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Show MODERN CITY AT BOULDER DAL! SITE Plans Drawn for City to House Workmen Who Will Construct Con-struct Hugh River Project WASHINGTON, D. C. Plans are being drawn in the department of the interior for a town as yet unnamed un-named which is to be brought into being on the brink of the Colorado river, for the housing of the workmen work-men who will construct Boulder dam, and of their families and the normal population necessary to their comfortable existence. Secretary Wilbur and Elwood Mead, commission of reclamation, selected the site for this town when they visited the Colorado river riv-er early in the summer. It is on the Nevada side of the river on the nearest level land a little more than a mile from the dam site. They have often conferred on the plans since that time and experts are working on details intended for making mak-ing a model community. As the visitor of today, driving from Las Vegas to Black Canyon, approaches the Colorado river, his road winds down a canyon which opens out fan-like in a gravel-strewn gravel-strewn valley. The view from this canyon looks down on a panorama of the Colorado river, looking up stream, with huge black cliffs rising ris-ing perpendicularly from the water and a chaos of bare rock mountains moun-tains stretching away for a hundred hun-dred miles In the background. It is a scene of such grandeur as Is rarely presented. .The construction town for the dam will be located at the point where this canyon widens out and affords a favorable setting. The dam itself will be a mile away over a chaos of broken hills. The bottom of the canyon where the work must begin and where the greater part of it must be done will be at a level 1600 feet below the rim and the town. Into the bottom of the great canyon there will go every day a thousand men who will emerge again when their work is done and return to the town. The task of lowering these men into the canyon and bringing them out again presents in itself a bit of spectacular engineering. It will be accomplished through the installation in-stallation of huge elevators which will lift their passengers a perpendicular perpen-dicular 1000 feet which is practically practi-cally twice as great a lift as that which carries passengers to the top floors of our tallest skyscrapers. Water for the proposed town will need to be pumped from the Colorado Colo-rado river. Refrigerations will be provided. The town itself will be located on government land. The government will retain ownership of the land and lease it to those who live on it or use it for commercial purposes. One of the features of these leases will be that they will continue only under the period of good behavior of the tenant. It is the intention of the government that the bootlegger or other law violator shall not interfere with the well-being of its workmen while assigned as-signed to this huge task. The power pow-er to terminate leases, and therefore residence, in this town will be used as one of ' the means of enforcing proper conduct The construction of the great works at Black canyon will require a period of eight years. Something like a thousand workmen will be constantly employed. With their families and those who are drawn to the damsite by the general activity, ac-tivity, it is estimated that this town will have a population of some 4000 people. It should be borne in mind, however, that there is no employment employ-ment at present nor will there be for perhaps another year. The proposed town is being planned plan-ned as a permanent community and is expected to live even after the construction period has passed. When the reservoir is full the water will come up the valley almost to the town and the great lake will stretch away for many miles through a region re-gion of rare scenic beauty. The region re-gion is one of admirable healthful-ness healthful-ness and it is thought that a ' popular popu-lar resort may here grow up when the reservoir has been so developed as to provide its incidental attractions. |