Megaproject: Lake Kennedy
- Thread starter Amerigo Vespucci
- Start date
Well, I don't go into that all that much. What do you envision?
Only the fact that it was the rainy season on the Yukon and flow was high through the dam kept serious problems from developing. With winter’s freezeup approaching and the threat of limited river flow and thus, electricity production, imminent, the state legislature passed emergency subsidies that eliminated the problems for that winter.
Fortunately for the state, increased electric production at Rampart was on the horizon. One month before the intertie was completed, the cofferdam surrounding the northern section of the dam was broken. With an unbroken stretch of concrete more than 250 feet high, the full dam was more than capable of standing on its own. Though this was an important landmark on the step toward completing the dam, it passed largely unnoticed, overshadowed as it was by the switchover to Rampart electricity in Anchorage.
By the time the northern cofferdam was broken, the reservoir behind Rampart Dam had engulfed the former village of Rampart, submerging most of the region’s gold rush history. Other Native village followed in due course in the years that followed: Stevens Village, Beaver, Fort Yukon (the oldest English-speaking settlement in Alaska), Birch Creek, Alexander’s Village, and others. The inhabitants were relocated as needed, though some were convinced to move only when the rising waters of Lake Kennedy could be seen from the doors of their cabins.
In 1984, Alaska Sen. Wendell P. Kay announced his intention to not run for another term as one of Alaska’s two U.S. Senators because of his declining health. He died two years later, of a heart attack at age 72. His announcement opened the door for a wide range of candidates on both the Democratic and Republican tickets. The ultimate winner was Republican Gov. Jay Hammond, who had won re-election to that office in 1982. Replacing Hammond as governor was his lieutenant governor, Terry Miller, who filled the remaining two years of Hammond’s term.
Alaska again voted strongly in favor of President Reagan in the 1984 national race, and in 1985, shortly after Reagan’s re-election, he began negotiations with the Canadian government for an improved shared electrical grid between the two countries. In addition to interties between the Quebec/Ontario grid and New England, he pushed for joining Alaska’s power grid to that of the Yukon and British Columbia. The latter was connected to the United States through interties in Washington, and further connections could theoretically allow electricity from Rampart to power televisions and electronics in Washington. The negotiations went quickly because of the close relations between the two countries, previous agreements along similar lines, and the obvious utility of the agreement.
Construction of an intertie between Fairbanks and Whitehorse, Yukon, paralleling the Alaska Highway, began in the summer of 1985. Though the joint electrical grid never fulfilled the promise of powering electronics in Washington with Rampart power — transmission losses would have been massive — it did so indirectly. Rampart power was used in the Yukon and British Columbia, allowing hydroelectric plants in British Columbia to power Washington state and a portion of the Northwest U.S.
Fortunately for the state, increased electric production at Rampart was on the horizon. One month before the intertie was completed, the cofferdam surrounding the northern section of the dam was broken. With an unbroken stretch of concrete more than 250 feet high, the full dam was more than capable of standing on its own. Though this was an important landmark on the step toward completing the dam, it passed largely unnoticed, overshadowed as it was by the switchover to Rampart electricity in Anchorage.
By the time the northern cofferdam was broken, the reservoir behind Rampart Dam had engulfed the former village of Rampart, submerging most of the region’s gold rush history. Other Native village followed in due course in the years that followed: Stevens Village, Beaver, Fort Yukon (the oldest English-speaking settlement in Alaska), Birch Creek, Alexander’s Village, and others. The inhabitants were relocated as needed, though some were convinced to move only when the rising waters of Lake Kennedy could be seen from the doors of their cabins.
In 1984, Alaska Sen. Wendell P. Kay announced his intention to not run for another term as one of Alaska’s two U.S. Senators because of his declining health. He died two years later, of a heart attack at age 72. His announcement opened the door for a wide range of candidates on both the Democratic and Republican tickets. The ultimate winner was Republican Gov. Jay Hammond, who had won re-election to that office in 1982. Replacing Hammond as governor was his lieutenant governor, Terry Miller, who filled the remaining two years of Hammond’s term.
Alaska again voted strongly in favor of President Reagan in the 1984 national race, and in 1985, shortly after Reagan’s re-election, he began negotiations with the Canadian government for an improved shared electrical grid between the two countries. In addition to interties between the Quebec/Ontario grid and New England, he pushed for joining Alaska’s power grid to that of the Yukon and British Columbia. The latter was connected to the United States through interties in Washington, and further connections could theoretically allow electricity from Rampart to power televisions and electronics in Washington. The negotiations went quickly because of the close relations between the two countries, previous agreements along similar lines, and the obvious utility of the agreement.
Construction of an intertie between Fairbanks and Whitehorse, Yukon, paralleling the Alaska Highway, began in the summer of 1985. Though the joint electrical grid never fulfilled the promise of powering electronics in Washington with Rampart power — transmission losses would have been massive — it did so indirectly. Rampart power was used in the Yukon and British Columbia, allowing hydroelectric plants in British Columbia to power Washington state and a portion of the Northwest U.S.
In 1986, Alaska Gov. Terry Miller was defeated by Democrat Steve Cowper, partially because of revelations that Miller had terminal bone cancer. Three years after his electoral loss, he died of the disease. The tourist information center in Eureka is named in his honor, and construction of it began in 1987.
That year, the first Rampart electricity reached Whitehorse, the result of more generators being installed at the dam. One came online in 1984 to satisfy the demands of Anchorage and Southcentral Alaska, and one was installed and activated each year that followed. After the breaking of the northern cofferdam, the number of workers and the amount of work being done on the dam slackened somewhat. Because there was no need for excavation work or foundation pours, much of the specialized equipment needed for those tasks was removed. This in turn meant fewer workers were needed on the site, which in turn required fewer support personnel in Eureka. This meant less demand for services in Manley and Fairbanks, causing tougher economic times in both locations.
Starting in 1984, Fairbanks endured a particularly tough time. Just as dam work began to slow, global oil prices plummeted as a result of Saudi Arabia slashing prices. This virtually halted new exploration on Alaska’s North Slope, reducing demand for services in Fairbanks still further. During the boom times of the pipeline and dam, the city had become overbuilt, and retailers that had relied on free-spending workers relaxing after time in construction camps suddenly faced hard times. More than a few homeowners simply left their keys at the bank that held their mortgage before catching a flight out of town. So many cars were abandoned at the airport that the city was unable to find buyers for them at auction.
Adding to the problem was an influx of displaced Alaska Bush village residents. More than 1,500 people were displaced by Lake Kennedy’s rising waters, and most made their way to Fairbanks. Many lived a subsistence lifestyle, catching or growing their food, and the Western way of life was foreign to them. Holding down a regular job was a new experience, and even if they had lived in a village and were familiar with town life, their family connections were broken and they had to start over again. More than a few turned to drinking, their only income coming from interest checks provided by all Alaska Native corporations to their respective groups and tribes.
Further intensifying the village flight was the increased cost of life in the villages. Construction of the dam interrupted barge traffic to most river communities in east-central Alaska, and flying in items became the main source of supply for many of these villages. The resulting increased costs drove more than a few families to Fairbanks or Anchorage in search of stable work. Making matters worse was the wildlife shortage upstream of the dam. In the years after the northern cofferdam was built, salmon numbers fell by 75% despite the enormous fish ladder that had been built to allow salmon to travel upstream to spawn. As Lake Kennedy inundated the Yukon Flats, the moose, waterfowl and fur-bearing animal population similarly plummeted. These factors crippled subsistence life in east-central Alaska and caused more than a few complaints among the 40% of the Fairbanks population that enjoyed hunting in the flats.
Another major effect of the creation of Lake Kennedy was a change in central Alaska’s weather. As Lake Kennedy grew, it increased the amount of moisture available in central Alaska. In the summer, the lake spawns large thunderstorms, which can cause rough conditions on the water. Occasional waterspouts have been seen, but because of the relatively undeveloped nature of the lakeshore, these storms have caused little effect.
That year, the first Rampart electricity reached Whitehorse, the result of more generators being installed at the dam. One came online in 1984 to satisfy the demands of Anchorage and Southcentral Alaska, and one was installed and activated each year that followed. After the breaking of the northern cofferdam, the number of workers and the amount of work being done on the dam slackened somewhat. Because there was no need for excavation work or foundation pours, much of the specialized equipment needed for those tasks was removed. This in turn meant fewer workers were needed on the site, which in turn required fewer support personnel in Eureka. This meant less demand for services in Manley and Fairbanks, causing tougher economic times in both locations.
Starting in 1984, Fairbanks endured a particularly tough time. Just as dam work began to slow, global oil prices plummeted as a result of Saudi Arabia slashing prices. This virtually halted new exploration on Alaska’s North Slope, reducing demand for services in Fairbanks still further. During the boom times of the pipeline and dam, the city had become overbuilt, and retailers that had relied on free-spending workers relaxing after time in construction camps suddenly faced hard times. More than a few homeowners simply left their keys at the bank that held their mortgage before catching a flight out of town. So many cars were abandoned at the airport that the city was unable to find buyers for them at auction.
Adding to the problem was an influx of displaced Alaska Bush village residents. More than 1,500 people were displaced by Lake Kennedy’s rising waters, and most made their way to Fairbanks. Many lived a subsistence lifestyle, catching or growing their food, and the Western way of life was foreign to them. Holding down a regular job was a new experience, and even if they had lived in a village and were familiar with town life, their family connections were broken and they had to start over again. More than a few turned to drinking, their only income coming from interest checks provided by all Alaska Native corporations to their respective groups and tribes.
Further intensifying the village flight was the increased cost of life in the villages. Construction of the dam interrupted barge traffic to most river communities in east-central Alaska, and flying in items became the main source of supply for many of these villages. The resulting increased costs drove more than a few families to Fairbanks or Anchorage in search of stable work. Making matters worse was the wildlife shortage upstream of the dam. In the years after the northern cofferdam was built, salmon numbers fell by 75% despite the enormous fish ladder that had been built to allow salmon to travel upstream to spawn. As Lake Kennedy inundated the Yukon Flats, the moose, waterfowl and fur-bearing animal population similarly plummeted. These factors crippled subsistence life in east-central Alaska and caused more than a few complaints among the 40% of the Fairbanks population that enjoyed hunting in the flats.
Another major effect of the creation of Lake Kennedy was a change in central Alaska’s weather. As Lake Kennedy grew, it increased the amount of moisture available in central Alaska. In the summer, the lake spawns large thunderstorms, which can cause rough conditions on the water. Occasional waterspouts have been seen, but because of the relatively undeveloped nature of the lakeshore, these storms have caused little effect.
Nice...showing the (rather nasty) downsides of otherwise awesome megaprojects. So...what's left? We've got power flowing to Yukon/BC, and then power from there going to Washington. One tick mark for "how will the electricity be used?" The other ones...hm, aluminum...maybe, petrochemicals, perhaps? Though by this point building refineries etc. will be harder and more expensive than earlier, especially in the bad Alaskan climate. Still, processing Alaskan oil before it gets anywhere...though it probably wouldn't happen until oil prices pick back up, which won't happen for around 20 years, will it?
Lake Kennedy’s far more noticeable weather feature is lake-effect snow. In October and November, temperatures in central Alaska plunge below freezing, but the season is early enough that the lake has not frozen all the way across. In these months, the areas south and east of the lake are some of the snowiest in the United States. In an average October, about 20 inches (50 cm) of snow falls in Eagle, the nearest town southeast of the lake. A similar amount falls in November, precipitation falls off in December, then almost stops from December through May, when the lake is frozen. Lake Kennedy does not have as much lake-effect snow as the Great Lakes, because its northern latitude does not allow as much summer heating and thus the temperature difference between the lake and the atmosphere is not as great as it is on the Great Lakes.
After the lake freezes completely over in December, it can be walked across or driven across by snowmachines or automobiles. In February, the lake hosts the Kennedy 500, a 500-mile circuit sled dog race that both starts and ends in Eagle.
Work on the dam continued at a slow pace through the late 1980s with few interruptions. With most of the hard work completed, all dam workers had to do was keep pace with rising reservoir levels by building the dam higher. Because they had a more than 100-foot head start by the time the northern cofferdam was broken, there was never any danger of Lake Kennedy overtopping the dam.
A year after Rampart electricity reached Whitehorse, Lake Kennedy reached an elevation of 550 feet above sea level, only 90 feet below its ultimate height. This elevation allowed the use of the cargo terminals above and below the dam. These had been built in the early years of dam construction with an eye toward restoring barge traffic once the water level reached a certain point. In the early years, the sight of docks halfway up a hillside appeared absurd to onlookers, but now they began to be used. The restoration of barge traffic to the northern half of the Yukon River provided some relief of transportation costs for villages, but village flight continues today.
To obviate some of the economic effects of the oil bust, the Alaska Legislature passed several bills encouraging outside industry to relocate to Alaska to take advantage of the cheap electricity provided by Rampart. The biggest result of this was the construction of half a dozen oil refineries on the Kenai Peninsula and near Valdez. Rampart electricity gave the refineries a cheap power source, and the proximity of the trans-Alaska pipeline meant their raw material was close at hand. This did little to reduce the recession’s effects in central Alaska, which suffered the most.
In 1990, Gov. Cowper was replaced by Republican Walter Hickel, who had served as the state’s second governor. Because Hickel did not win the Republican primary, he elected to run on the Alaskan Independence Party ticket and won as a third-party candidate. Although he was technically a member of the AIP, he governed as a Republican and renounced his AIP status halfway through his term.
As the summer solstice of 1992 approached, so too did completion of Rampart. The final concrete was poured on June 18, 660 feet above sea level, and the dam was pronounced complete on August 22. The announcement, as some observers pointed out, was a bit premature. Lake Kennedy had not yet reached its full level, and many of the dam’s turbines and generators had not been installed because demand did not require it at that point.
After the lake freezes completely over in December, it can be walked across or driven across by snowmachines or automobiles. In February, the lake hosts the Kennedy 500, a 500-mile circuit sled dog race that both starts and ends in Eagle.
Work on the dam continued at a slow pace through the late 1980s with few interruptions. With most of the hard work completed, all dam workers had to do was keep pace with rising reservoir levels by building the dam higher. Because they had a more than 100-foot head start by the time the northern cofferdam was broken, there was never any danger of Lake Kennedy overtopping the dam.
A year after Rampart electricity reached Whitehorse, Lake Kennedy reached an elevation of 550 feet above sea level, only 90 feet below its ultimate height. This elevation allowed the use of the cargo terminals above and below the dam. These had been built in the early years of dam construction with an eye toward restoring barge traffic once the water level reached a certain point. In the early years, the sight of docks halfway up a hillside appeared absurd to onlookers, but now they began to be used. The restoration of barge traffic to the northern half of the Yukon River provided some relief of transportation costs for villages, but village flight continues today.
To obviate some of the economic effects of the oil bust, the Alaska Legislature passed several bills encouraging outside industry to relocate to Alaska to take advantage of the cheap electricity provided by Rampart. The biggest result of this was the construction of half a dozen oil refineries on the Kenai Peninsula and near Valdez. Rampart electricity gave the refineries a cheap power source, and the proximity of the trans-Alaska pipeline meant their raw material was close at hand. This did little to reduce the recession’s effects in central Alaska, which suffered the most.
In 1990, Gov. Cowper was replaced by Republican Walter Hickel, who had served as the state’s second governor. Because Hickel did not win the Republican primary, he elected to run on the Alaskan Independence Party ticket and won as a third-party candidate. Although he was technically a member of the AIP, he governed as a Republican and renounced his AIP status halfway through his term.
As the summer solstice of 1992 approached, so too did completion of Rampart. The final concrete was poured on June 18, 660 feet above sea level, and the dam was pronounced complete on August 22. The announcement, as some observers pointed out, was a bit premature. Lake Kennedy had not yet reached its full level, and many of the dam’s turbines and generators had not been installed because demand did not require it at that point.
Sorry for abandoning this right toward the end, folks. Oddball was right about the construction process, so I had to do a major rewrite. The construction process also changed quite a bit of the dam's timeline, which meant the effects were different. The whole writing process was a great example of the butterfly effect in action. By changing merely the river diversion, we changed the whole universe.
Thanks to the folks who commented on the first version of the timeline. I've rewritten it, and to speed things up, I'm going to start where the changes start from the original version. If you get confused, don't worry -- I'll post a complete version of the timeline when all is said and done. Until then, sit back, relax, and enjoy! (Oh, and please comment if you like it.)
Even before the final Rampart blueprints were given the OK in summer 1972, material began being stockpiled outside of Fairbanks, the nearest railroad hub. From Seattle or San Francisco, construction material was shipped to Anchorage, loaded onto trains and shipped to Fairbanks. There, it was warehoused or put into an enormous freight yard constructed for the purpose. From Fairbanks, material was loaded onto trucks and taken 120 miles north, along the Elliott Highway to the spur road then 30 miles further north to the dam site at Rampart Gorge. To keep things moving, a fleet of trucks was needed, as was a ready stable of freight cranes. Assembling this logistics train began in spring 1972, several months before the design was frozen and two full years before the first concrete was poured at the dam.
Survey work was completed in summer 1972 as the first shipments of construction materials began to be stockpiled at the holding yard south of the construction site. Construction also began on the workers’ “village” next to the holding yard. Calling it a “village” was a bit of a misnomer, as during construction, nearly 15,000 people lived at the site — almost half the population of Fairbanks, which underwent a massive population boom at the time. The construction village was named Eureka, taking the name of the unorganized settlement located at the junction of the Elliott Highway and the dam spur road.
After full surveying was complete in summer 1972, preparations began to be made for construction of diversion tunnels to channel the flow of the Yukon River. As outlined in the construction plans, the river would be blocked by two temporary cofferdams — a 150-foot tall one at the upstream end of the project, and a 40-foot tall one at the downstream end. This disruption of the Yukon’s natural flow presented several problems.
The Yukon serves as a vital transportation route for Interior Alaska villages and towns off the road network — diverting the river around the dam site required the construction of transshipment facilities for riverborne traffic that needed to go upstream. In addition, diverting the river might block the annual migration route of Yukon River salmon, a critical subsistence food for Yukon River residents.
Steps had to be taken to mitigate both of these problems. Temporary wharves were constructed below the site of the downstream cofferdam and above the site of the upstream cofferdam, which had to employ floating docks in order to cope with the widely varying river levels anticipated during the project. To connect the transshipment facilities, a short rail line was created and a special locomotive was brought in.
In a move that later caused a problem for the dam project, no studies were done on the likely difficulties salmon would face swimming against the increased current of the diversion tunnels. Because the entire flow of the Yukon would be directed through a tunnel with a defined diameter, rather than a free riverbed, its flow would be quicker, as defined by the higher water pressure. This would correspondingly force the salmon to expend more energy while returning to their upstream spawning grounds.
In any event, work on the diversion tunnels was delayed to spring 1973 because surveying had concluded so late in the summer. Delaying the start of drilling and blasting allowed for a buildup of material at the site and for construction facilities to be built to a greater extent. But as sound as that planned delay was from an engineering standpoint, it almost was a fatal move for the project.
Thanks to the folks who commented on the first version of the timeline. I've rewritten it, and to speed things up, I'm going to start where the changes start from the original version. If you get confused, don't worry -- I'll post a complete version of the timeline when all is said and done. Until then, sit back, relax, and enjoy! (Oh, and please comment if you like it.)
Even before the final Rampart blueprints were given the OK in summer 1972, material began being stockpiled outside of Fairbanks, the nearest railroad hub. From Seattle or San Francisco, construction material was shipped to Anchorage, loaded onto trains and shipped to Fairbanks. There, it was warehoused or put into an enormous freight yard constructed for the purpose. From Fairbanks, material was loaded onto trucks and taken 120 miles north, along the Elliott Highway to the spur road then 30 miles further north to the dam site at Rampart Gorge. To keep things moving, a fleet of trucks was needed, as was a ready stable of freight cranes. Assembling this logistics train began in spring 1972, several months before the design was frozen and two full years before the first concrete was poured at the dam.
Survey work was completed in summer 1972 as the first shipments of construction materials began to be stockpiled at the holding yard south of the construction site. Construction also began on the workers’ “village” next to the holding yard. Calling it a “village” was a bit of a misnomer, as during construction, nearly 15,000 people lived at the site — almost half the population of Fairbanks, which underwent a massive population boom at the time. The construction village was named Eureka, taking the name of the unorganized settlement located at the junction of the Elliott Highway and the dam spur road.
After full surveying was complete in summer 1972, preparations began to be made for construction of diversion tunnels to channel the flow of the Yukon River. As outlined in the construction plans, the river would be blocked by two temporary cofferdams — a 150-foot tall one at the upstream end of the project, and a 40-foot tall one at the downstream end. This disruption of the Yukon’s natural flow presented several problems.
The Yukon serves as a vital transportation route for Interior Alaska villages and towns off the road network — diverting the river around the dam site required the construction of transshipment facilities for riverborne traffic that needed to go upstream. In addition, diverting the river might block the annual migration route of Yukon River salmon, a critical subsistence food for Yukon River residents.
Steps had to be taken to mitigate both of these problems. Temporary wharves were constructed below the site of the downstream cofferdam and above the site of the upstream cofferdam, which had to employ floating docks in order to cope with the widely varying river levels anticipated during the project. To connect the transshipment facilities, a short rail line was created and a special locomotive was brought in.
In a move that later caused a problem for the dam project, no studies were done on the likely difficulties salmon would face swimming against the increased current of the diversion tunnels. Because the entire flow of the Yukon would be directed through a tunnel with a defined diameter, rather than a free riverbed, its flow would be quicker, as defined by the higher water pressure. This would correspondingly force the salmon to expend more energy while returning to their upstream spawning grounds.
In any event, work on the diversion tunnels was delayed to spring 1973 because surveying had concluded so late in the summer. Delaying the start of drilling and blasting allowed for a buildup of material at the site and for construction facilities to be built to a greater extent. But as sound as that planned delay was from an engineering standpoint, it almost was a fatal move for the project.
In November 1972, President Richard Nixon was reelected to a second term in office. During his first term, he moved strongly in favor of ecological and environmental concerns, taking advantage of a Democratic lack in that area during the 1960s. Though most environmentalists objected to the Rampart Dam project, Nixon didn’t act against it, due primarily to the strong Democratic majority in Congress and the objections of his Interior Secretary, former Alaska governor Wally Hickel. But following the Kent State shootings in 1970, Hickel wrote a scathing letter criticizing Nixon’s treatment of the Vietnam War protests. In the wake of that incident, Hickel was fired by Nixon, and the Nixon administration abruptly lost its strongest Rampart backer. During the 1972 presidential campaign, environmentalism and Rampart again became an issue.
Because of overwhelming public support of his foreign policy and his moves toward a withdrawal from Vietnam, Nixon didn’t have to press the environmental plank of his platform as firmly as he did during his first term or the 1968 election. He handily won re-election by the fourth-largest margin in modern history and carried 49 states, including Alaska, which normally leaned strongly Democratic due to Democrats’ support of Rampart. The Republicans also picked up a dozen seats in the House of Represenatives, but lost ground in the Senate. In Alaska, Represenative Nick Begich was elected to his third term as the state’s lone member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He had been elected during the rising Democratic tide during 1968 and remained in office due to Alaska’s strong favoritism toward incumbent politicians.
Unfortunately for Begich, his electoral victory was a posthumous one. His aircraft disappeared while flying from Anchorage to Juneau two weeks prior to the election, and no wreckage was ever found. Democrat Emil Notti defeated Republican Don Young in a special election held in March 1973 to fill the seat. Notti remains in office today, though hampered by corruption allegations.
On the national stage, Nixon felt secure enough in his position to again challenge Rampart funding. He perceived the opportunity as an easy way to score political points by canceling a relatively unpopular and expensive government project at the cost of Alaska support for the Republican Party. This was considered to be a small price to pay, since Alaska has only three Electoral College votes. In summer 1973, Nixon pushed for a bill to cancel the Rampart Dam project. “Not a single shovel has yet been turned,” he said, and there still was time to eliminate a wasteful project. The bill ending Rampart funding easily passed the House of Representatives, but in the Senate, longtime Senator and fervent Rampart backer Ernst Gruening managed to delay the bill as he desperately tried to head off the inevitable.
Fortunately for Gruening and the dam’s backers in Alaska, events halfway around the world kept the project alive. On October 6, 1973, Syria and Egypt launched an attack on Israel that came to be known as the Yom Kippur War. The United States military, under orders from Nixon, sent military aid to the embattled Israeli Defense Force. In response, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which was primarily made up of nations that supported Egypt and Syria, proclaimed an oil embargo against the United States on October 15. By the end of the year, the price of oil more than quadrupled on the open market. Gasoline shortages, rationing, and energy problems erupted in the United States.
Because of overwhelming public support of his foreign policy and his moves toward a withdrawal from Vietnam, Nixon didn’t have to press the environmental plank of his platform as firmly as he did during his first term or the 1968 election. He handily won re-election by the fourth-largest margin in modern history and carried 49 states, including Alaska, which normally leaned strongly Democratic due to Democrats’ support of Rampart. The Republicans also picked up a dozen seats in the House of Represenatives, but lost ground in the Senate. In Alaska, Represenative Nick Begich was elected to his third term as the state’s lone member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He had been elected during the rising Democratic tide during 1968 and remained in office due to Alaska’s strong favoritism toward incumbent politicians.
Unfortunately for Begich, his electoral victory was a posthumous one. His aircraft disappeared while flying from Anchorage to Juneau two weeks prior to the election, and no wreckage was ever found. Democrat Emil Notti defeated Republican Don Young in a special election held in March 1973 to fill the seat. Notti remains in office today, though hampered by corruption allegations.
On the national stage, Nixon felt secure enough in his position to again challenge Rampart funding. He perceived the opportunity as an easy way to score political points by canceling a relatively unpopular and expensive government project at the cost of Alaska support for the Republican Party. This was considered to be a small price to pay, since Alaska has only three Electoral College votes. In summer 1973, Nixon pushed for a bill to cancel the Rampart Dam project. “Not a single shovel has yet been turned,” he said, and there still was time to eliminate a wasteful project. The bill ending Rampart funding easily passed the House of Representatives, but in the Senate, longtime Senator and fervent Rampart backer Ernst Gruening managed to delay the bill as he desperately tried to head off the inevitable.
Fortunately for Gruening and the dam’s backers in Alaska, events halfway around the world kept the project alive. On October 6, 1973, Syria and Egypt launched an attack on Israel that came to be known as the Yom Kippur War. The United States military, under orders from Nixon, sent military aid to the embattled Israeli Defense Force. In response, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which was primarily made up of nations that supported Egypt and Syria, proclaimed an oil embargo against the United States on October 15. By the end of the year, the price of oil more than quadrupled on the open market. Gasoline shortages, rationing, and energy problems erupted in the United States.
In response, President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger created an initiative called “Project Independence,” a program designed to make the United States self-reliant on energy by 1980. As a move separate from Project Independence, Nixon signed the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act on November 16, 1973, clearing the way for construction of the pipeline from the North Slope to Valdez. The 1973 Oil Crisis also killed opposition to Rampart Dam’s continued funding. As any opportunity to create indigenous sources of energy was being embraced in the United States, opposing Rampart — which had been advertised as potentially providing cheap energy to the American West — would have been political suicide for politicians watching their constituents wait in line for gasoline. Sen. Gruening’s delaying tactics, though they appeared futile just four months before, won Rampart a reprieve.
In the construction history of Rampart Dam, 1973 is considered the lost year. Because it seemed so likely that the project would be written off, purchases were canceled, workmen were laid off, construction of Rampart village was halted, and no work was done to drill the diversion tunnels. By November, when it became clear that the project would go forward at full speed, it was too late to begin any serious construction. Winter had set in, and by January, several feet of snow and ice covered the construction site. Although construction material continued to pile up at the site due to infrequent shipments from the Fairbanks rail yard and workers were readied for spring work, nothing could be done.
That didn’t mean the Corps of Engineers was wholly inactive, of course. Through the winter, Corps engineers feverishly worked with those of Alyeska to chart a route for the trans-Alaska pipeline around the footprint of Rampart Dam and Lake Kennedy. The most direct route crossed the Yukon River halfway between what were then the towns of Beaver and Rampart (not to be confused with Rampart village, the construction town adjacent to the dam). Once the dam was constructed, this portion of the river would be about a hundred feet underwater, and Lake Kennedy would extend for miles both north and south of the river’s original channel.
The most obvious solution was to construct a roadway atop the dam and string the pipeline across the dam’s crest, creating a “free” bridge. Given the construction timeline for the dam, however, this was impossible. The pipeline would be constructed far more quickly than the dam, and in any event, a construction road was needed immediately to supply Prudhoe Bay and support the construction of the pipeline. Alyeska couldn’t wait for the dam to be built. Consideration was given to bridging Lake Kennedy at a point about 20 miles upriver from the dam site. Due to high, steep canyon walls at this point of the river, Lake Kennedy would be less than half a mile wide. But the Corps of Engineers couldn’t guarantee the exact height of Lake Kennedy, and Alyeska engineers were unwilling to deal with a best-guess estimate.
A second option was to simply plan for a portion of the pipeline to be submerged by Lake Kennedy. But this would prevent easy maintenance, particularly in winter. Feet-thick sheets of ice would cover the lake, and no techniques to repair pipelines under water and ice had ever been developed. Furthermore, developing and implementing such techniques would require creating a fleet of dedicated boats and port facilities to handle them. It would be far cheaper to find a third option.
In the construction history of Rampart Dam, 1973 is considered the lost year. Because it seemed so likely that the project would be written off, purchases were canceled, workmen were laid off, construction of Rampart village was halted, and no work was done to drill the diversion tunnels. By November, when it became clear that the project would go forward at full speed, it was too late to begin any serious construction. Winter had set in, and by January, several feet of snow and ice covered the construction site. Although construction material continued to pile up at the site due to infrequent shipments from the Fairbanks rail yard and workers were readied for spring work, nothing could be done.
That didn’t mean the Corps of Engineers was wholly inactive, of course. Through the winter, Corps engineers feverishly worked with those of Alyeska to chart a route for the trans-Alaska pipeline around the footprint of Rampart Dam and Lake Kennedy. The most direct route crossed the Yukon River halfway between what were then the towns of Beaver and Rampart (not to be confused with Rampart village, the construction town adjacent to the dam). Once the dam was constructed, this portion of the river would be about a hundred feet underwater, and Lake Kennedy would extend for miles both north and south of the river’s original channel.
The most obvious solution was to construct a roadway atop the dam and string the pipeline across the dam’s crest, creating a “free” bridge. Given the construction timeline for the dam, however, this was impossible. The pipeline would be constructed far more quickly than the dam, and in any event, a construction road was needed immediately to supply Prudhoe Bay and support the construction of the pipeline. Alyeska couldn’t wait for the dam to be built. Consideration was given to bridging Lake Kennedy at a point about 20 miles upriver from the dam site. Due to high, steep canyon walls at this point of the river, Lake Kennedy would be less than half a mile wide. But the Corps of Engineers couldn’t guarantee the exact height of Lake Kennedy, and Alyeska engineers were unwilling to deal with a best-guess estimate.
A second option was to simply plan for a portion of the pipeline to be submerged by Lake Kennedy. But this would prevent easy maintenance, particularly in winter. Feet-thick sheets of ice would cover the lake, and no techniques to repair pipelines under water and ice had ever been developed. Furthermore, developing and implementing such techniques would require creating a fleet of dedicated boats and port facilities to handle them. It would be far cheaper to find a third option.
In the end, the Alyeska engineers decided to simply extend the Elliott Highway from its end at Manley Hot Springs northward to a point downriver of the dam site. There, they could bridge the Yukon with a clear idea of what its depth was going to be, and without worrying about construction.
There were several drawbacks to this approach, however. The route of the pipeline and the extended Elliott Highway now took an enormous dog-leg around Rampart Dam and Lake Kennedy, extending the length of both. In addition, construction traffic for both Rampart Dam and the trans-Alaska Pipeline had to share the Elliott Highway for most of its length south of the Yukon River. This caused massive traffic jams of trucks until the road was widened to three lanes in each direction. This caused it to be the widest road in Alaska, and today the seldom-used six-lane highway (only the center two lanes have been maintained — the outer four are little more than asphalt gravel now) is the biggest monument to the massive construction efforts that took place during the 1970s in Alaska.
Plans to extend the Alaska Railroad to Manley Hot Springs or Eureka never went beyond the planning stages, and all the material for the Rampart Dam and the portion of the trans-Alaska Pipeline north of Fairbanks was trucked to its ultimate destination. Some historians have alleged that the influence of Alaska Teamsters boss Jesse Carr was instrumental in foiling the railroad’s extension. The Teamsters Local 959 exerted enormous influence in the state, and while the Teamsters controlled commercial truck traffic at the time, they did not dominate the government-operated railroad.
Railroad expansion or not, these two massive construction projects obviously had a huge effect on the economy of Interior Alaska. From a population of 13,300 in 1960, Fairbanks exploded to 17,500 in 1970 and an astonishing 32,100 in 1975. The demand for housing, stores, and everyday living supplies skyrocketed, as did prices. The situation in the town was very much reminiscent of the turn-of-the-century gold rush that founded Fairbanks.
Crime spiked massively, as construction workers flooded into town with weeks of pay accumulated at their remote jobsites, drunken brawls were common, and so was prostitution, illegal gambling, and drugs. Many workers returned to Rampart village or a pipeline construction camp penniless — having spent all their pay on alcohol and prostitutes. Many didn’t return at all. Robberies became common, as did homicides — the result of robberies gone wrong. Only when the construction boom ended and the economy crashed for a time, did Fairbanks return to the state it had been before.
As great as the effect on Fairbanks was, boom times in the towns of Manley Hot Springs and Eureka were even greater. Neither boasted more than 100 residents prior to the construction boom, and at its peak, Eureka had more than 15,000 and Manley 6,000. Perhaps surprisingly, the atmosphere in the two boomtowns was far less rowdy than in Fairbanks. The Alaska State Troopers held jurisdiction in the area, and because of regulations set down by the pipeline companies, the Corps of Engineers, and the state of Alaska, alcohol was forbidden west of a certain point on the Elliott Highway, a place that became known as the “dry line.” Bars flourished on the eastern side of the line for workers who couldn’t wait to reach Fairbanks to have a good time. Of course, official regulations couldn’t keep smuggling from booming, especially during construction of the oil pipeline, when the pipeline construction camps were kept floating on booze thanks to the supply trucks. The official alcohol ban and tough policing by state troopers didn’t mean there wasn’t trouble — far from it, particularly when set against the dead quiet of isolated, pre-boom Interior Alaska. Still, by actively patrolling the area and confiscating and destroying all liquor discovered west of the dry line, the situation was kept from spiraling into utter lawlessness.
There were several drawbacks to this approach, however. The route of the pipeline and the extended Elliott Highway now took an enormous dog-leg around Rampart Dam and Lake Kennedy, extending the length of both. In addition, construction traffic for both Rampart Dam and the trans-Alaska Pipeline had to share the Elliott Highway for most of its length south of the Yukon River. This caused massive traffic jams of trucks until the road was widened to three lanes in each direction. This caused it to be the widest road in Alaska, and today the seldom-used six-lane highway (only the center two lanes have been maintained — the outer four are little more than asphalt gravel now) is the biggest monument to the massive construction efforts that took place during the 1970s in Alaska.
Plans to extend the Alaska Railroad to Manley Hot Springs or Eureka never went beyond the planning stages, and all the material for the Rampart Dam and the portion of the trans-Alaska Pipeline north of Fairbanks was trucked to its ultimate destination. Some historians have alleged that the influence of Alaska Teamsters boss Jesse Carr was instrumental in foiling the railroad’s extension. The Teamsters Local 959 exerted enormous influence in the state, and while the Teamsters controlled commercial truck traffic at the time, they did not dominate the government-operated railroad.
Railroad expansion or not, these two massive construction projects obviously had a huge effect on the economy of Interior Alaska. From a population of 13,300 in 1960, Fairbanks exploded to 17,500 in 1970 and an astonishing 32,100 in 1975. The demand for housing, stores, and everyday living supplies skyrocketed, as did prices. The situation in the town was very much reminiscent of the turn-of-the-century gold rush that founded Fairbanks.
Crime spiked massively, as construction workers flooded into town with weeks of pay accumulated at their remote jobsites, drunken brawls were common, and so was prostitution, illegal gambling, and drugs. Many workers returned to Rampart village or a pipeline construction camp penniless — having spent all their pay on alcohol and prostitutes. Many didn’t return at all. Robberies became common, as did homicides — the result of robberies gone wrong. Only when the construction boom ended and the economy crashed for a time, did Fairbanks return to the state it had been before.
As great as the effect on Fairbanks was, boom times in the towns of Manley Hot Springs and Eureka were even greater. Neither boasted more than 100 residents prior to the construction boom, and at its peak, Eureka had more than 15,000 and Manley 6,000. Perhaps surprisingly, the atmosphere in the two boomtowns was far less rowdy than in Fairbanks. The Alaska State Troopers held jurisdiction in the area, and because of regulations set down by the pipeline companies, the Corps of Engineers, and the state of Alaska, alcohol was forbidden west of a certain point on the Elliott Highway, a place that became known as the “dry line.” Bars flourished on the eastern side of the line for workers who couldn’t wait to reach Fairbanks to have a good time. Of course, official regulations couldn’t keep smuggling from booming, especially during construction of the oil pipeline, when the pipeline construction camps were kept floating on booze thanks to the supply trucks. The official alcohol ban and tough policing by state troopers didn’t mean there wasn’t trouble — far from it, particularly when set against the dead quiet of isolated, pre-boom Interior Alaska. Still, by actively patrolling the area and confiscating and destroying all liquor discovered west of the dry line, the situation was kept from spiraling into utter lawlessness.
On May 12, 1974, work began on the diversion tunnels. A ceremonial groundbreaking —took place on April 9, but due to ice on the Yukon River, work prior to May 12 consisted of excavating hillsides still muddy from recently melted snow. May 12 saw the first blasting of bedrock from the hills through which the tunnels would travel.
The tunnels were built in parallel: two 50-foot diameter concrete tubes drilled through rock. They were not perfectly circular — the upstream and downstream ends each had flat-bottomed portals with arched tops, and some of that form was kept throughout the length of the tunnels. The upstream portal was just above the pre-dam river level, and the downstream end was 10 feet below the upstream portal. Altogether, the diversion tunnels were longer than a mile.
After sizable holes were made into the hillside, barges loaded with equipment were pushed to the portals and unloaded excavators directly into the tunnel. The height of the diversion tunnels had been planned to allow this, and trucks ran a regular business hauling rock fragments from the drilling face to barges brought to haul the spoil away. Behind the excavating face was an unusual hydraulic machine designed to lift and hold concrete tunnel segments in place before they were bolted to the rock. The machine’s arms could pivot 360 degrees, so sections of concrete tunnel from the floor to the ceiling could be put into place without the need for heavy physical labor — apart from that needed to wield the power tools bolting the slabs into place.
In some cases, the excavators had to deal with permafrost — iron-hard soil that remains frozen throughout the year. The permafrost was as hard as the rock that excavators were boring through, but there was an easy alternative to blasting. To quickly thaw the permafrost, engineers developed a series of enormous boilers to blast it away with high-pressure streams of hot water. This system mirrored the days of hydraulic mining in Alaska, and worked so well that it largely replaced crane-driven excavation in the dry soil of the hillsides that would serve as the shoulders of the dam.
Shortly after work on the diversion tunnels began, the dam lost its strongest political backer when Sen. Gruening died at age 87. He had supported the dam project since its inception and had saved it from cancellation in 1973 with delaying tactics that had seemed futile until the oil embargo made canceling any sort of energy project politically impossible. He died knowing that the Rampart Dam project was sited on strong financial and political foundations, even if he never saw it completed. To fill the vacant Senate seat, Gov. Egan appointed Mike Gravel, who had challenged Gruening in the Democratic primary earlier that year.
The work proceeded steadily and without incident through the summer and fall. Only the arrival of extremely cold weather in mid-November halted work entirely. The cold weather made machinery balky, and unfrozen sections of ground froze, becoming as hard as concrete.
The hydraulic excavating used for removing hillside permafrost worked well, but the near-boiling water pumped through the excavators created a clouds of steam and spray that froze to every nearby surface, coating men and machines in inches of ice. On more than one occasion, so much ice built up on the clothing of workers manning the hydraulic hoses that they would change into new clothes and leave the frozen ones standing upright, as if an invisible person were wearing them. The operation didn’t shut down for the winter, however. Instead of barges, dump trucks navigating the frozen river kept steady loads of rock fragments moving away from the excavation, to be replaced by concrete slabs created at a plant in Rampart village.
Richard Nixon’s shocking resignation that fall didn’t keep work from proceeding as normal, and the first season of full-fledged work closed with the diversion tunnels and site clearing well under way.
During the 1974 election season, Democratic candidates across the state pointed to Rampart Dam, the trans-Alaska Pipeline, and other large projects that had happened under Democratic administration of Alaska. Republican candidates appealed to the large military vote in the state and ran a negative campaign trying to portray Alaska Democrats as merely an extension of the national party. That strategy was mildly successful, but it did not sway a majority of Alaskans, who returned Democrats to national office again. Mike Gravel, the interim U.S. Senate appointment, was elected to a full term, and Gov. Egan’s lieutenant governor, “Red” Boucher, was elected governor.
Work on the extension of the Elliott Highway and the trans-Alaska pipeline went ahead even more rapidly than construction of the dam. There were several reasons for this: more funding was available in a shorter time, the scale of the construction was smaller, and less material was needed. Although the pipeline work covered a geographically vast area, multiple work teams could operate at the same time, thus speeding the overall pace of the project. In addition, the materials involved were lighter and required less equipment to be emplaced. At Rampart, the work was heavy, and because crews worked only at one site, they were limited by the speed of the slowest stage of construction. In pipeline construction, if one section proved difficult — as in the Atigun Pass area — other sections could be built at the same time and the difficulty would not slow the project.
Spring 1975 saw the resumption of site clearing at the southern shoulder of the dam as the diversion work continued unabated. More than half of the site clearing had been completed in that first year, and much of the rest was completed during 1976.
Also during 1975, the first work on the enormous fish ladder began on the northern bank of the river. To avoid problems with the dam itself, the ladder began 1,000 yards downstream and it was positioned about 200 yards north of the dam itself. The “top” of the ladder — the eastern end, closest to the reservoir — was positioned slightly below the ultimate pool height of the reservoir. That way, the reservoir would provide a steady flow of water to the ladder without pumps. This wasn’t an altogether perfect solution, however, as pumping would be required during the years between the closure of the river channel and the filling of the reservoir.
The tunnels were built in parallel: two 50-foot diameter concrete tubes drilled through rock. They were not perfectly circular — the upstream and downstream ends each had flat-bottomed portals with arched tops, and some of that form was kept throughout the length of the tunnels. The upstream portal was just above the pre-dam river level, and the downstream end was 10 feet below the upstream portal. Altogether, the diversion tunnels were longer than a mile.
After sizable holes were made into the hillside, barges loaded with equipment were pushed to the portals and unloaded excavators directly into the tunnel. The height of the diversion tunnels had been planned to allow this, and trucks ran a regular business hauling rock fragments from the drilling face to barges brought to haul the spoil away. Behind the excavating face was an unusual hydraulic machine designed to lift and hold concrete tunnel segments in place before they were bolted to the rock. The machine’s arms could pivot 360 degrees, so sections of concrete tunnel from the floor to the ceiling could be put into place without the need for heavy physical labor — apart from that needed to wield the power tools bolting the slabs into place.
In some cases, the excavators had to deal with permafrost — iron-hard soil that remains frozen throughout the year. The permafrost was as hard as the rock that excavators were boring through, but there was an easy alternative to blasting. To quickly thaw the permafrost, engineers developed a series of enormous boilers to blast it away with high-pressure streams of hot water. This system mirrored the days of hydraulic mining in Alaska, and worked so well that it largely replaced crane-driven excavation in the dry soil of the hillsides that would serve as the shoulders of the dam.
Shortly after work on the diversion tunnels began, the dam lost its strongest political backer when Sen. Gruening died at age 87. He had supported the dam project since its inception and had saved it from cancellation in 1973 with delaying tactics that had seemed futile until the oil embargo made canceling any sort of energy project politically impossible. He died knowing that the Rampart Dam project was sited on strong financial and political foundations, even if he never saw it completed. To fill the vacant Senate seat, Gov. Egan appointed Mike Gravel, who had challenged Gruening in the Democratic primary earlier that year.
The work proceeded steadily and without incident through the summer and fall. Only the arrival of extremely cold weather in mid-November halted work entirely. The cold weather made machinery balky, and unfrozen sections of ground froze, becoming as hard as concrete.
The hydraulic excavating used for removing hillside permafrost worked well, but the near-boiling water pumped through the excavators created a clouds of steam and spray that froze to every nearby surface, coating men and machines in inches of ice. On more than one occasion, so much ice built up on the clothing of workers manning the hydraulic hoses that they would change into new clothes and leave the frozen ones standing upright, as if an invisible person were wearing them. The operation didn’t shut down for the winter, however. Instead of barges, dump trucks navigating the frozen river kept steady loads of rock fragments moving away from the excavation, to be replaced by concrete slabs created at a plant in Rampart village.
Richard Nixon’s shocking resignation that fall didn’t keep work from proceeding as normal, and the first season of full-fledged work closed with the diversion tunnels and site clearing well under way.
During the 1974 election season, Democratic candidates across the state pointed to Rampart Dam, the trans-Alaska Pipeline, and other large projects that had happened under Democratic administration of Alaska. Republican candidates appealed to the large military vote in the state and ran a negative campaign trying to portray Alaska Democrats as merely an extension of the national party. That strategy was mildly successful, but it did not sway a majority of Alaskans, who returned Democrats to national office again. Mike Gravel, the interim U.S. Senate appointment, was elected to a full term, and Gov. Egan’s lieutenant governor, “Red” Boucher, was elected governor.
Work on the extension of the Elliott Highway and the trans-Alaska pipeline went ahead even more rapidly than construction of the dam. There were several reasons for this: more funding was available in a shorter time, the scale of the construction was smaller, and less material was needed. Although the pipeline work covered a geographically vast area, multiple work teams could operate at the same time, thus speeding the overall pace of the project. In addition, the materials involved were lighter and required less equipment to be emplaced. At Rampart, the work was heavy, and because crews worked only at one site, they were limited by the speed of the slowest stage of construction. In pipeline construction, if one section proved difficult — as in the Atigun Pass area — other sections could be built at the same time and the difficulty would not slow the project.
Spring 1975 saw the resumption of site clearing at the southern shoulder of the dam as the diversion work continued unabated. More than half of the site clearing had been completed in that first year, and much of the rest was completed during 1976.
Also during 1975, the first work on the enormous fish ladder began on the northern bank of the river. To avoid problems with the dam itself, the ladder began 1,000 yards downstream and it was positioned about 200 yards north of the dam itself. The “top” of the ladder — the eastern end, closest to the reservoir — was positioned slightly below the ultimate pool height of the reservoir. That way, the reservoir would provide a steady flow of water to the ladder without pumps. This wasn’t an altogether perfect solution, however, as pumping would be required during the years between the closure of the river channel and the filling of the reservoir.
Love it. Pure Engineer Porn here.
The attention to the little details of the construction effort make this so wholly believable it brings a tear to my eye. Makes this engineer nostalgic for the days when engineers actually created things.
The attention to the little details of the construction effort make this so wholly believable it brings a tear to my eye. Makes this engineer nostalgic for the days when engineers actually created things.
A similar problem was encountered as engineers tackled the issue of cargo trans-shipment facilities. The temporary wharves would function as long as dam construction was under way, but when the reservoir began filling, the upstream cargo docks would be inundated. This presented a problem as cargo still would be needed during the several years of that process. To avoid problems with the rising level of water, a series of floating docks were designed for use during this period. They would rise to the level of the reservoir, and the cargo facilities were modular and designed to be easily movable. The rail line, which could not be easily moved, was simply reconstructed as required by the rising water. When the first floating docks were put into place as the construction cofferdams were being built, a worker put a small sign far up the hillside upstream of the river. In red letters, it read: Future Site of Port Rampart. This sign, several hundred feet above the river, created a stark message about how high the river would rise as it turned into Lake Kennedy.
Late in 1975, the first large-scale sawmill went into operation east of the dam site. During the time period leading up to Lake Kennedy’s creation, nearly a dozen similar saw mills were built to take advantage of the vast swath of free timber that was being offered by the federal government. The creation of Lake Kennedy was scheduled to inundate almost 10,000 square miles. That area was sparsely developed and forested with spruce, aspen, willow, and birch. Though wood harvested from these trees has marginal commercial value individually, spruce wood is used in construction, and other uses have been found for the other types. By opening the future site of Lake Kennedy to clear-cutting, the Bureau of Land Management — which was in charge of the area — hoped to accomplish two goals. It would eliminate a massive potential hazard when the area was flooded and killed the trees, which would then float en masse on the surface of the lake. It also would attract industry to the area, which would then use the electricity produced by Rampart Dam, helping the government accomplish its stated objective of paying for the dam with electricity sales.
The first sawmills that took advantage of the timber lacked the advantage of cheap electricity. They made up for that fact by being the first on the scene and claiming the stands of trees that had the highest market value. This advantage was heightened by the way in which lumber claims were conducted. Loggers were required to report their claims to the Bureau of Land Management office in Fairbanks, and the first person to stake the claim at the office meant that he or she would have the right to harvest the timber, regardless of who was there first. Each logger or company was limited to five 500-acre claims at any time, and production had to be started on a claim within 90 days of it being claimed, or the claim was forfeit. These conditions created a Gold Rush-style atmosphere during the first few years of the logging. Organized companies often had teams exploring the area, radioing their findings to Fairbanks, then having a separate person make the claim. Competitors countered by jamming the radio frequencies of competing companies. In some cases, violence erupted between companies competing to be the first to lay claim to a particular area. Several large logging companies created shell corporations or had individual employees register claims independently in order to secure larger amounts of timber. The BLM countered by instituting a $100 fee for each claim. This only slightly cut down on the number of claims, however. Its biggest effect was to create resentment of the BLM by family loggers, who observed that the BLM eventually made more than $75 million from the claims — and the fee was implemented only after many claims had been filed.
Late in 1975, the first large-scale sawmill went into operation east of the dam site. During the time period leading up to Lake Kennedy’s creation, nearly a dozen similar saw mills were built to take advantage of the vast swath of free timber that was being offered by the federal government. The creation of Lake Kennedy was scheduled to inundate almost 10,000 square miles. That area was sparsely developed and forested with spruce, aspen, willow, and birch. Though wood harvested from these trees has marginal commercial value individually, spruce wood is used in construction, and other uses have been found for the other types. By opening the future site of Lake Kennedy to clear-cutting, the Bureau of Land Management — which was in charge of the area — hoped to accomplish two goals. It would eliminate a massive potential hazard when the area was flooded and killed the trees, which would then float en masse on the surface of the lake. It also would attract industry to the area, which would then use the electricity produced by Rampart Dam, helping the government accomplish its stated objective of paying for the dam with electricity sales.
The first sawmills that took advantage of the timber lacked the advantage of cheap electricity. They made up for that fact by being the first on the scene and claiming the stands of trees that had the highest market value. This advantage was heightened by the way in which lumber claims were conducted. Loggers were required to report their claims to the Bureau of Land Management office in Fairbanks, and the first person to stake the claim at the office meant that he or she would have the right to harvest the timber, regardless of who was there first. Each logger or company was limited to five 500-acre claims at any time, and production had to be started on a claim within 90 days of it being claimed, or the claim was forfeit. These conditions created a Gold Rush-style atmosphere during the first few years of the logging. Organized companies often had teams exploring the area, radioing their findings to Fairbanks, then having a separate person make the claim. Competitors countered by jamming the radio frequencies of competing companies. In some cases, violence erupted between companies competing to be the first to lay claim to a particular area. Several large logging companies created shell corporations or had individual employees register claims independently in order to secure larger amounts of timber. The BLM countered by instituting a $100 fee for each claim. This only slightly cut down on the number of claims, however. Its biggest effect was to create resentment of the BLM by family loggers, who observed that the BLM eventually made more than $75 million from the claims — and the fee was implemented only after many claims had been filed.
1976 marked a big year in the dam project. That summer saw the completion of the diversion tunnels and the beginning of the two construction cofferdams. There was little land clearing on the south bank, but tree-cutters and hydraulic excavators were at work along the north bank, where work had not yet begun.
The diversion tunnels were dedicated on July 4, and the first loads of gravel for the cofferdams were dumped into the river during the ceremony. Special barges were brought into service. Each had the ability to dump its load of gravel without the need for bucket excavators, and the ease with which they emplaced their gravel — compared with the labor needed to fill the barges — led to no small number of jokes about the ease of life working the barges.
The cofferdams were not entirely gravel — they also contained large amounts of clay and plastic sheeting to prevent water from seeping through them and into the construction area. So great was the demand for gravel and clay that mines were opened along the Elliot Highway specifically to provide raw material for them. In some cases, these mines were operated by men with close connections to those purchasing the gravel for the project. The Los Angeles Times, which also won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing corruption during the construction of the pipeline, published a scathing expose on the way “gravel was turned to gold” that summer. No convictions resulted, but the Times won another Pulitzer from its work and the practice became much less blatant.
By the end of the year, the two enormous diversion tunnels were completed, as were the two cofferdams. Before the river froze for the winter, water was flowing through the diversion tunnels around the construction site. The riverbed location of the dam was drained of water, and hydraulic excavators went to work removing the overburden from the bedrock in the riverbed.
The winter of 1976-1977 saw the completion of the site clearing, which was accomplished much more quickly than had been anticipated, thanks to the use of the hydraulic excavators. Engineers also overcame the first major problem which had not been accounted for in the construction plans. At no time in the diversion project was any consideration made for ice forming in the diversion tunnels. When the river ice began to break up in spring 1977, it quickly clogged both upstream entrance portals to the diversion tunnels.
Only through steady use of hydraulic excavators to break up the ice was the river kept from rising over the upstream cofferdam and flooding the construction site. Later in the breakup season, both diversion tunnels became completely blocked by ice, again causing the river upstream to rise dangerously. This was a problem with no easy fix, but it had to be done quickly, lest the river flood the construction site.
In the end, one man volunteered to enter the diversion tunnels to place a small bit of mining explosive then, in his words, “run like hell.” The icy water was knee-deep, and there was the danger that at any moment the ice block could let go, sweeping him through the diversion tunnel with the full force of the Yukon River. That didn’t happen, and the charge cleared one tunnel. The only problem was that there were two — so he coolly repeated the feat.
In the summer after the incident, heating elements were added at various points in the tunnel so future blockages could be melted as needed. Gates at the mouth of each tunnel were alternately closed to allow the installation of the elements and other maintenance work needed to repair cracks caused by the winter ice blasting.
The diversion tunnels were dedicated on July 4, and the first loads of gravel for the cofferdams were dumped into the river during the ceremony. Special barges were brought into service. Each had the ability to dump its load of gravel without the need for bucket excavators, and the ease with which they emplaced their gravel — compared with the labor needed to fill the barges — led to no small number of jokes about the ease of life working the barges.
The cofferdams were not entirely gravel — they also contained large amounts of clay and plastic sheeting to prevent water from seeping through them and into the construction area. So great was the demand for gravel and clay that mines were opened along the Elliot Highway specifically to provide raw material for them. In some cases, these mines were operated by men with close connections to those purchasing the gravel for the project. The Los Angeles Times, which also won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing corruption during the construction of the pipeline, published a scathing expose on the way “gravel was turned to gold” that summer. No convictions resulted, but the Times won another Pulitzer from its work and the practice became much less blatant.
By the end of the year, the two enormous diversion tunnels were completed, as were the two cofferdams. Before the river froze for the winter, water was flowing through the diversion tunnels around the construction site. The riverbed location of the dam was drained of water, and hydraulic excavators went to work removing the overburden from the bedrock in the riverbed.
The winter of 1976-1977 saw the completion of the site clearing, which was accomplished much more quickly than had been anticipated, thanks to the use of the hydraulic excavators. Engineers also overcame the first major problem which had not been accounted for in the construction plans. At no time in the diversion project was any consideration made for ice forming in the diversion tunnels. When the river ice began to break up in spring 1977, it quickly clogged both upstream entrance portals to the diversion tunnels.
Only through steady use of hydraulic excavators to break up the ice was the river kept from rising over the upstream cofferdam and flooding the construction site. Later in the breakup season, both diversion tunnels became completely blocked by ice, again causing the river upstream to rise dangerously. This was a problem with no easy fix, but it had to be done quickly, lest the river flood the construction site.
In the end, one man volunteered to enter the diversion tunnels to place a small bit of mining explosive then, in his words, “run like hell.” The icy water was knee-deep, and there was the danger that at any moment the ice block could let go, sweeping him through the diversion tunnel with the full force of the Yukon River. That didn’t happen, and the charge cleared one tunnel. The only problem was that there were two — so he coolly repeated the feat.
In the summer after the incident, heating elements were added at various points in the tunnel so future blockages could be melted as needed. Gates at the mouth of each tunnel were alternately closed to allow the installation of the elements and other maintenance work needed to repair cracks caused by the winter ice blasting.
This work was largely ignored in favor of another major milestone in the construction process — the pouring of the dam’s first concrete. With the riverbed dry and excavated to the bedrock, the first pour was performed on May 3, 1977. By that date, two sets of parallel cables — eventually there would be four such — had been strung from hilltop to hilltop over the construction site. These parallel cables had a lifting power of over 50 tons, and 20 tons of concrete could be carried in a single load.
The buckets were loaded at the concrete mixing facility on the southern hilltop, then were swung out over the construction site before being lowered to the ground, where their load of concrete was deposited. The entire length of the dam was divided into 62 separate “blocks” into which the concrete was poured. These blocks allowed work to progress at a pace determined by the construction manager of each block. To prevent one block from becoming too much higher than its neighbors — and potentially becoming unstable — work crews were assigned to blocks as needed.
After the concrete was dumped into a block from the suspended bucket, crews on the ground spread and mixed it into the harder stuff already brought down. As in the construction of the Hoover Dam a half-century previous, the concrete was filled with a network of cooling tubes in addition to its steel rebar. The tubes were needed to help the concrete cool or “cure” evenly. Otherwise, the extreme cold temperatures of Rampart Canyon would cause the concrete on the outer layers to harden first, before the inner concrete had even cooled. That would weaken the overall structure and cause cracking.
That concrete pour in May began a process that would continue, unstopped, for the next 17 years. In winter, the work would actually move faster, as the cold temperatures caused the concrete to harden much faster, forcing workers to keep to the schedule of piling wet concrete onto wet concrete. Wet concrete upon already hardened stuff would cause weaknesses in the structure that could cause a potentially fatal collapse. To prevent this from happening, the concrete was treated with a series of chemicals that slowed the curing process.
Despite the great strides the project was making, progress on Rampart Dam was overshadowed by the completion of the trans-Alaska pipeline on May 31, 1977. It had taken less than four years from the signing of the pipeline authorization act by Nixon to have the entire system up and running.
Rampart Dam, by comparison, had been planned as early as 1959 — 18 years before — and ground had been broken in 1974, just six months later than the pipeline. There was some grumbling about the “slow” pace of work on the dam, but in reality, it was slightly ahead of the Corps of Engineers’ construction schedule. Traffic on the Elliott Highway slowed slightly due to the completion of the pipeline, but many more trucks used the highway extension to supply the growing oil drilling operations at Prudhoe Bay, which still required much heavy machinery to operate. Not until the oil bust of the early 1980s did this traffic start to disappear.
In 1978, concrete pouring continued unabated, and the dam’s foundation was completed as the structure began to rise above what once had been the riverbed. The biggest change in the dam’s appearance was the construction of the stilling basin at the foot of the seven blocks that would house the dam’s spillway. In effect looking like an enormous concrete field, the stilling basin is submerged and receives the waterfall that comes through the spillways at periods of high water. Under construction, it looked like nothing more than a patio the size of several football fields. Without the stilling basin, the water cascading down the front of those blocks through the spillway would gradually erode the ground beneath it, potentially harming the foundation of the dam. In addition to preventing erosion, the stilling basin calms the whitewater of the spillway waterfalls before returning to the river’s regular flow.
On the political front, things were far from calm as the Democrats were removed from their entrenched position in the governor’s office. “Red” Boucher was defeated by Republican Jay Hammond, who took office in a state with three Democratic Congressmen.
In 1979, with the concrete structure rising by the week, Rampart Dam again faced a threat to its future. In San Francisco, the Alaska Conservation Foundation, Natural Resources Defense Council, and several other environmental organizations filed suit in the United States District Court for Alaska. Their aim was to halt development of Rampart on the grounds that the dam would cause irreversible harm to the ecology of the region and that due diligence in researching the environmental effects of the dam had not been performed by the Department of the Interior. This research was required by the National Environmental Policy Act, which was passed by Congress in 1977, one of the first fruits of the more liberal Carter administration. Under NEPA, all federally funded projects and projects on federal land are required to draw up an environmental impact statement before work can proceed. The environmental organizations argued that NEPA required the federal government to create an environmental impact statement even though work on the project began before NEPA became law.
During the next nineteen years, the case percolated through the U.S. judicial system. Attempts at obtaining an injunction against continued construction were unsuccessful, and as court arguments continued, so did work on the dam. In 1983, Judge James Martin Fitzgerald of the Alaska District ruled against the lawsuit, saying that the Department of the Interior had used the best information available at the time. The conservation groups appealed the case, and in 1987, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Fitzgerald to review the case again. In 1990, Fitzgerald upheld his decision. Another appeal resulted in another trial four years later. This time, the appeals court turned down the conservationists’ case in its court. Not discouraged, the plaintiffs appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1999, fully five years after the Ninth Circuit’s decision, the Supreme Court decided to hear the case. In the decision Alaska Conservation Foundation v. United States, the court found that the Corps of Engineers used all available information and moved ahead on those grounds, not out of any willful neglect of the facts. Furthermore, attempting to apply ex post facto law violates Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly states that the federal government and state governments are specifically prohibited from passing ex post facto legislation. It based the decision on that section and on Bouie v. City of Columbia, which had a similar result in regard to ex post facto laws in 1964. Alaska Conservation Foundation v. United States has since been cited in Rogers v. Tennessee and Stogner v. California, cases in which ex post facto registration of sex offenders was ruled unconstitutional.
The buckets were loaded at the concrete mixing facility on the southern hilltop, then were swung out over the construction site before being lowered to the ground, where their load of concrete was deposited. The entire length of the dam was divided into 62 separate “blocks” into which the concrete was poured. These blocks allowed work to progress at a pace determined by the construction manager of each block. To prevent one block from becoming too much higher than its neighbors — and potentially becoming unstable — work crews were assigned to blocks as needed.
After the concrete was dumped into a block from the suspended bucket, crews on the ground spread and mixed it into the harder stuff already brought down. As in the construction of the Hoover Dam a half-century previous, the concrete was filled with a network of cooling tubes in addition to its steel rebar. The tubes were needed to help the concrete cool or “cure” evenly. Otherwise, the extreme cold temperatures of Rampart Canyon would cause the concrete on the outer layers to harden first, before the inner concrete had even cooled. That would weaken the overall structure and cause cracking.
That concrete pour in May began a process that would continue, unstopped, for the next 17 years. In winter, the work would actually move faster, as the cold temperatures caused the concrete to harden much faster, forcing workers to keep to the schedule of piling wet concrete onto wet concrete. Wet concrete upon already hardened stuff would cause weaknesses in the structure that could cause a potentially fatal collapse. To prevent this from happening, the concrete was treated with a series of chemicals that slowed the curing process.
Despite the great strides the project was making, progress on Rampart Dam was overshadowed by the completion of the trans-Alaska pipeline on May 31, 1977. It had taken less than four years from the signing of the pipeline authorization act by Nixon to have the entire system up and running.
Rampart Dam, by comparison, had been planned as early as 1959 — 18 years before — and ground had been broken in 1974, just six months later than the pipeline. There was some grumbling about the “slow” pace of work on the dam, but in reality, it was slightly ahead of the Corps of Engineers’ construction schedule. Traffic on the Elliott Highway slowed slightly due to the completion of the pipeline, but many more trucks used the highway extension to supply the growing oil drilling operations at Prudhoe Bay, which still required much heavy machinery to operate. Not until the oil bust of the early 1980s did this traffic start to disappear.
In 1978, concrete pouring continued unabated, and the dam’s foundation was completed as the structure began to rise above what once had been the riverbed. The biggest change in the dam’s appearance was the construction of the stilling basin at the foot of the seven blocks that would house the dam’s spillway. In effect looking like an enormous concrete field, the stilling basin is submerged and receives the waterfall that comes through the spillways at periods of high water. Under construction, it looked like nothing more than a patio the size of several football fields. Without the stilling basin, the water cascading down the front of those blocks through the spillway would gradually erode the ground beneath it, potentially harming the foundation of the dam. In addition to preventing erosion, the stilling basin calms the whitewater of the spillway waterfalls before returning to the river’s regular flow.
On the political front, things were far from calm as the Democrats were removed from their entrenched position in the governor’s office. “Red” Boucher was defeated by Republican Jay Hammond, who took office in a state with three Democratic Congressmen.
In 1979, with the concrete structure rising by the week, Rampart Dam again faced a threat to its future. In San Francisco, the Alaska Conservation Foundation, Natural Resources Defense Council, and several other environmental organizations filed suit in the United States District Court for Alaska. Their aim was to halt development of Rampart on the grounds that the dam would cause irreversible harm to the ecology of the region and that due diligence in researching the environmental effects of the dam had not been performed by the Department of the Interior. This research was required by the National Environmental Policy Act, which was passed by Congress in 1977, one of the first fruits of the more liberal Carter administration. Under NEPA, all federally funded projects and projects on federal land are required to draw up an environmental impact statement before work can proceed. The environmental organizations argued that NEPA required the federal government to create an environmental impact statement even though work on the project began before NEPA became law.
During the next nineteen years, the case percolated through the U.S. judicial system. Attempts at obtaining an injunction against continued construction were unsuccessful, and as court arguments continued, so did work on the dam. In 1983, Judge James Martin Fitzgerald of the Alaska District ruled against the lawsuit, saying that the Department of the Interior had used the best information available at the time. The conservation groups appealed the case, and in 1987, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Fitzgerald to review the case again. In 1990, Fitzgerald upheld his decision. Another appeal resulted in another trial four years later. This time, the appeals court turned down the conservationists’ case in its court. Not discouraged, the plaintiffs appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1999, fully five years after the Ninth Circuit’s decision, the Supreme Court decided to hear the case. In the decision Alaska Conservation Foundation v. United States, the court found that the Corps of Engineers used all available information and moved ahead on those grounds, not out of any willful neglect of the facts. Furthermore, attempting to apply ex post facto law violates Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly states that the federal government and state governments are specifically prohibited from passing ex post facto legislation. It based the decision on that section and on Bouie v. City of Columbia, which had a similar result in regard to ex post facto laws in 1964. Alaska Conservation Foundation v. United States has since been cited in Rogers v. Tennessee and Stogner v. California, cases in which ex post facto registration of sex offenders was ruled unconstitutional.
The lawsuit had little effect on the construction ongoing in central Alaska, despite its high-profile course. Although workers kept an eye on the proceedings, which lasted well after the completion of the dam, they were not directly affected. Nevertheless, tragedy still afflicted the dam project
On May 12, 1980, a particularly harsh Yukon breakup sent piles of ice floating downstream. Although ice removal techniques at the diversion tunnels were well practiced, no such techniques had been used at the upstream cofferdam, where the enormous frozen fragments piled up every year, pushed onto the gravel by the river’s flow. That year, ice piled up to a height estimated to be nearly half again as tall as the cofferdam. The piled ice shifted, and a chunk the size of a tractor-trailer plunged to the ground inside the cofferdam, killing three workers: Tim Arnold, Evon Noble, and Rexford Isaac. Their deaths weren’t the first fatal accidents at the site — two workers had been killed in separate incidents in the freight yard — but they were by far the most spectacular to that point. Work slowed as hydraulic drills were hastily taken out of storage and employed to carve the ice piled up on the cofferdam, just as was being done at the mouths of the diversion tunnels. As bad as the three men’s deaths were, it would have been far worse had the ice cracked the cofferdam. The resulting inundation would have obliterated all the work done to that point, potentially dealing a deathblow to the project. Cranes were diverted from construction work to lift the biggest chunks of ice over the dam site and into the downstream portion of the river.
After the reservoir had filled to a certain extent, ice buildup at the dam was no longer a major concern due to a lack of current at the dam. Today, breakup typically is a calm event on Lake Kennedy and follows a similar pattern to breakup on ponds and lakes across North America. Where rivers flow into the lake and both downstream and upstream of the lake, it still retains much of its ferocity, however. In spring 2009, the town of Eagle was virtually destroyed by an ice dam that forced chunks of ice and flood water over the riverbank and into the town.
The accident that killed Arnold, Noble, and Isaac wasn’t the last fatal incident during construction of Rampart Dam. If you include accidents involving trucks bound for Rampart and accidents in the freight yards and Rampart village, a total of 33 people were killed during its construction. At the site itself, only 11 people were killed. There were hundreds of injuries ranging from smashed fingers to amputated limbs and frostbite. These injuries stemmed from the extreme conditions present at the site and the simple size of the project — more than 20,000 people worked on the dam when construction reached its height in 1986 — and although the absolute number of accidents was high, in terms of the percentage of people who worked on the project, it was very small. Weather was a constant threat, mainly from the extreme cold during six months of the year. The cold did provide some opportunities, however. No fewer than 17 studies of frostbite and cold-related injuries were performed by students and medical teams during the project, and several pioneering advances were made in cold-injury treatment.
After the disasters and near-disasters of the spring, summer 1980 on the construction site went smoothly. The first dam turbines arrived via barge and were unloaded on the riverbank, ahead of the planned beginnings of the southern powerhouse that summer. Their location on the riverbank later proved to be a problem, as their enormous weight caused them to sink into the sand and mud of the bank. Several excavators were required to dig around the turbines before cableway cranes working in tandem jerked them free.
With the dam 40 feet above what had been the riverbed, work began on the southern powerhouse. To understand this, you must understand the layout of Rampart’s two powerhouses. Imagine a capital letter L. Now reverse the letter and lay it on its side, so the short side is pointing vertically and the long side is horizontal, at the top of the short side. The short side is the southern Rampart powerhouse, which is directly across the riverbed. The northern, long powerhouse is where the northern riverbank used to be, but work on it did not begin for some years after 1980.
In that year, all attention was focused on preparing the southern powerhouse. Located just to the north of the stilling basin and stretching to where the new riverbank would eventually be — it would become a concrete wall, part of the foundation for the northern powerhouse — it houses nine turbines and various equipment and maintenance bays. In 1980, none of this equipment was in place. Where the turbines were to be installed, there were only enormous holes in the concrete. In places where construction was moving slower, there was not even that. But by the end of the season, the foundations for the powerhouse were well on their way to completion.
The 1980 election brought a Republican shift in Alaska politics, mirroring the national trend. The state voted for Ronald Reagan in the presidential election — the first time since statehood that Alaska went for a Republican — and Republican Frank Murkowski was elected to the U.S. Senate, joining Democrat Wendell P. Kay, whose Senate tenure had begun with the 1968 election.
In 1981, work continued on all fronts — and one new one. Because of the enormous size of Lake Kennedy, engineers wanted to close off the diversion tunnels as soon as possible to begin filling the reservoir. Even uncompleted, Rampart Dam was tall enough to hold back the rising water — as long as construction kept well ahead of the reservoir’s growth.
The only problem with this plan was that a regular supply of water was needed to keep the Yukon flowing downstream. If the diversion tunnels were closed and the entire river devoted to filling the reservoir, the Yukon would run dry downstream of the dam, destroying river commerce and the critical fish populations of the region. To avoid this, engineers planned two temporary sluices through the spillway blocks of the dam. In effect, these are enormous concrete holes in the dam, through which the rising water could “leak,” allowing river water to continue downstream even as the reservoir rose.
The first set of sluices was located below the level of the southern powerhouse, and they emptied into the stilling basin. Gates and valves were installed to control the flow of water, and taking into account the lessons learned from the diversion tunnels, heating elements were installed to prevent ice buildup. As the reservoir and dam rose to completion, the lowest sluice would be closed by gates and plugged with concrete. The second sluice would then be activated and plugged in turn as required.
On May 12, 1980, a particularly harsh Yukon breakup sent piles of ice floating downstream. Although ice removal techniques at the diversion tunnels were well practiced, no such techniques had been used at the upstream cofferdam, where the enormous frozen fragments piled up every year, pushed onto the gravel by the river’s flow. That year, ice piled up to a height estimated to be nearly half again as tall as the cofferdam. The piled ice shifted, and a chunk the size of a tractor-trailer plunged to the ground inside the cofferdam, killing three workers: Tim Arnold, Evon Noble, and Rexford Isaac. Their deaths weren’t the first fatal accidents at the site — two workers had been killed in separate incidents in the freight yard — but they were by far the most spectacular to that point. Work slowed as hydraulic drills were hastily taken out of storage and employed to carve the ice piled up on the cofferdam, just as was being done at the mouths of the diversion tunnels. As bad as the three men’s deaths were, it would have been far worse had the ice cracked the cofferdam. The resulting inundation would have obliterated all the work done to that point, potentially dealing a deathblow to the project. Cranes were diverted from construction work to lift the biggest chunks of ice over the dam site and into the downstream portion of the river.
After the reservoir had filled to a certain extent, ice buildup at the dam was no longer a major concern due to a lack of current at the dam. Today, breakup typically is a calm event on Lake Kennedy and follows a similar pattern to breakup on ponds and lakes across North America. Where rivers flow into the lake and both downstream and upstream of the lake, it still retains much of its ferocity, however. In spring 2009, the town of Eagle was virtually destroyed by an ice dam that forced chunks of ice and flood water over the riverbank and into the town.
The accident that killed Arnold, Noble, and Isaac wasn’t the last fatal incident during construction of Rampart Dam. If you include accidents involving trucks bound for Rampart and accidents in the freight yards and Rampart village, a total of 33 people were killed during its construction. At the site itself, only 11 people were killed. There were hundreds of injuries ranging from smashed fingers to amputated limbs and frostbite. These injuries stemmed from the extreme conditions present at the site and the simple size of the project — more than 20,000 people worked on the dam when construction reached its height in 1986 — and although the absolute number of accidents was high, in terms of the percentage of people who worked on the project, it was very small. Weather was a constant threat, mainly from the extreme cold during six months of the year. The cold did provide some opportunities, however. No fewer than 17 studies of frostbite and cold-related injuries were performed by students and medical teams during the project, and several pioneering advances were made in cold-injury treatment.
After the disasters and near-disasters of the spring, summer 1980 on the construction site went smoothly. The first dam turbines arrived via barge and were unloaded on the riverbank, ahead of the planned beginnings of the southern powerhouse that summer. Their location on the riverbank later proved to be a problem, as their enormous weight caused them to sink into the sand and mud of the bank. Several excavators were required to dig around the turbines before cableway cranes working in tandem jerked them free.
With the dam 40 feet above what had been the riverbed, work began on the southern powerhouse. To understand this, you must understand the layout of Rampart’s two powerhouses. Imagine a capital letter L. Now reverse the letter and lay it on its side, so the short side is pointing vertically and the long side is horizontal, at the top of the short side. The short side is the southern Rampart powerhouse, which is directly across the riverbed. The northern, long powerhouse is where the northern riverbank used to be, but work on it did not begin for some years after 1980.
In that year, all attention was focused on preparing the southern powerhouse. Located just to the north of the stilling basin and stretching to where the new riverbank would eventually be — it would become a concrete wall, part of the foundation for the northern powerhouse — it houses nine turbines and various equipment and maintenance bays. In 1980, none of this equipment was in place. Where the turbines were to be installed, there were only enormous holes in the concrete. In places where construction was moving slower, there was not even that. But by the end of the season, the foundations for the powerhouse were well on their way to completion.
The 1980 election brought a Republican shift in Alaska politics, mirroring the national trend. The state voted for Ronald Reagan in the presidential election — the first time since statehood that Alaska went for a Republican — and Republican Frank Murkowski was elected to the U.S. Senate, joining Democrat Wendell P. Kay, whose Senate tenure had begun with the 1968 election.
In 1981, work continued on all fronts — and one new one. Because of the enormous size of Lake Kennedy, engineers wanted to close off the diversion tunnels as soon as possible to begin filling the reservoir. Even uncompleted, Rampart Dam was tall enough to hold back the rising water — as long as construction kept well ahead of the reservoir’s growth.
The only problem with this plan was that a regular supply of water was needed to keep the Yukon flowing downstream. If the diversion tunnels were closed and the entire river devoted to filling the reservoir, the Yukon would run dry downstream of the dam, destroying river commerce and the critical fish populations of the region. To avoid this, engineers planned two temporary sluices through the spillway blocks of the dam. In effect, these are enormous concrete holes in the dam, through which the rising water could “leak,” allowing river water to continue downstream even as the reservoir rose.
The first set of sluices was located below the level of the southern powerhouse, and they emptied into the stilling basin. Gates and valves were installed to control the flow of water, and taking into account the lessons learned from the diversion tunnels, heating elements were installed to prevent ice buildup. As the reservoir and dam rose to completion, the lowest sluice would be closed by gates and plugged with concrete. The second sluice would then be activated and plugged in turn as required.
But before the sluices could be opened, the diversion tunnels had to be closed and the temporary cofferdams had to be removed. All through the winter of 1981-1982, the finishing touches were put on the dam’s lowest levels. By May, the bottom 100 feet of dam and foundations were as complete as they could be. After spring breakup, the ground-level portions of the construction site were evacuated, then flooded to river level. The cableway cranes were put into a reverse — for them — role, pulling material from the cofferdams and returning it to Rampart village to be incorporated in dam cement in a form of recycling. When the cofferdams were eroded enough, the river poured through — at first a little, then in greater and greater torrents. There was not dynamiting, but the final moments went as quickly as if it had been. The flowing river water mixed with the flooded construction site, and the dam stood as solid as if it were a part of the river. The thousands of workers and spectators who had gathered to see the event let out mixed sighs and cheers as the dam stood unperturbed by the ceremony.
The lowest sluices were then opened by men deep in the concrete heart of the dam who moved controls to raise the seven enormous steel gates that controlled them. Imperceptibly, upstream water mixed with downstream water, flowing through the dam. After two days of anticlimactic verification and testing, the diversion tunnels were shuttered for good. Rampart Dam now controlled the entire flow of the Yukon River, and Lake Kennedy was being formed. As the water rose, so did the dam — work stopped only briefly as the workers noted the circumstance.
With ground-level access closed, all materials for work on the dam now had to come via the suspended cable cranes above. Their enormous strength allowed trucks, trailers, and any imaginable piece of equipment to be lifted and lowered to the construction site atop the rising dam.
Each year, the level of Lake Kennedy rose by just over 24 feet. The water backed up further and further up the river, inundating the stubs of trees harvested by sawmills, barren rocks, and a few scattered log buildings left behind by those evacuated by the government. Not until late 1999, one year ahead of schedule, did Lake Kennedy reach its full capacity. But to those working on the dam, the pace of filling seemed interminable and quite easy to beat with the pace of construction. To the managers and those in charge of the project, however, the rising water was a cause for ulcers and heartburn. In their nightmares, they envisioned delay upon delay impacting the project until the day when the rising water would outpace construction, overtop the dam, and destroy everything.
Of course, such a circumstance could never happen. Even in the worst-case scenario, where work was halted for a lengthy period of time, it would take more than six years for the water to make up ground on the lead the construction workers had. The diversion tunnels also could be reopened as needed, but the likelihood of that being needed was so small as to be nonexistent.
Instead of the catastrophic problems feared by the managers, what they actually had to deal with were the mundane issues faced by any construction project: labor difficulties, supply issues, and political entanglements. Despite these, workers managed to keep the dam rising by an average of 25 feet per year across its entire length until completion. The pace at the beginning was much slower than this, because the dam tapers as it nears its top. Much more cement had to be laid in lower sections than higher ones.
In 1984, Alaska Sen. Wendell P. Kay announced his intention to not run for another term as one of Alaska’s two U.S. Senators because of his declining health. He died two years later, of a heart attack at age 72. His announcement opened the door for a wide range of candidates on both the Democratic and Republican tickets. The ultimate winner was Republican Gov. Jay Hammond, who had won re-election to that office in 1982. Replacing Hammond as governor was his lieutenant governor, Terry Miller, who filled the remaining two years of Hammond’s term.
The lowest sluices were then opened by men deep in the concrete heart of the dam who moved controls to raise the seven enormous steel gates that controlled them. Imperceptibly, upstream water mixed with downstream water, flowing through the dam. After two days of anticlimactic verification and testing, the diversion tunnels were shuttered for good. Rampart Dam now controlled the entire flow of the Yukon River, and Lake Kennedy was being formed. As the water rose, so did the dam — work stopped only briefly as the workers noted the circumstance.
With ground-level access closed, all materials for work on the dam now had to come via the suspended cable cranes above. Their enormous strength allowed trucks, trailers, and any imaginable piece of equipment to be lifted and lowered to the construction site atop the rising dam.
Each year, the level of Lake Kennedy rose by just over 24 feet. The water backed up further and further up the river, inundating the stubs of trees harvested by sawmills, barren rocks, and a few scattered log buildings left behind by those evacuated by the government. Not until late 1999, one year ahead of schedule, did Lake Kennedy reach its full capacity. But to those working on the dam, the pace of filling seemed interminable and quite easy to beat with the pace of construction. To the managers and those in charge of the project, however, the rising water was a cause for ulcers and heartburn. In their nightmares, they envisioned delay upon delay impacting the project until the day when the rising water would outpace construction, overtop the dam, and destroy everything.
Of course, such a circumstance could never happen. Even in the worst-case scenario, where work was halted for a lengthy period of time, it would take more than six years for the water to make up ground on the lead the construction workers had. The diversion tunnels also could be reopened as needed, but the likelihood of that being needed was so small as to be nonexistent.
Instead of the catastrophic problems feared by the managers, what they actually had to deal with were the mundane issues faced by any construction project: labor difficulties, supply issues, and political entanglements. Despite these, workers managed to keep the dam rising by an average of 25 feet per year across its entire length until completion. The pace at the beginning was much slower than this, because the dam tapers as it nears its top. Much more cement had to be laid in lower sections than higher ones.
In 1984, Alaska Sen. Wendell P. Kay announced his intention to not run for another term as one of Alaska’s two U.S. Senators because of his declining health. He died two years later, of a heart attack at age 72. His announcement opened the door for a wide range of candidates on both the Democratic and Republican tickets. The ultimate winner was Republican Gov. Jay Hammond, who had won re-election to that office in 1982. Replacing Hammond as governor was his lieutenant governor, Terry Miller, who filled the remaining two years of Hammond’s term.