire Imperial Valley-a
Holland in America, below the level
Of the sea and one of the richest farm
ing spots in all the west--was to be
| inundated.
Theodore Roosevelt buried his pride
and asked L. H. Hartman for help,
Hartman did not have to bury any
pride when he turned to Randolph and
ordered him to do the JOB.
Randolph was having one Of his
"bad turns" at that time. But he is
enough Of a soldier to obey orders,
and he went to the Salton sink fiat on
his back in his private car,
From that bed Epes Randolph
built one of the worlds great dams.
In this day, when there are many
huge impoundings, that may seem a
statement. Men may think of the
dams across the Nile or the Missis-
sippi, the mighty structures of Pana-
ma and of the New York city water
works, but not one of these was built
under pressure.
Epes Randolph's dam was built un-
der a stop watch and in Ia days and
q hours. In IA days and 21 hours he
had placed 250,000 cubic feet of rock
and gravel in the gap, all at a cost Of
something like S1,6OO,000. But the
Colorado had been stopped and, like a
naughty child forced back into its old
bed.
Once during the work Roosevelt by
wire had asked Hartman how the job
was getting on. The railroader re-
piled that if the dam was not COM
pleted within five more days it never
would be and 100000 acres Of fine,
new farms would be forever lost. And
when the President of the United
States asked the then president of the
Southern Pacific if the work would be
done within five days Hartman re-
rlied that he had Epes Randolph on
the job and that Epes Randolph had
not yet known failure.
Epes Randolph was indeed on the
job. He lay on his bed at the edge of
the muddy flood and gave orders
thousands and thousands of orders in
single day. In the first place, the
rock and gravel had to be brought a
long way, and it was Epes Randolph
who gave the directions under which
the hundreds Of gravel trains moved.
They closed the main line Of the
Southern Pacific and all its branches
to travellers; they took the engines off
freight trains up and down the lines
wherever they could find them. They
sent north to San Francisco and east
to Houston and New Orleans for more
engines and for fiat cars by the mile.
This flood tide of gravel traffic a mas
ter mind operated with his left hand;
with his right he built the dam.
Before his car moved back to Tue
son again he got out Of bed and went
out upon the work. Out toward the
end Of the embankment, steadily ad-
vancing across the path of the truant
river, group Of men were struggling
with fine new steel car that had be-
come derailed at the end Of the tenn
porary track.
"How long have you been trying to
save that car? ?" asked Randolph.
Twelve minutes" replied the fore
man.
"Let it 60" came the order from the
chief Twelve minutes time on this
job is worth more than a hundred
cars"
And so the car went down under
some thousands of tons Of rock and
gravel that went to hold back the
mighty Colorado from the haven that
it coveted.-Metropolitan Magazine.