OCR Text |
Show f - Mil? 1- ' - - r-- . tKll',V I .... .. : j ? 1 f ; -j ; ? : ii n r !: if r . : . ' ' ' " . t ' - J ; y Geri Taylor To look at the "G" mountain, moun-tain, one could hardly imagine imag-ine its pristine beauty being marred by a tramway and pipeline, but harnessing water wa-ter was the main concern in 1905. Enterprising men realized real-ized a great amount of power could be generated from the output of the Battle Creek and Blue Creek Springs at the foot of Timpanogos and so the Battle Creek Power plant was begun. Robert Fairbanks, brother broth-er of movie star Douglas Fairbanks, supervised the project for the Telluride Power Company that had built the Nunn's Power Plant in Provo canyon. He later left the company to become a Fox Studio executive in Hollywood. Hol-lywood. To move the transformer and generator to the plant site required two steam engines and 20 horses. According to Sam Hilton, who lived at and operated the plant from 1932 to 1957, about 60 feet of track would be laid and the steam engines and horses j would haul the equipment to the end. The tracks would then be disassembled, moved "Power" continued on page 5 "Power" continued from page 1 to where they had ended and continued on up the hill. This process was repeated until the 1200 feet had been , traversed. The plant, pipeline, reservoir res-ervoir and penstock was finished fin-ished by 1907 and as Eva Warburton Proctor noted in her history, Pleasant Grove now had their own Greek Temple and a beacon on the hill. It is unknown why the plant had the Greek-style columns, col-umns, but it certainly added charm to the otherwise conspicuous con-spicuous building. At the time of construction, construc-tion, steel manufacturers in America were unable to supply sup-ply Telluride with the need-' ed pipe and so a specially constructed steel pipe was shipped from Germany to Galveston, Texas, then by rail to Utah. The five foot circumference circumfer-ence feeder pipe connecting Battle Creek Spring to the reservoir res-ervoir was made of wooden tongue and groove slats held together with steel rings placed short distances apart. After the plant was in use, Ed Warburton could be seen walking along the pipe with his bag of oakum fiber used to mend the leaks. The wooden pipeline brought water from Blue Creek and Battle Creek Springs to the reservoir behind Little Mountain, then the steel penstock pen-stock pipe conducted the water downhill to the hydroelectric plant. The pipeline wound two and one-half miles around the hills and "hollers" between the top of the mountain to Blue Creek and one mile to Battle Creek then into the block-long 75 foot deep reservoir. Five weir boxes were built, one on each spring and three at the top of the mountain to facilitate facili-tate measuring the flow of water. wa-ter. The boxes were built of one and one-half inch planks, measured ten feet high and six feet across and were reinforced rein-forced with steel bolts. Warburton War-burton would measure the water wa-ter each day so each box would hold the same amount at both springs. Beginning in 1907, Warburton War-burton regulated the water levels and amount of water go ing down the penstock manually. manu-ally. During the Spring, runoff and snow slides could cause a great deal of damage and so the boxes were watched especially espe-cially close during these times. He would also check the reservoir during the winter months and fix any problems or leaks. His full-time caretaker care-taker job ended in 1917 when an automatic float device was perfected. Nunn sold his Telluride Power Company in 1912 to the newly formed Utah Power and Light which operated the plant until its closure in 1957. An era had ended and within several years the landmark had been demolished, leaving only a memory for the history books. r i , " ,.; V . i " : . ' ' ' ( - ' ' - 1 , ... -. , ' ' ; .-V; S .' . ' . |