BUILDING THE OROVILLE DAM

[Music] [Music] [Music] long before world war ii machines like this huge dredge turned california inside out in man's insatiable search for gold [Music] each dredge clawed a steady diet of earth into its separators sifted out tiny nuggets of gold then spewed out tons and tons of worthless cobbles in the process the gold dredges covered countless square miles of rolling green countryside with ugly useless mounds of mine tailings but now californians are seeking another kind of wealth more important than gold they're looking for water water to slake the thirst of the west burgeoning industries and to satisfy the domestic needs of the country's most populous state california is blessed with tremendous water resources but they are in remote areas of the state where relatively fewer people live realizing that the remotely abundant water supplies would someday have to quench the thirst of the densely populated south water conservationists created a plan to hoard the clean clear waters in vast reservoirs the point of origin for this project was to be at oroville then through a network of canals and aqueducts the water would be channeled southward as far as san diego at oroville the picturesque feather river sometimes placid sometimes violent winds its way through gentle mountains bordering the northern edge of the san joaquin valley around oroville too the countryside was covered with the gold dredge tailings this tremendous waste became wealth when the decision was made to build an earthen dam at oroville a dam of such vast dimensions that it would contain 10 times more mass than all the major pyramids of egypt combined because of the stability of the sub-terny and rock formations the narrows near oroville were selected for the dam site mammoth diversion tunnel was built to redirect the feather river and provide a dry valley during dam construction the concrete core block designed to anchor the fantastic mass of the earth and dam was in itself larger than many dams then began the greatest earth-moving project in history 80 million cubic yards of earth and fill would be piled on the core block in a precisely engineered cone securely anchored against the core block zone one would be the impervious clay water barrier forming the heart of the dam [Music] zone two a semi-pervious material and zone three a previous material that would be the major supporting mass of the dam equipment was needed in the same gigantic scale as the project itself [Music] this stripping wheel chewed into the mountains of mine tailings devouring up to eighty thousand cubic yards a day of pervious material during its round round-the-clock operation conveyors from the stripping wheel fed stockpiles so huge that 40 car trains were tunneled underneath to be gravity-fed 10 cars at a time in less than seven minutes not far from the big wheel giant drag lines scooped up 11 cubic yard bites loading hundred ton capacity bottom dumps the big wagons fed yet another stockpile of pervious material which in turn also fed the railroad these huge earth movers at oroville meant that top long-wearing tires were of vital importance goodyear was selected as the exclusive supplier of tires and tire service the nine foot high tires carried a gross weight approaching 150 tons and had to run over broken jagged cobbles good tire maintenance and frequent inspections helped protect these tires of course hall roads were well maintained but the very nature of the job created severe tire punishing condition and on a project like the oroville dam no tire can last forever impervious clay fill for the heart of the dam was gouged out of a vast clay boro pit about 12 miles away from the dam [Music] big scrapers equipped with specially designed goodyear tires for hauling upwards of 50 tons of clay per load shift after shift day after day with ambient temperature often well above 100 degrees [Music] scrapers were loaded in an endless cycle [Music] they traveled across the pit and upped the ramp to dump 40 cubic yards at a time into the hopper [Music] conveyed up into a bank of ten more hoppers towering over the railroad tracks impervious clay was accumulated until needed then the train pulled under the hoppers was loaded 10 cars at a time and was on its way again 12 minutes later with 4 000 tons of film [Music] double headers pulling their trains of hundred ton gondolas ran on a 24 hour a day schedule [Music] when the trains arrived at the dam the engines disconnected from loaded cars picked up a train of empties and headed back to the stockpiles for another load [Music] the fastest way to unload the cars was to tip them over and another huge machine did just that [Music] taking two cars at a time without even disconnecting them this machine rotates and simply dumps the cars upside down then automatically the two empty cars are advanced dragging the next two full ones into position for the dumping cycle [Music] the material then was conveyed across the river and deposited on yet another stockpile and from there to the dam itself [Music] on the dam great lumbering bottom dumps took turns at the double hopper which filled their huge wagons with the right type of fill at the right time circling over the surface of the dam they roared along one after another in an endless chain each one dumping 48 cubic yards of material rubber tired dozers hurried around the entire area darting in to push a pile over one place [Music] smoothing out another compactors wove back and forth after the dozers packing down the various kinds of fill that were being laid down layer upon layer small only in comparison to the other huge earth-moving equipment employed at oroville these compactors were tremendously weighted to make the density of the dam uniform one of the toughest jobs the big tires had to live through was on the giant front end loaders working in jagged chunks of granite called riprap the tires took a merciless beating then roared downhill to the dam damn to resist erosion that would be caused by the turbulence of the water in the reservoir [Music] professional tire maintenance and the amazing durability of the tires helped keep the construction of the oroville dam ahead of schedule a tragic accident marred the remarkable record of efficiency and safety of the railroad and slowed down the movement of materials to the stockpiles however the earth-moving job continued with amazing efficiency and demonstrated again the flexibility of the big rubber-tired monsters the earth movers were able to keep the dam going nearly on schedule thanks to the efficient planning and foresight of experienced construction professionals who had maintained a three-day surplus of material in each major stockpile the trains were running again only four days later and construction activity resumed at a record-setting pace more earth was moved over longer distances in a shorter period of time than had ever been moved in the history of man par was considered a million cubic yards picked up transported up to 12 miles from borough pit to dam site and deposited on the dam every two weeks at oroville they broke par many times and so in 1968 the dam was completed the result of a smoothly efficient organization of seven of the country's leading contractors [Music] codel construction company r.p farnsworth and company hardaway contracting company mcdowell company incorporated rb portashank wright contracting company and sponsored by omen construction company of nashville tennessee [Music] j rodney mims of omen was the overall construction boss of the historic project oroville dam now towering 770 feet above the valley contains more than 80 million cubic yards of earth and rock with a crest length of over a mile and a quarter the dam is three quarters of a mile thick at the base the reservoir has a capacity of three million five hundred thousand acre feet of water and a 167 mile shoreline the nation's largest underground power plant built in conjunction with the dam is capable of lighting a city of one million people oroville dam is a masterpiece of engineering a construction of heroic proportions it is the keystone of the vast project developing under the guidance and control of the california department of water resources to conserve the natural wealth and to serve the people of the most populous state in the union [Music] i