Pathfinder Dam - Description

Description

Pathfinder Dam is composed of granite blocks, quarried from the same stone that forms the river's canyon. With Buffalo Bill Dam, its contemporary, Pathfinder Dam was intended to irrigate semi-arid lands in Wyoming. Buffalo Bill Dam, however, is of concrete construction, owing to its location within 7 miles (11 km) from the railroad, while Pathfinder Dam is about 45 miles (72 km) from the nearest railroad. Freight took at least three days to cover the distance, and once took 76 days. Transportation of cement in barrels was not feasible by horse-drawn wagon, so the dam was built of quarried stone. The dam was faced with stones between 24 inches (61 cm) and 36 inches (91 cm) thick, laid in a 2-inch (5.1 cm) thick mortar bed. Between these facings was a core of irregularly-shaped granite blocks of up to ten tons in weight, bedded in mortar and quarry tailings. The diversion tunnel was adapted to become the dam's outlet works. Construction costs were $2.5 million in 1909. An auxiliary dike, 38 feet (12 m) high, extends to the south of the dam. It is an earthfill structure with a concrete corewall. A natural channel was enlarged and straightened to form an uncontrolled spillway on the north side of the dam.

The original diversion tunnel became the north outlet works, abandoned and sealed in 1958 with bulkheads. From 1958 the tunnel was modified to feed the power outlet works, an 18 feet (5.5 m) tunnel extending 3 miles (4.8 km) to the Fremont Canyon Powerplant at the upper end of Alcova Reservoir. The Fremont Canyon Powerplant has a capacity of 66.8 MW with two turbines, upgraded from 48 MW between 1986 and 1990. A low-flow outlet was completed at the dam in 1997 to allow water flow in the four river miles between the dam and the powerplant.

Read more about this topic:  Pathfinder Dam

Famous quotes containing the word description:

    Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.
    Horace Walpole (1717–1797)

    As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)