SHOSHONE RESERVOIR, WYOMING
Judged from the service it has rendered mankind already, as a preventive against disastrous floods and a guarantor of generous harvests, it deserves a high place among the storage structures of the world. Since its completion the North Platte River has been completely tamed, and angry floods that once wrought millions of dollars of destruction are now so distributed as to insure an annual harvest valued at $6,000,000 in a region once occupied only by nomadic herdsmen.
Transferring a River
The waters of the Strawberry River in Utah, which for ages flowed idly to the Pacific Ocean, are today contributing to the material prosperity of a beautiful valley in the drainage of Great Salt Lake. The transferrence of a river from its own drainage into that of another has been performed by the Federal engineers on several occasions, notably in Colorado, where the Gunnison River is augmenting the flow of the Uncompahgre, the St. Mary River in Montana (a former tributary of the Arctic Ocean, now transferred to Atlantic drainage) and the Truckee River in Nevada, now consolidated with the Carson River.
PATHFINDER DAM, WYOMING
218 feet high, 600 feet long at top. Irrigates 220,000 acres; cost, $1,000,000
Strawberry Valley, Utah, in the heart of the lofty Wasatch Range, has been converted into a large lake by means of a dam in Strawberry River. The stored waters are turned through a tunnel four miles long, piercing the range, and dropped into Utah Valley on the Western slope. By means of sixty miles of cement-lined canals skirting the mountains, an area of 60,000 acres of excellent agricultural land has been reclaimed. The downward rush of water has been harnessed, and the surplus power developed is leased to several of the towns in the valley.
ELEPHANT BUTTE DAM, NEW MEXICO