WORLD’S HIGHEST DAM.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 836, 7 May 1910, Page 4

WORLD’S HIGHEST DAM.

The highest dam in the world is finished, says the Chicago Evening Post. It is in the gorge of the Shoshone river, in Wyoming, joining cliffs so nearly perpendicular that the workmen who drilled for the first blasts had to be lowered by ropes hundreds of feet into the canon. Only 85 feet wide at the bottom, the dam rises feet. The dam will create behind it the largest lake in Wyoming, with a surface area of ten square miles, and an average depth of 70 feet. But instead of a diversion canal along the banks of the river, as it is customary to construct, it was found simpler to conduct the irrigation flow directly through the precipitous cliffs iu a tunnel three miles long. Colonel William F. Cody of Wild West fame, was the first man to see the possibilities of irrigating the fertile valley that stretches out below the rocky gorge of the Shoshone river. His works have been superseded by those of the Government, however, which contemplates the reclamation of 132,000 acres. The extension of lateral canals has proceeded with the construction of the dam, the area brought under irrigation being extended as the flood penned up iu the storage reservoir has increased. At the present time same 30,000 acres have been brought under cultivation, and after the expected opening of 50,000 acres more there still will be a like area to be made arable by the extension of ditches.