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Show MAMMOTH RESERVOIR DAM GIVES AWAY CAUSING GREAT DAMAGE LOSSES WILL TOTAL OVER TWOlLLIONj Releasing a vast quantity of water which rushed with irresistible force through miles of intervening canyons to the mining camps and agricultural' eos; ions of Carbon county where it' destroye d property valued at ham-: diesis or thousands of dollars and took as a human toll at least one life, the Mammoth reservoir, located at lie inver end of the Gooseberry basin and ebout twelve miles northeast, north-east, of Fairview, gave way Monday ,r... nt 7 o'clock. In about twenty twen-ty hours the reservoir was an empty v. .. . I ' :v'een hours previous to the! finnl break of the dam a force of men had labored with all possible haste and vigor in an effort to repair the hick, or, failing in that, to keep the water under control to such an extent ex-tent as to minimize the damage in the valleys below. The leak which finally final-ly enlarged until the dam as a whole went out, was discovered about 3 o'clock Sunday afternoon by C. M. Chrifte; sen of Fairview, for years watchman at. the dam. Mr. Christen, sen Ind noted with much uneasiness the rfe"dy increase of the water in the re" ervoir, due to the rapidly mel'ii-r snow on the surrounding hills pouring thousands of gallons into it hourly, hut he was powerless to control it. He cculd only wait and wptih and hope. When discove.'e, water was pouring pour-ing over the embankment on the north end in a stream which was Increasing In-creasing in size rapidly. A portion of the cement core had given way and , the dirt of the dam had become so thoroughly saturated with water that it was a dead weight against the core .instead of a support to it as was intended. in-tended. An urgent call for men was made by telephone and within an hour Fairview and other towns of North Sanpete had started a score or more post haste to the scene. Dirt and trees and other obstacles were rushed to the scene and thrown into ' the opening and all night long the willing workers did their utmost, but nothing was accomplished the rush, ing water in ever increasing torrents , cut and tore at the weakened strue-1 strue-1 ture aintil, inch by inch, foot by foot. - and yard by yard, it gave way and finally with a mighty rush the long-impounded long-impounded millions of tons of water pushed the entire center of the dam out and started on a journey of mad destruction through the box canyons of Gooseberry and Fish creeks into Pleasant and Price river valleys. In the meantime settlers of Scho-H Scho-H field, Helper, Castle Gate and Colton ' were warned of the approach of impending im-pending torrents and fled to points of safety in time to avoid the danger. ""' Property, however, could not be moved mov-ed and damages, according to the somewhat incomplete reports sent out, due to the flood will amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Farms, totaling many thousands of acres, were inundated and their splendid crops of hay, grain, fruit and vegetables were destroyed. Fifty Fif-ty miles of wagon road were ruined, including bridges, grades, fills and 'culverts. Telephone and telegraph lines throughout the flooded district were destroyed. Railroad trackage, including several large steel bridges, was swept away by the might of the torrents, the mileage being variously estimated at from ten to thirty miles, a portion of it being main line tracks, the balance being the Schofield ill' branch. The damage as a whole has been , variously estimated at from $1,000,-000 $1,000,-000 to $2,000,000. If the cost of construction con-struction of the old dam and probabld cost of a new one to replace it are included the latter figure is probably the nearer. By far the biggest sufferer from the flood Is the Denver & Rio Grande railroad, whose damage, It is conservatively conserv-atively estimated, will exceed half a i.j-aiillion dollars. The Utah Fuel corns' corn-s' pany's damages in the vicinity of Cas. j:le Gate probably will reach $50,000. tU'3tato highways and bridges swept iway can not be replaced for less ,han $25,000, and the damages suf-. suf-. ered by farmers and others, it is be-ieved, be-ieved, will aggregate fully $150,000. Parts of the towns of both Castle S), ate and Helper were swept away I'hen the river practically abandoned he old bed through each town and ut a new channel nearly 2 00 feet 'ide and from ten to twenty feet eep. Only heroic methods and the ree us of giant powder and dynamite .fii removing debris and other ob-jjjy'tructions ob-jjjy'tructions saved a much heavier loss 1 each town. In Castle Gate alone tie damage to property, including sat of the railroad and fuel coin-any, coin-any, will bo in the neighborhood of 150,000. The losses at Helper were rincipally dwellings and probably ill not exceed $20,000. At Castle Gate the railroad depot j? id all company buildings, eight sellings and the barber shop near the depot were washed away. The Castle Gate hotel escaped by a narrow nar-row margin, losing the front porch and collecting instead two feet of mud in the rooms of the ground floor when the waters receded. At Carbon, about midway between Castle Gate and Helper, three dwellings dwell-ings were washed away, and Helper contributed a total of five, with two more hanging over the bank of the stream ready to go with just a little more encouragement. One of the most serious phases of the entire situation is that of the State's coal supply. With a serious shortage already at hand and a complete com-plete tieup of the mines for a month or more a certainty, the damage and inconvenience bound to follow will be far-reaching and serious in the extreme. ex-treme. The Denver & Rio Grande railroad rail-road will be unable to operate through trains, either freight or passenger pas-senger for three or four weeks, and it will be longer before the branch to the Schofield district is in operation. A representative of the Pyramid visited the dam Tuesday, climbing climb-ing over the mountain in the Pyramid car. The scene there beggars description. Above the dam a vast basin of desolate, m-.id-enerusted waste, with a mountain moun-tain stream winding through it, here and there centering in a small pond near the dam. held there by what re- ' mains at the point of the break of the once massive structure, a few boulders resting on bedrock. Below . the dam a rhannej two hundred yards wide and fifty feet in depth wild, rough, torn, strewn with enormous : boulders, with a bedrock bottom, winding down the deep box canyons as far as the eye can follow, telling ' as no words can tell, the story of the awful destructive force and power pow-er of the mighty torrent it controlled for the twenty hours-beginning Monday Mon-day morning. Of the dam itself, one-third one-third remains, a seamed, crumbling mass of dirt and stone. The other two-thirds is the breaK. Bedrock at the bottom and bedrock up the mountain side almost to the top. Ev. ery particle of dirt having been washed wash-ed away by the torrents which poured pour-ed through. Enormous boulders were left here, also, with a few huge sections of the cement core scattered about on the floor of the dam. Fifty yards above the dam stands the valve tower, rising a hundred feet in the lir, the only source of escape from he disaster which overtook the dam mute but Irrefutable evidence of he inadequate means provided in the beginning to meet just such an emergency emer-gency as occurred. Portions of the cement core of the dam tower into he air in broken sections, these also howing faulty construction lack of strength and power of resistance igainst the seepage of the water. The future of the reservoir is problematical. prob-lematical. The great system of canals, can-als, laterals and ditches and the 20,-000 20,-000 acres of land in Price Valley of value only because of the reservoir and the water it annually conserved, demand its reconstruction. Rumor is that officials of the company favor its reconstruction. The company is now heavily involved with the plant itself as security. Tile rumor that the dam had been Mown up by German sympathizers and that other depredations of like character were contemplated, which was current early in the wepk, is incorrect. in-correct. A surplusage of water which caused an overflow and a poor, ly constructed flam were the causes of the disaster. One death at least was doie to the breaking of the dam. Miss Hattie Peacock of Orangeville, cousin of Charles Peacock of Fairview. Miss Peacock was drowned near Price early ear-ly Tuesday morning, when the automobile auto-mobile in which she and her brother, Warren Peacock, and Mr. and Mrs. Earl King of Price were riding, went, into the river. The party had been watching the rising water since Monday Mon-day evening, and in starting home shortly after midnight the clutch on the car failed to operate properly and the machine backed into the stream. At that point, close to the shore, the stream was not deep and all four members of the party sprang from the car. The current caught the car and swung it against Miss Peacock, Pea-cock, throwing her into deeper water and she was swept away. The screams of Miss Peacock as she was plunged into the muddy and raging torrent were beard by many persons on the shore, but no one was able to give aid. The two men of the party could not swim, and so quickly quick-ly was she carried down the stream that others near by were unable to act. The town fire alarm at Trice was sceiinded and . practically the whole town turned out. Thp stream was patrolled from Price to Wellington before daylight, but. no trace of the hodv was found. The business houses of Price were closed all day Tuesday end the search was continued without with-out avail until about 3 o'clock, when the body was recovered half a mile below Price by Byron Peacock, a cousin cou-sin of the dead girl, and Scout Olson. The body has been brought to Price, but funeral arrangements have not been completed. Miss Peacock was 71 years of age and was employed by tbe J. C. Feupey company at Price. |