Arizona republican., 1921-02-15
-The Gillespie Dana- Greot Project
 To Curb The Waters Of I'he Gilu

Have you ever made a mental pie ture of something you had heard
 about but never seen, and then all of
 a sudden had the thing you had pie
 tured thrust under your gaze? And
 did you say, That's just exactly what
 thought it would look like''-and tell
 the truth about it2 Or did you mutter
 something like, Well. I'll be jig
 geredl"?
 Anyhow. the last is what the re-
 porter said when given the first
 glimpse of the Gillespie dam. It was
 night. A crescent moon hung in a
 sky of q billion stars, and the white road stretched gently up and up the side Of d pitch dark hill. We rounded a sharp curve and came out on the
 top of the world and there at our feet
 lay the dam. A breathless silence.
 while all eyes took in the unexpected
 wonder, and then-the exclamation. Two high towers, electric lighted, one near at hand and one on the far dim side of the Gila, formed the out posts of the dam, which ran like a white serpent out across the sands Of | the Gila. It lost itself in mass of
 machinery and derricks where the current flowed the swiftest, picked up 1 it's course on the other side of the stream and hurried. true as steel to q magnet, to the side of Gillespie noun 1 tain It is a project so inconceivably vast so almost dream- like beneath the rays of countless electric arcs. that mere words can never justly describe l it. It will remain, when all is said that
 can be said. one of those creations which must be seen to be appre- ciated."
 1 Down where the congestion was the 1 thicSest-where cranes clanked as l they swung their loads, engines footed. l hammers changed on steel till words l Ho -l,nr Narl 1 worked all night long, 40 feet below | the surface of the river, driving piles 1 and putting in heavy timbers to make l the forms for concrete-down where 1 men pit the cunning of their brains against the whims of nature, the enormity of the undertaking is liter 1 ally forced on one. Everything is in l motion. even the sand which ooZes treacherously beneath the feet. Cranes dip into yawning holes, seize great buckets of soil and empty it on the tor
 of a temporary earth dam, which has
 diverted the river from its natura course, forcing it to flow under the
 arches and over the concrete apron O the partly finished portion. A network of pipes. some of them blistering hot wires. ropes. cables tracks-traverse: the ground beneath and the air above The two great towers are the destina- ton of all the concrete mixed in tht !, two mixing plants for from them it i. distributed by chutes to any part o,
 the work. A quarry at each side fur
 nishes rock to the crushers and sant
 is brought from up the river Tht concrete is trucked in over 12 miles O. } dirt road, a steady procession of ma [ chimes winding it's way through th' valley all day long to keep the gian hoppers supplied. Everywhere, in this seeming confusion and bedlam, ther, is evidence of men going about well ordered task, and seeing that task ac f complished
 To keep this work going at tol 5 speed. to see that no part slacks O falls behind the schedule which mus . be maintained if the gap between tn < two white ribbons of concrete is close' 1 on time, is no mean job. It has kep . many men thinking night and day. an' some there are who spend sleeples ? nights yet, but so on with their think