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    The Building of the Oroville Dam
    The Building of the Oroville Dam
    The Building of the Oroville Dam
    Ebook190 pages1 hour

    The Building of the Oroville Dam

    By Larry R. Matthews

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    In the early 1960s, thousands of construction workers and their families came to Oroville, in Northern California, to help build the largest earth-fill dam in the world. Located nine miles northeast of town, the Oroville Dam would be the cornerstone of the California State Water Project, which would provide flood control, electric power, recreation, and water to California residents. The project was so massive that it would reinvent the look of much of the area; require the building of roads, bridges, and railroads; inundate much of the area's history under hundreds of feet of water; and greatly effect the lives of the residents of Oroville. The successful completion of the project came at a price--34 construction workers died.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateJan 20, 2014
    ISBN9781439644546
    The Building of the Oroville Dam
    Author

    Larry R. Matthews

    Author Larry R. Matthews has been writing about Northern California history since 1998 and is the author of Arcadia's The Building of the Oroville Dam book. Author Scott C. Roberts enjoys uncovering local history and exploring historical sites and also helped in the research for the Oroville Dam book. Some images in this book came from various museums and historical societies. A large portion of the images were contributed by those who resided in the communities covered by this book.

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      Book preview

      The Building of the Oroville Dam - Larry R. Matthews

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      INTRODUCTION

      The small mining town of Ophir was established in October 1850 in California’s northern Sacramento Valley. It was founded along the Feather River where it flows out of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and turns south.

      Millions of dollars in gold and some diamonds were found in the area. Some miners struck it rich, but many went broke. By 1856, the town was renamed Oroville (based upon the Spanish word for gold and the French word for town).

      At one time, Oroville was the largest mining town and the fifth-largest town in California. In addition to the mining industry, Oroville was essentially an agricultural community, and very successful nut and fruit industries continue to flourish there even today.

      In 1906, the city of Oroville was incorporated. It had previously become the county seat of Butte County in 1856 after the cities of Hamilton and Bidwell Bar had held the honor for a short time.

      From 1898 to 1918, enormous gold dredges plied the Feather River area. It is estimated that $30 million in gold was recovered in the Oroville area. The use of dredges left acres and acres of ponds and enormous piles of rock. Those rock piles would play an integral part in what was to come later. By 1950, the state of California was concerned about water. Sometimes, there was too much, but mostly there was too little, especially in Southern California.

      There had been major floods on the Feather River in 1906, 1907, 1909, 1928, 1937, and 1955. These disasters had greatly affected Oroville and the Marysville–Yuba City area that is located 30 miles south.

      In 1957, preliminary work had started on the plan to build the Oroville Dam, a major part of the California State Water Project. The dam location would be nine miles to the northeast of Oroville, near the confluence of the North, Middle, and South Forks of the Feather River. At 770 feet, it would be the highest earth-filled dam in the world—44 feet higher than Hoover Dam. It was estimated that the dam would impound more than three and a half million acre-feet of water and that the lake would have a shoreline of 167 miles. Much of the dam would be constructed with many of those supposedly useless rocks left over from the old gold-dredging operations.

      But there was much more to the project than just the big dam, and this book will attempt to document that fact. For miles around, the area would be transformed. There were canals, bridges, roads, dams, tunnels, and railroads to be built or rerouted. All of the trees had to be removed from the proposed lake area. Two enormous powerhouses needed to be built: one beneath the dam and the other at the Thermalito Power House. A forebay and afterbay also needed constructed.

      There was history to be saved or destroyed. In the lake area, 350 pioneer graves needed to be excavated and relocated. The town of Bidwell Bar had to be burned down, the old Enterprise Bridge needed to be demolished, and Hansell’s Bridge had to be blown up. The historic 1856 Bidwell Bar Bridge, tollhouse, and Mother Orange Tree all had to be removed and relocated.

      Some history would be lost. Holes would be gouged out of McLaughlin’s Wall, and it would be inundated by the waters behind the Thermalito Diversion Dam.

      There was also a whole new railroad to build. The Oro Dam Constructors Railroad moved all of the rock materials, and the length of the route was 12 miles. It started at the borrow area, located on the west side of the Feather River southwest of Oroville. It then crossed to the east side of the river, traveled north, and crossed to the north side of the river. From there, it went east, traveling under the Highway 70 freeway bridge and recrossing the river between the Upper Thermalito Bridge and the new fish hatchery dam. Traveling along the east side of the river, it ran north and east, through an old railroad tunnel, and then on to the construction site of the dam. This material-handling system was one of the very first to be designed by computer.

      During construction, 34 workers died. Four perished at that old railroad tunnel in a tragedy that is documented in this book. Others were killed by explosions, vehicle collisions, electrocutions, falls, strokes, and heart attacks.

      Mother nature did not always cooperate with the construction. In 1962, 1963, and 1964, major flooding ravaged the construction sites of the main dam, the Thermalito Diversion Dam, and the fish hatchery dam. It can be supposed that this was nature’s way of illustrating one of the reasons why the project was necessary.

      This enormous project brought in construction crews from all over the world. Some brought their families, and some came alone. Some stayed a few months or a year before moving on to the next construction project, and some who came to work on the dam in 1961 still live in the Oroville area.

      Gov. Edmund G. Brown signaled the beginning of major construction in 1961 with a dynamite blast, and Gov. Ronald Reagan came for the dedication of the dam in 1968. That seven-year period was a hectic, thrilling, and rewarding time of activity for the citizens of the area.

      Since its

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