CONSERVATION: Boulder Dam Start

Work on Boulder Dam, world’s highest (727 ft.), was ready to start last week. Congress had appropriated $10,660,000 to get the $165,000,000 project under way. Secretary of the Interior Wilbur approved a construction order which was telegraphed to Las Vegas, Nev., where Walker R. Young, resident U. S. engineer, received it. Said Secretary Wilbur: “With dollars, men and engineering brains we will build a great natural resource . . . make new geography . . . start a new era … conquer the Great American Desert. To bring about this transformation requires a dam higher than any the engineer has hitherto conceived or attempted to build.” Secretary Wilbur warned against a great rush of workmen to the barren dam site where their services are not yet needed.

Great was the excitement at Las Vegas (pop. 5,177) as work was about to start. The town suffered a premature land boom two years ago when the Boulder Dam Bill was signed. Houses were erected but no tenants arrived. Today ample quarters exist there for workmen and their families.

The dam will be built at Black Canyon on the Colorado River, 30 mi. from Las Vegas. Construction job No. 1: A $2,500,000 branch railroad from Las Vegas on the Union Pacific to the dam site. The U. P. is ready to build the first 22 miles of this track, but declines to undertake the last eight miles up back-breaking mountain grades. Construction job No. 2: A $525,000 town at the dam site to house 5,000 workmen and families. Construction job No. 3: $18,000,000 tunnels 50 ft. in diameter to divert the river’s flow while the dam is being built. The whole construction job will be under the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation which will contract with private firms to do the work.

Chief Engineer of Boulder Dam is Raymond F. Walter of the Reclamation Service. Born in Chicago 57 years ago, he was named Arthur Raymond Walter. Aged 5, he migrated with his father, a printer, in a covered wagon to the Leadville, Col., gold rush, drifted from one boom town to the next. As a boy he dropped the Arthur from his name, inserted a meaningless initial F. He learned civil engineering at Colorado Agricultural College (1893), surveyed Cameron Pass over the Great Divide, has done much irrigation work. He entered the U. S. Reclamation Service in 1902, rose to be its chief engineer. Bald and bespectacled, he is a genial, easy-going engineer, never too busy or hyperefficient to stop and talk to friends or strangers. He will supervise the eight-year Boulder job from his headquarters in Denver.