i handed you my secrets, my past, my life. I trusted you with them; i loved you. You promised you'd lock them up, and swallow the key; no one will would ever find them.

 

Somehow the lock came undone, and my secret came out. They floated into everyones home, and they were no longer secrets. I trusted you, and in the end, you lied. Now, my secrets are out and imbedded onto my skin for everyone to read-- all because of you.

 

1. i want to start selling my photos, but i'm not sure how. Anyone know?

2. I want a penpal. One the likes to take photos especially so we can send each other disposable cameras, fill them up, and then send them back.

3. i like guys with a 5 o' clock shadow.

4. i don't like meat, chips, salt, or soda. i'm a fan of the sweets.

5. I like chocolate milk a lot.

6. I wonder if anyone is jealous of my photography; probably not. But, honestly, i'm very jealous of other flickr members photography skills. i want to be as good as them.

7. not to brag or anything, but i'm a pretty awesome new driver.

8. i think i've turned into a big flirt recently. I never use to be, but my sister told me i should lay off a bit.

9. i noticed that i don't have a style for photography. it's all over the place.

10. So i typed all these ten facts out and once i was done i accidently clicked "cancel". All my facts were lost. I was able to think of 7 but the last three, including this one, were new. I was very upset.

I'm posting this shot as a celebration of the fact that we found out we're having a little girl! This is our first baby, and we're beyond excited. And for those of you who have offered thoughts and prayers concerning my husband's lay-off last month . . . thank you! He found a fantastic job!

 

Much better large: 'I'm so close . . .' On Black

 

Interestingness - Top 100 (March 23, 2007 #54)

 

To reach this half-alive heart

He had to touch my eyes

To show me truth that's real to me

'Cause it speaks of all I've left behind

Coming alive is harder than anything I've tried

And fear, don't reach for me now

'Cause I'm so close, so close . . .

-- Jill Paquette

A slide scan from my collection of CF-GCV. At the time of photo it was operated by Pacific Western Airlines doing fire control in the Smithers area. The Otter has an amazing and lengthy history as written by Otter historian Karl E Hayes of Ireland.

 

The second Otter built, CF-GCV, made its first flight from Downsview on 2nd May 1952 and joined

the prototype in the flight test programme, flying as CF-GCV-X. It was used by DHC to certify the

Otter as a float plane. Like the prototype, it had been constructed with a pointed vertical fin, which

caused stability problems and in September 1952 the fins on both these Otters were changed to

what became the standard production fin, allowing the Otter to achieve commercial certification in

November 1952.

In July 1952, GCV piloted by Russ Bannock, DHC's Sales Director, was flown to Goose Bay,

Labrador where it was demonstrated to some of the RCAF's “top brass” and was undoubtedly

instrumental in the RCAF's order for Otters. After the DHC-3 achieved commercial certification in

November '52, GCV continued in use from Downsview as a demonstrator. In August '53 Russ

Bannock flew GCV to St.John's, Newfoundland to demonstrate it to Eastern Provincial Airways (EPA)

and so impressed were they that they bought the Otter. GCV's first task with EPA was on a Canadian

Marconi contract flying out of Goose Bay until the end of October '53. On one occasion, it broke

loose in a gale, damaging the tail. Parts were ordered from DHC, but had to be made specially as

GCV was a prototype aircraft. Trans Canada Airlines had difficulty fitting the parts into one of their

North Star aircraft, but they were eventually squeezed into the aisle between the passengers and

flown to Goose Bay, where the Otter was repaired.

Even though the Otter had been delivered to EPA in August '53, its official sale date from DHC to

33

EPA was 18th December 1953 and GCV was registered to EPA on 5th January 1954, based at

Gander. EPA had a winter mail contract from the post office, and the Otter was used on this

alongside the company's Norsemen, Beavers and Cessna 180. The contract ran from January until

April/May and covered the towns and settlements around the island of Newfoundland as well as in

mainland Labrador. During the summer months, the mail was brought in by ship, but with the winter

freeze up of the coastal waters, the mail had to be flown in.

On 20th February '54 Beaver CF-GBD crashed into the mountains on a mail delivery flight to

Parson's Pond and Port Saunders on the west coast. As Marsh Jones writes in his much

recommended book on EPA (“The Little Airline That Could”):”The following morning I departed

Gander in Otter GCV with a load of mail for Flowers Cove. Bill Easton and an aircraft engineer

George Furey came along to assist and survey the damaged Beaver. We landed our mail at Flowers

Cove then flew south to the crash site, located about 200 yards up on a snowy slope from a good

size pond which we called Benny's Pond. We landed and while George Furey was assessing the

damaged aircraft we lugged the mail down a snowy slope to the Otter. After take-off we delivered the

Beaver's mail to Parsons Pond and Port Saunders, then returned to Gander”. The Otter was then

used to fly the necessary spare parts, tools, camping gear, provisions etc into the accident site, and

to keep the camp supplied while the Beaver was being repaired, which took until 9th May '54.

In winter 1955 Otter GCV was again used on the post office mail contract, in the course of which it

encountered some difficulty. Again, to quote from Marsh Jones excellent book: “On 28th February '55

I departed Gander with Rex Clibbery (our Canso captain) and a load of mail for Charlottown and

Black Tickle in southern Labrador. A refuelling stop was made at Roddickton and the first mail stop

was made at Charlottown, at the head of St. Michaels Bay. With excellent weather we proceeded up

the coast to Black Tickle. A circuit was made for ice observation, and as everything looked normal,

we landed heading out the bay along the line of tree top markers. During the turn to taxi back to the

inner bay after landing, the skis broke through the ice and the aircraft settled on the upper struts of

the under-carriage. What a predicament!”

“Black Tickle is completely devoid of trees and my immediate thought was to build a platform over

the area where we had broken through, but what would we use for material? One of the numerous

bystanders suggested that there might be planks in Guy Earl's shed on his fishing premises. I told

the man to bring over all the long planks and poles he could find plus nails and ropes and a block

and tackle. We then unloaded the mail. We ended up with more than enough material and built a

long platform around the nose of the aircraft, on which we erected an “A” frame lean-to over the

propeller hub and a long line going out to a 'deadman' secured in the ice. On this we secured our

block and tackle and before dark we had the aircraft skis well clear of the ice, with planks laid under

them to support the aircraft until, after a night of freezing temperature, the aircraft could be lowered

back onto its undercarriage again”.

“The area where we had broken through had been a large crack in the Bay ice about ten feet

wide which had frozen over. With a light layer of snow it was impossible to see and unfortunately noone

had bothered to mark it as unsafe. The following day, March 1st, was clear and cold and there

was now at least eight inches of hard slush ice under the aircraft. We lowered the Otter onto the

platform and pulled the aircraft clear of the area. On inspecting the aircraft it was found to be free of

damage and after heating up the engine we started up with no difficulty and taxied back to the inner

bay where we secured the aircraft for the night. The weather was not suitable for flight the next

morning, however we utilized the time in returning all the material and gear to Mr.Earl's shed. We

departed Black Tickle in marginal weather on 3rd March and with another refuelling stop at

Roddickton, landed at Gander in mid afternoon”. After that excitement, the Otter continued on the

post office contract until the end of the season.

EPA had also received a government contract to support construction of the Mid Canada Line of

radar stations. It was one of several operators who benefited considerably from the construction of

the radar defences of North America. The Pine Tree Line, Mid Canada Line and DEW Line were,

particularly in eastern Canada, relatively inaccessible by land transport and so the airlines became a

necessity for their construction and re-supply. The revenue generated by these projects was of great

assistance to such young companies as EPA and allowed them to grow both in experience and

34

equipment. EPA's contract with the Department of Defence involved two Cansos CF-HFL and CFHGF

and Otter GCV, which occupied the aircraft all that summer of 1955. The Cansos were used

mainly to move petroleum products to the sites where the radar stations were being constructed. In

conjunction with this, the Otter moved general freight, provisions and personnel from the base at

Knob Lake (Schefferville), Quebec. GCV was particularly active, flying upwards of 550 hours that

summer.

1956 saw a similar pattern of operation for the Otter as in the previous year. During the winter it

was engaged on the mail contract, and in the summer based out of Knob Lake on the Mid Canada

Line contract. On 6th July '56 Canso CF-HFL ran short of fuel and force landed on a lake fifty miles

north of Knob Lake. It was located after a two hour search by Otter GCV and 20998, a USAF C-124

Globemaster. The Otter then flew in fuel for the Canso. In November '56, GCV returned to DHC at

Downsview for overhaul and repaint. It was painted 'stearman vermillion red' overall with white

cheatline and black trim.

In the early part of 1957, GCV was extremely busy with a Department of Defence contract resupplying

the Hopedale and Cartwright radar stations in Labrador. On 14th March '57 en route from

Hopedale to Site 206 (Lakehead), the tail ski broke off on landing, causing some damage to the rear

fuselage, which was repaired on site. During the summer of 1957, the Otter was again based at

Knob Lake for POL and construction support of the Mid Canada Line. By the end of the summer the

construction phase was complete and the Otter went back down to Newfoundland. On 31st October

'57 it suffered some damage at Quidi Vidi Lake, St.John's and was repaired on site.

CF-GCV's next posting in spring 1958 was to Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island in the Northwest

Territories, where EPA had received a contract to supply and service a Pinetree Line radar site on

Resolution Island which lay off the southern tip of Baffin Island at the junction of the Hudson and

Davis Straits. Resolution Island, some 180 miles from Frobisher Bay, had a 1,500 foot gravel landing

strip, which made the Otter an ideal aircraft to rotate personnel to and from the radar station and fly

in supplies. On 14th October '58 GCV flew from Frobisher that morning on a supply flight to

Resolution Island and took off in the early afternoon for the return sector, carrying the pilot and four

passengers. It was to be a day of remarkable drama.

While in the cruise, the pilot noticed the oil pressure needle fluctuating and the oil pressure

dropped sharply. He instructed the passengers to put on their life jackets. The situation deteriorated,

with white smoke coming from the engine, which was running rough, vibrating and rapidly losing

power. At this stage the Otter was over Lower Savage Island and the pilot, knowing they were going

down, put out a mayday call and sought a place to land. As the sea ice was very rough, he selected

a small lake on Lower Savage Island and decided to land on the wheels, to maintain directional

control, and to try and put the Otter after landing on the beach. The Otter touched down on the

frozen small lake and rolled for some 300 feet. Unfortunately however the aircraft then broke through

the ice, requiring a very rapid evacuation by the pilot and his four passengers, who reached the

shore with some difficulty. The cockpit was soon completely submerged and then the fuselage filled

with water and sank, leaving only the tail protruding above the ice.

As luck would have it, a USAF KC-97 Stratocruiser callsign “RONSON 29” rapidly came to the aid

of the downed Otter. As major Robert C.Schmidt of Strategic Air Command's 40th Air Refuelling

Squadron/40th Bombardment Wing later wrote of that “remarkable day”: “We had departed Goose

Air Base on the morning of the 14th headed for Thule, Greenland. We were cruising at 15,000 feet

and had just passed 90 miles east of Lower Savage Island when we heard the mayday call and

headed for the island, having received ATC clearance to conduct a search. We made several passes

over the island at two thousand feet and noticed an object sticking out of an ice-covered lake. We

spotted the red tail of the Otter and men waving their arms frantically from a rock adjacent to the

lake. We dropped survival kits and notified Frobisher Bay of the exact position.” Major Schmidt

commended the Otter pilot (“one heck of a fine fellow and an outstanding pilot”) for putting his aircraft

down on the only available landing area in the vicinity.

The historical report of the USAF's 920th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron, callsign

“Footloose”, based at the radar station on Resolution Island, also tells what happened, all times

35

quoted being Zulu/Greenwich time, the local time being four hours earlier: “At 1635Z Otter CF-GCV

departed Resolution Island for Frobisher Airport. At 1709Z RONSON 29 a KC-97 en route from

Goose to Thule called Footloose Control and stated that the following call had been received from

GCV at 1707Z on 121.5 “Mayday, on fire, landing at Lower Savage Island”. Efforts by Footloose to

contact GCV were unsuccessful. At 1711Z Footloose assumed control of RONSON 29 and first

vector for Savage Island was given. All agencies at Frobisher and Goose were alerted while

RONSON 29 was en route. The KC-97 arrived over Lr.Savage Island group at 1740Z and five

minutes later reported sighting GCV. At 1756Z RONSON 29 sighted five survivors and reported that

GCV was half submerged in the centre of a lake about three miles inland. Terrain was reported as

very rough and rescue by fixed wing aircraft impossible”.

“Footloose requested RONSON 29 to orbit the scene as long as possible and to drop as much

survival gear as they could. At 1800Z Frobisher notified Footloose that they were loading a C-54D

72617 of the 4087th Transport Squadron, SAC, with survival gear to drop at the scene and

estimated off in 30 minutes. At 1827Z RONSON 29 successfully dropped two E-1 kits and sighted

survivors opening them. At 1910Z RONSON 29 reported second successful drop of two E-1 kits

which included notes from Footloose advising survivors of rescue plans. At 1846Z C-54 72617 was

airborne from Frobisher and at 1927Z Footloose assumed control of Air Force 72617. At 1938Z the

C-54 had radio and visual contact with the KC-97 and had sighted survivors. By 1950Z the C-54 had

completed two successful drops. Survivors were now in possession of blankets, food gasoline,

sleeping bags, exposure suits and a radio. By 2009Z RONSON 29 and Air Force 72617 had

departed Lower Savage Island for Goose Air Base. At 2313Z Footloose requested Air Force 72488,

another C-54 of the 4087th Transport Squadron, which is based at Ernest Harmon AFB, Stephenville,

Newfoundland, to attempt to contact survivors when over Lower Savage Island. Air Force 72488

reported negative contact but sighted several flares. At

1247Z the next day (15th October '58) MATS C-118A 33242 arrived over Lower Savage Island after

being diverted from course by Footloose. The C-118 reported successful radio contact with survivors.

They reported everyone was OK but very cold and they had no way to build a fire”.

Rescue came later that day in the form of the US Navy supply ship “Greenville Victory”, a vessel

which already had quite a connection with Otter aircraft, having been part of the Naval task force

which had sailed to Antarctica in 1955 and subsequent years in support of the 'Deep Freeze'

operations. The vessel managed to come to within two miles of the island and then launched a motor

boat with a rescue party. The pilot of the Otter and one passenger were located on the beach and

brought back to the ship for hot soup and biscuits to revive them. The motor boat with the rescue

party then returned to the island, accompanied by the pilot, as they had to make their way inland to

the lake where the Otter was, and where the other three passengers had established a camp. This

was quite a difficult undertaking, as it was by then dark, freezing cold, and the terrain between the

beach and the lake was uneven and treacherous. The rescue party carried battle lanterns to light

the way and also rifles and side arms, as polar bear tracks in the snow were plentiful. On arrival at

the camp, they found the three passengers in high spirits, having made good use of the USAF

dropped survival gear. Before they set off to return to the motor boat, they shone their lanterns

across the lake, illuminating the tail of the Otter, which was all that remained of the aircraft above the

ice. It must have been an eerie scene in the stillness of this very remote spot.

Having trecked back to the motor boat, they sailed back to the “Greenville Victory”. At 0551Z on

16th October, Footloose was advised by Air Force 72674, another C-54D of the 4087th Transport

Squadron, that all survivors were aboard the ship in good condition and rescue operations were

completed. The “Greenville Victory” then resumed course for Thule, Greenland. At Thule the

survivors met up with the crew of the KC-97 which had first come to their help and could even view

movie footage of the incident taken by one of the Stratocruiser's crew. The pilot of the Otter and his

passengers were flown by the USAF from Thule to Torbay, Newfoundland, where they arrived on

22nd October, none the worse for their dramatic experience. The pilot of the Otter that day was Jim

Rowe, who would subsequently lose his life in the crash of EPA Otter CF-MEX (332) in Greenland in

August 1961.

That crash at Lower Savage Island marked the end of GCV's career with EPA, who regarded the

Otter as a total loss “due to submersion and the remote location of the accident”. EPA purchased

36

another Otter, CF-LEA (286), to replace GCV, which was delivered on 6th November 1958, and in

the meantime they used Beaver CF-GQU on the contract to re-supply the Resolution Island radar

site from Frobisher Bay. The wreckage of GCV was turned over to the insurers, who sold it to Mr

Frank Ferrer, a US citizen from Miami, Florida but then living in Montreal, who was flying as a pilot

with one of the American carriers who were servicing the DEW Line sites at the time. Mr Ferrer

managed to retrieve the Otter from Lower Savage Island and transport it by ship to Frobisher Bay,

where it was restored to flying condition. On 30th June 1959 a ferry permit was issued for a flight

from Frobisher Bay to St.Jovite, Quebec base of Wheeler Airlines Ltd, to whom Mr Ferrer had leased

the Otter. CF-GCV was registered to Wheeler Airlines Ltd and entered their service.

In July 1959, Wheeler Airlines secured the contract to re-supply the eastern sector of the DEWLine

radar sites, taking over from EPA, and already had a number of Otters working on the contract,

in conjunction with the company's larger aircraft. Its DC-4s flew regular flights from Montreal north to

Frobisher Bay, and the Otters then flew out of Frobisher to the radar station on Resolution Island and

other sites. Otter CF-GCV returned to Frobisher Bay and resumed where it had left off while with

Eastern Provincial, supplying the radar station on Resolution Island. In April 1960 Wheeler Airlines

underwent a major re-organisation. The heavy transport division of the company and all its larger

aircraft were sold to Nordair. The company was re-constituted as Wheeler Airlines (1960) Ltd and

continued with its bush operations. CF-GCV and the company's other Otters were registered to the

new operation, and GCV continued flying from Frobisher Bay.

On 29 June 1960 GCV was yet again en route from Frobisher to Resolution Island, where the

weather was clear except for a fog bank which covered part of the runway. The airstrip at Resolution

was a 1,500 foot gravel strip and was on much higher ground than the surrounding terrain. The flight

was uneventful until the Otter was on final approach from the west to the gravel strip. Severe

downdrafts were encountered at this point, which forced the aircraft below the level of the runway,

requiring the pilot to use take-off power to regain the height which had been lost. The use of this

extra power resulted in increased airspeed that was sustained after power had been reduced up to

the point of touchdown. The touchdown was within the first 200 feet of runway, and brakes were

applied before the tail made contact with the ground. The wheels sank into a soft spot on the runway

and the aircraft pitched forward, coming to a stop when the propeller blades touched the ground. At

this point the tail dropped heavily. The fuselage was broken about ten inches behind the rear door.

The prop blades were bent at the tips, the tail landing gear was torn away and the skin on both sides

of the rudder was bent and buckled. Temporary repairs were effected on site and a ferry permit

issued on 8th July 1960 for a flight from Resolution Island to Montreal, where permanent repairs

were carried out over the winter. That incident ended GCV's career with Wheeler Airlines and on 4th

April 1961 the aircraft was registered to Canavia Corporation of Montreal in connection with its sale

to Pacific Western Airlines, to whom it was registered on 1st December 1961.

Having served all its career up to this point on Canada's east coast, the Otter headed west and for

the next six years faithfully served Pacific Western Airlines, providing a full range of bush services. In

1966 it was based at Fort Nelson, BC on forest fire duties. The Otter was eventually sold by Pacific

Western to Thunderbird Airlines Ltd of Prince George, BC to whom it was registered on 29th January

1968. There was a change of name to Northern Thunderbird Air Ltd on 9th August 1974 but the Otter

continued flying out of its base at Prince George. On 15th October '74 the Otter suffered another

mishap, when it went through the ice of Ominica Bay in Williston Lake, to the north of Prince George.

GCV had taken off from McKenzie with twelve Native Indian school children on board, who were

going to Ingenika. In the area of Ominica Bay, visibility was about four miles, but suddenly light snow

conditions turned into a very heavy snow fall, with visibility reduced to one quarter mile. Rather than

taking a risk with his precious load, the pilot decided to set the Otter down on the ice covered lake

and wait for an improvement in the weather. All was well until near the end of the landing roll when

the ice gave way and the aircraft began to sink in the water, not for the first time in its career!

The pilot quickly removed the wet children from the machine as it sank, and took them to the

shore where a fire was started to warm and dry them. Then he guided them on a two mile hike

through the woods to a logging camp where the children were given a good meal and put to bed.

Thankfully a happy ending for the children, but the unfortunate GCV had almost completely sunk into

the lake and was locked into the ice, with only its tail visible, an eerie repeat of its earlier submersion

37

on Lower Savage Island.

The recovery of the Otter was undertaken by Denny McCartney and is fully described in his most

excellent book “Picking up the Pieces”. He describes how, the following January he proceeded to the

lake and with his helpers erected an “A” frame from sturdy logs, which was used with a pulley to

raise the sunken Otter, having first cut the ice from around it. Then the ice had to be cleared out from

inside the aircraft, and the whole aircraft and engine thoroughly checked and made airworthy. Then a

section of ice was carefully checked for security and an airstrip was marked out with small

evergreens as a guide for the pilot in his take off run to fly back to base at Prince George, a flight

made without incident. At the time of this incident, this hard-working Otter had accumulated 12,140

hours total airframe time.

That incident marked the end of its career with Northern Thunderbird Air. GCV was sold to Silver

Pine Air Services of Pine Falls, Manitoba, who sold it on to Walsten Air Services of Kenora, Ontario

in 1976. After six years on the ground and a lengthy rebuild by Northern Servicentre at Reddit,

Ontario C-FGCV flew again on 11th June 1980 and joined the fleet of Walsten Air Services, flying

from Kenora on charter work. It was normally active during the summer months only, flying tourists,

hunters, fishermen to remote parts of the province. During the winter months, it was stored at Reddit,

Ontario. GCV was equipped with Bristol 7850 floats, a type normally used on Beech 18s, one of

which was also in the Walsten fleet. On the Otter, the ventral fin was replaced with two vertical fins

on the horizontal stabilizer, to provide increased stability with the larger floats.

GCV continued to serve Walsten Air Services for many years, and on 19th June 1994 was

involved in a minor incident. The Otter was landing at a lodge at Forest Lake, north of Vermillion Bay,

Ontario when during the approach it struck and severed an un-marked low-level power line which

served the fishing lodge. It landed without further incident. GCV's fifteen years of yeoman service for

Walsten Air Services came to a tragic end on 20th September 1995. That morning the pilot took off

from Kenora and flew to Stewart Lake, some sixty miles west of Dryden, to pick up five passengers

and their equipment. The passengers were all anglers on a fishing trip, all being close personal

friends coming from Cross Plains, Wisconsin. The Otter flew the party to an outpost camp at

Salvesen Lake, Ontario about fifty miles north-west of Kenora. Tragically the Otter crashed during the

landing when it flipped over and became submerged, killing all six on board. The remains of the Otter

were taken to Walsten Air's facility in Kenora.

 

IT BEGAN WITH RL201—and it ended with RL201.

 

AVRO ARROW RL201 was the very first Arrow to fly…and it was the very last Arrow to fly.

 

Earlier in the day RL203 made "Arrow history" as it was the only time a passenger flew on an Arrow. D.E. "Red" Darrah went up with "Spud" Potocki to fine-tune the Arrow's fly-by-wire system. All in vain, as we now know.

 

THIS PIC is very, very, rare. In fact, I had never seen it before, until only a month ago!

 

It shows AVRO ARROW RL201 sitting in one of Avro Canada's hangars on February 19, 1959 just before…or just after it's very last flight. The last flight of any Arrow in the Arrow program.

 

Sad and ominous.

 

The storm clouds were indeed gathering.

 

FEBRUARY 20, the very next day was BLACK FRIDAY when Diefenbaker's government cancelled both Avro Canada programmes (the Arrow interceptor and the Orenda Iroquois jet engine) LEAVING Avro Canada NO CHOICE but to lay off all 13,000 GTA workers.

 

THIS PICTURE I think came originally from the collection of

Marc-André Valiquette. I did extensive work to clean it up somewhat for this post. Therefore it has my "black bars".

 

I OWN ALL of Marc-André's ARROW books.

 

All 5 including…

Destruction of a Dream - Tragedy of Avro Canada and The CF-105 Arrow (Volumes 1-4) can be found at Aviation World in Toronto, or online here: www.aviationworld.net/default/catalogsearch/result/?q=avr…

 

Marc-André's books are great both for their extensive history and for their copious historical photos.

 

I often return to my posts to edit content, or continue work on my photos FYI.

 

.

.

.

.

.

——-——— WARNING!!! : DON'T READ THIS! —-——-———

  

When CANADA was SUPER-GREAT we produced the CF-105 Avro Arrow Interceptor and the PS.13 Orenda Iroquois Turbojet Engine.

 

Why were these Canadian technological achievements so awesome, you ask?

 

CF-105 Avro Arrow's “FIRSTS and NOTABLES” to the uninitiated:

 

• FIRST AIRCRAFT designed with digital computers being used for both aerodynamic analysis and designing the structural matrix (and a whole lot more).

• FIRST AIRCRAFT design to have major components machined by CNC (computer numeric control); i.e., from electronic data which controlled the machine.

• FIRST AIRCRAFT to be developed using an early form of "computational fluid dynamics" with an integrated "lifting body" type of theory rather than the typical (and obsolete) "blade element" theory.

• FIRST AIRCRAFT to have marginal stability designed into the pitch axis for better maneuverability, speed and altitude performance.

• FIRST AIRCRAFT to have negative stability designed into the yaw axis to save weight and cut drag, also boosting performance.

• FIRST AIRCRAFT to fly on an electronic signal from the stick and pedals. i.e., first fly-by-wire a/c.

• FIRST AIRCRAFT to fly with fly by wire AND artificial feedback (feel). Not even the first F-16's had this.

• FIRST AIRCRAFT designed to be data-link flyable from the ground.

• FIRST AIRCRAFT designed with integrated navigation, weapons release, automatic search and track radar, datalink inputs, home-on-jamming, infrared detection, electronic countermeasures and counter-countermeasures operating through a DIGITAL brain.

• FIRST HIGH WING jet fighter that made the entire upper surface a lifting body. The F-15, F-22, Su-27 etc., MiG-29, MiG 25 and others certainly used that idea.

• FIRST sophisticated bleed-bypass system for both intake AND engine/exhaust. Everybody uses that now.

• FIRST by-pass engine design. (all current fighters have by-pass engines).

• FIRST combination of the last two points with an "ejector" nozzle that used the bypass air to create thrust at the exhaust nozzle while also improving intake flow. The F-106 didn't even have a nozzle, just a pipe.

• Use of Titanium for significant portions of the aircraft structure and engine.

• Use of composites (not the first, but they made thoughtful use of them and were researching and engineering new ones).

• Use of a drooped leading edge and aerodynamic "twist" on the wing.

• Use of engines at the rear to allow both a lighter structure and significant payload at the centre of gravity. Everybody copied that.

• Use of a LONG internal weapons bay to allow carriage of specialized, long-range standoff and cruise missiles. (not copied yet really)

• Integration of ground-mapping radar and the radar altimeter plus flight control system to allow a serious strike/reconnaissance role. The first to propose an aircraft be equally adept at those roles while being THE air-superiority fighter at the same time. (Few have even tried to copy that, although the F-15E is an interesting exception.)

• FIRST missile armed a/c to have a combat weight thrust to weight ratio approaching 1 to 1. Few have been able to copy that.

• FIRST flying 4,000 psi hydraulic system to allow lighter and smaller components.

• FIRST oxygen-injection re-light system.

• FIRST engine to have only two main bearing assemblies on a two-shaft design.

• FIRST to use a variable stator on a two-shaft engine.

• FIRST use of a trans-sonic first compressor stage on a turbojet engine.

• FIRST "hot-streak" type of afterburner ignition.

• FIRST engine to use only 10 compressor sections in a two-shaft design. (The competition was using 17!!)

 

The Avro Arrow was Canada's finest aviation achievement, even though it never entered RCAF service.

 

DETRACTORS … thanks for comin' out ~

 

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you have to be watch full when looking for birds in the SWAMP as this hungry Gator was eyeing me. Other photographers warned me to watch out for the Gators. i'll try to lay off of posting for a while but get excited and want to share some of my shots. Also met some great fellow Cajun photographers!

I am sharing this not for the photo itself, which has some obvious limitations, but for what it represents. It is the first railway-related photo I took in the UK after returning to the railway hobby following a lay-off of over twenty years, although at this stage I may not even have realised that I had actually returned.

 

Class 158 dmu No. 158778 speeds past Hewish crossing in North Somerset on Wednesday 22nd August 2007, most likely bound for either Weston-super-Mare or Taunton. The "158" is still in the livery of TransPennine Express, presumably having only recently been transferred west from that TOC. I was doing an afternoon hike from Congresbury to Clevedon. The railway here was just one of several obstacles I had to negotiate, the other main ones being the River Yeo and the M5 motorway. In the case of the latter, this was achieved by passing through a narrow tunnel built to allow a major rhyne to flow through, with a foot gangway squeezed alongside it.

 

In the intervening decade I have had lots of fun catching up with railway developments I had missed, travelling on new lines for the first time, discovering Flickr and its friendly community of like-minded enthusiasts, improving my railway photography (I hope!), dusting off the old photos from my youth and breathing a bit of new life into them, and much more besides. I hope it continues for a long time yet.

From Menace.. Because Menace would have just been like "Meh, whatever happens Happens"

 

And today Thank you so much everyone for the hugs and sweet words.. we just got word that the client that could have pretty much caused our business to have to lay off several people has in fact renewed their contract with us, I have not felt a sense of relief this big in years, I have had no sleep for 3 months worrying about the outcome of this event today...and finally Finally I can sleep.

 

Thank you Friends for listening <3 it means the whole world to me!

After going bankrupt in 2002 and closing more than 300 stores in the U.S., and laying off about 34,000, geniuses at KMart figured that messing around with their well-liked 40 year old logo would somehow bring them back from the brink. In a word... "Wrong". Kmart did five prototype stores with a new logo, layout, and lime green and gray color scheme. Here's the first of the bunch, in White Lake Township, Michigan.

 

The four others were all in central Illinois: Peoria, Pekin, Morton and Washington. The Washington store closed, but the others remain, a concept failure for all to see. I'll never understand why companies get into trouble, and the first thing they think will "save" them is to muck around with their logo/branding. Let it alone, guys. 99.9% of the time, your problems aren't in your logo!

Our Daily Challenge - Song Title

So lucky my new sneakers are blue suede

  

You can burn my house,

Steal my car,

Drink my liquor

From an old fruitjar.

 

Do anything that you want to do, but uh-uh,

Honey, lay off of my shoes

Don't you step on my blue suede shoes.

You can do anything but lay off of my blue suede shoes.

 

Well, it's one for the money,

Two for the show,

Three to get ready,

Now go, cat, go.

 

Killer Whales of the west coast of Whalsay, weather conditions were low cloud and mostly calm dry conditions. The Killer Whales (Orcas) were first spotted on the east side of the calf of Linga an Island which is situated of Symbister Harbour. The whales then proceeded into the north west traveling between islands Bruceholm and Hunderholm headed to a bight which lays off mainland Shetland called Bunnydale, here the whales frolicked around breaching and playing swimming upside down etc. Here as you will see in one of the photos the whale also grabbed a tystie for a snack. They then left this location and headed south again around the island of Hunderholm and carried on proceeding south towards nesting and Lerwick area. In the pod there were 2 large Killer Whales and three smaller cubs. The whales travelled at a speed around 6-7 knots into the south.

  

A dominant Cape Seal displays his displeasure in a convincing way

The Ravenswood Mining Landscape and Chinese Settlement Area is situated south of Elphinstone Creek and to the west of School Street and Kerr Street, in the town of Ravenswood, about 85km south of Townsville and 65km east of Charters Towers. The Ravenswood goldfield was the fifth largest producer of gold in Queensland during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its main mining periods, prior to modern open cut operations (1987 onwards), were: alluvial gold and shallow reef mining (1868 - 1872); attempts to extract gold from sulphide ores below the water table (1872 - 1898); the New Ravenswood Company era (1899 - 1917); and small scale mining and re-treatment of old mullock heaps and tailings dumps (1919 - 1960s). In 2016 the Ravenswood Mining Landscape and Chinese Settlement Area contains surface structures from eight mines: the Grand Junction, Little Grand Junction, Sunset No. 1 and Sunset No. 2, Deep, General Grant, Duke of Edinburgh, and Grant and Sunset Extended mines, as well as the mill associated with the Deep mine, and the Mabel Mill tailings treatment plant (most structures dating from the New Ravenswood Company era). It also includes remnants of two treatment plants (Partridge and Ralston’s Mill, and Judge’s Mill) from the 1930s; and the Chinese settlement area (1870s to the early 20th century, covering the first three mining periods at Ravenswood).

 

The place contains important surviving evidence of: ore extraction (from underground shafts) and metallurgical extraction (separation of gold from the ore) conducted on and near the Ravenswood goldfield’s most productive reefs during the boom period of the town’s prosperity (1900 - 1908); later attempts to re-treat the mullock heaps and tailings dumps from these mines; and Ravenswood’s early Chinese community, which made an important contribution to the viability of the isolated settlement and was located along Deighton Street and Elphinstone Creek. The Ravenswood Mining Landscape and Chinese Settlement Area also has the potential to reveal evidence of early alluvial and shallow reef mining, as well as domestic living arrangements on the Ravenswood goldfield. It is an evocative reminder of the precarious and short-lived nature of North Queensland’s mining booms, and has a special association with Archibald Lawrence Wilson, who established the New Ravenswood Company and improved both ore and metallurgical extraction processes on the goldfield.

 

Settlement and mining in North Queensland:

 

European settlement of the Kennedy Land District in North Queensland commenced with the founding of Bowen in 1861, and the spread of pastoralists through the hinterland. Pastoral stations were established up the valley of the Burdekin River, including ‘Ravenswood’ and ‘Merri Merriwa’. Townsville and Cardwell were both established north of Bowen in 1864.

 

However, mining, not pastoralism, proved to be the main catalyst for European settlement of North Queensland. In 1865 the founders of Townsville offered a reward for the discovery of a payable goldfield, and gold rushes occurred in the region from 1866. Mining employed 19.8% of the North Queensland population in 1868, and 50% by 1876, before dropping to 15% in 1911. Although gold mining attracted people to North Queensland, alluvial finds of gold usually led to temporary townships, whereas underground reef mining held the promise of more stable and permanent settlements.

 

Alluvial gold and shallow reef mining (1868 - 1872):

 

Alluvial gold was discovered south of the later site of Ravenswood, in tributaries of Connolly Creek on Merri Merriwa Station, north of the Burdekin River, in late 1868. Prospectors soon established ‘Middle Camp’ (later Donnybrook) on Tucker’s Creek, and ‘Lower Camp’ on Trieste Creek, with about 700 miners on the field by early 1869. Further north, in April 1869, the goldfield’s richest alluvial discoveries were made in three dry creek beds close to the site of Ravenswood: Nolan’s, Jessop’s, and Buchanan’s gullies. Despite these finds, many miners soon left for the rush to the Gilbert River (over 300km west of Townsville).

 

The parent reefs of the alluvial gold found in April were located about the same time as the exodus to the Gilbert – the General Grant being discovered first, followed by the Sunset. Both were visible above ground level, and both reefs would play an important part in the future prosperity of Ravenswood. In the next 40 years, nearly £3 million of gold would come from the reefs ‘in the little triangle between Buchanan’s Gully, just east of Macrossan Street, Jessop’s Gully, southwest of the town, and Elphinstone Creek’.

 

Other reefs were soon found north of Elphinstone Creek, and in Nolan’s Gully; and meanwhile, reefs had been discovered at Middle Camp. However, a lack of water meant that miners did not establish ‘Upper Camp’ (later Ravenswood) near the General Grant and Sunset reefs until October 1869, after a storm temporarily resolved the water issue. By this time, most miners had returned from the Gilbert. The three camps on the goldfield had a population of 600 by January 1870, most in Upper Camp. Work was slowed by a lack of water, until rains in February 1870 enabled panning and sluicing, the results of which confirmed that Ravenswood was the first significant reef mining goldfield in the northern half of Australia.

 

However, the miners needed to crush the quartz ore to extract gold. The first machinery for this purpose, WO Hodkinson’s five stamp crushing battery, the Lady Marion (or Lady Marian) Mill, was operational at Burnt Point (south of Upper Camp) from the 18th of April 1870. The first month’s crushing results caused ‘an even greater “rush” than that … caused by the discovery of the alluvial gold’. A second battery was operational in Upper Camp in August 1870, when the goldfield’s population was about 1200.

 

Official recognition of the goldfield and settlement soon followed. Government Geologist Richard Daintree visited Upper Camp in August 1870, and the Ravenswood goldfield (about 300 square miles) was proclaimed on the 3rd of November 1870. By this time, the goldfield had a population of about 2000, and Upper Camp had 10 ‘public houses’, with six public houses in Middle Camp.

 

The Government Surveyor, John von Stieglitz, arrived in November 1870, but was too late to impose a regular grid pattern on the settlement. Instead he formalised the existing plan, which was centred on the crossing of Elphinstone Creek by the main road (Macrossan Street), with tracks radiating out to the various diggings. Most commercial buildings were located along Macrossan Street. The resulting juxtaposition of mining, habitation and commerce gave the town its distinctive character.

 

The town was proclaimed on the 19th of May 1871, with an area of one square mile (259ha). This was later expanded to four square miles (1036ha) on the 13th of July 1883. Although gold had been discovered on Merri Merriwa Station, the name Ravenswood, after the run located further southeast, downstream on the Burdekin River, was preferred.

 

In 1871 the population of the goldfield was 900, with over half being in Upper Camp/Ravenswood, and by the end of 1871 there were five machines in Ravenswood. Hodgkinson’s mill had been moved into town, to a site just north of Elphinstone Creek, and was renamed the Mabel Mill. In 1871 the town had 30 licensed hotels, although these were referred to as ‘shanties’ and did not offer accommodation.

 

By this time Ravenswood also had a Chinese population, due to an influx of Chinese miners who had been forcefully evicted from the Western Creek diggings near Gilberton in mid-1871. At least three of the hotels of 1871 had Chinese licensees. The first Chinese had arrived in North Queensland in 1867, during the rush to the Cape River, and there were 200 Chinese looking for alluvial gold at Ravenswood in 1871. In January 1872 it was estimated that there were about 1500 Chinese present on the Ravenswood goldfield, and a matching number of Europeans. As the Chinese focussed on alluvial gold, and also provided other services, they were tolerated at Ravenswood, because the Europeans were now focusing on reef mining. The quartz reefs were originally worked at shallow depths by means of a windlass (hand-wound rope and bucket), or a horse-powered whip or whim (using poles, ropes and pulleys) raising the ore from shallow shafts.

 

Extracting gold from sulphide ores (1872 - 1898):

 

Despite its promising start, in 1872 the Ravenswood goldfield entered a ‘period of depression’, as its most important mines reached the water table at about 70ft (21m) deep – starting with the Sunset in 1871, followed by the General Grant, Black Jack, and Melaneur in 1872. Although the oxidised quartz (‘red stone’ or ‘brown stone’ quartz) close to the surface yielded its gold to traditional methods of mechanical crushing, below the water table the gold was in fine particles, which was not easily recovered by mechanical means. It was also mixed with sulphide ores; mainly iron sulphide (pyrite, or ‘mundic’ ore) but also sulphides containing lead, copper, zinc, arsenic, and antimony, which interfered with chemical treatments such as amalgamation (amalgamating the gold with mercury; then heating the resulting amalgam in a retort to vaporise the mercury) and chlorination (exposing roasted, concentrated ore to chlorine gas, and then precipitating gold out of the chloride solution). A process that worked on the ore from one reef might not work for an adjacent reef, due to a varying distribution of different types of sulphides. In addition, even if a process worked on a small scale, it could be uneconomical on a larger scale, given the price of transporting fuel to Ravenswood for smelting, or transporting concentrates for smelting elsewhere.

 

Once the mundic had been struck, ‘mining was "worse than dull" as the field grappled with the realisation that to break below the waterline, the days of the individual miner were over and the time of companies was looming’. The 1870s was a decade of major gold discoveries in Queensland, and miners keen on quick profits had plenty of new goldfields from which to choose. Many miners joined the rushes to Charters Towers (1872) and the Palmer River (1873). Charters Towers soon overtook Ravenswood as the most important inland town in north Queensland; and the Hodgkinson rush (southwest of Port Douglas) in 1876 also drew away miners.

 

However, Ravenswood grew during the 1870s and 1880s, despite the goldfield’s ‘refractory’ ores, and ‘mundic problem’. The goldfield had a population of 950 in 1877 (with 50 Chinese), rising to 1100 in 1880 (including 250 Chinese), and 2000 in 1883 (including 300 Chinese; with 190 working the alluvial, and 10 quartz miners).

 

The 1877 Pugh’s Almanac listed one Chinese hotelkeeper (out of seven hotelkeepers) in Ravenswood, and one Chinese storekeeper. The Chinese, as well as working alluvial claims and operating hotels and stores, were employed as wage labour in some mines; worked as roasters and chlorinators at the Mabel Mill; and operated 24 licensed gardens on the Ravenswood goldfield in 1883. Chinese gardens were vital in providing fresh vegetables to North Queensland’s goldfield populations.

 

For 19th Century diasporic Chinese communities such as Ravenswood’s, the establishment of specific cultural settlement areas, or ‘Chinatowns’, that ‘provided a range of sacred and secular services, including temples, stores, and accommodation’, was an important aspect of community building. Deighton Street, west of Macrossan Street, was the centre of Chinese life in Ravenswood. There were two eating houses close to Macrossan Street’s bridge across Elphinstone Creek, in the 1870s; and market gardens were located between Deighton Street and Elphinstone Creek, as well as north of Elphinstone Creek, interspersed amongst several crushing machine operations. There was also a temple south of Deighton Street. Temples were not just places of religious worship; rather, they were an integral part of a Chinese village. ‘They were places to meet, to check one's horoscope before embarking on a new venture and places where ancestors were venerated’. As well as being a place where the community could worship at any time, major gatherings were held at temples on festival days, with feasts and processions. The Ravenswood temple appears on an 1874 survey plan, making it the earliest known Chinese temple in Queensland. The nearby pig roasting oven is also a rare example of its type, and demonstrates the usual spatial arrangement of temple and oven, for community feasts.

 

Ravenswood continued to develop during the 1880s. By 1885, the Ravenswood goldfield had an estimated population of 2294 Europeans and 227 Chinese, with 1490 Europeans and 148 Chinese located in Ravenswood itself. Ravenswood at this time had four Chinese storekeepers, and two Chinese produce merchants, but all six hotel licensees were European. The Ravenswood National School, which began in late 1873, had an average attendance of 110 students in 1878, and reached its peak enrolment of 390 by 1889.

 

The 1880s were also a period of experimentation in metallurgical (gold extraction) technology. In 1883, the only method for dealing with sulphide ores was stamper mills and rotary buddles (which used water and gravity to separate and concentrate the crushed ores), but later Ravenswood ‘was the first place where the chlorination process and Wilfley tables, developed in 1896, to shake the ore and separate out different sized particles, and were used in Queensland, and probably the first place where the cyanide process (dissolving fine gold in a cyanide solution, and later precipitating the gold out of the solution) for extracting gold was used in Australia’. Other techniques attempted included fine grinding (using ball mills), roasting (burning off the sulphides), and smelting (prohibitively expensive, as it required high temperatures and thus a lot of fuel). By 1888 a new company at One Mile Creek, formed by Duncan and Peter Macintyre, had adapted an abandoned Cassell’s patent plant (a version of the chlorination process which was applied and failed in Ravenswood in 1886), to work on a ‘secret process’ (cyaniding).

 

Ravenswood mining continued to be viable, although only a (fluctuating) percentage of the gold was being recovered from the ore. In the mid-1880s there was even a temporary increase in the goldfield’s production, due to good returns from the Sandy Creek mines on the John Bull reef. For the next eight years, the principal producers of the district were the General Grant, Sunset, New England, Wild Irish Girl, Melaneur, and John Bull reefs, plus the silver lodes of the One Mile (at Totley).

 

Ravenswood’s economy survived the 1880s due to the development of silver mines at Totley, a township established about 2km north of Ravenswood. The silver mines opened circa 1879 - 1880, and Richard King floated the Ravenswood Silver Mining Company Ltd in 1882 – the year of Ravenswood’s lowest gold production between 1878 and 1898. Silver prices were high during the 1880s, and the Totley mines encouraged the Queensland Government to approve a branch railway line (off the Northern Railway between Townsville and Charters Towers) to Ravenswood in 1882, completed in 1884. The railway meant that some gold ores could be crushed, concentrated and sent for treatment at the Aldershot works just north of Maryborough or overseas to Swansea, in Wales. However, all silver mining had stopped by 1891, due to falling silver prices and over-expenditure on treatment plants.

 

Gold mining at Ravenswood continued during the 1880s and 1890s. Hugh Hawthorne Barton, who had operated Brothers Mill on Elphinstone Creek from the late 1870s, took over the General Grant, Sunset, and Black Jack mines, and the Mabel Mill (and later the Melaneur and Duke of Edinburgh mines), and floated the Ravenswood Gold Mining Company in 1887, with £100,000 in capital. From 1884 to 1896 Barton’s group was the largest and most successful operation in Ravenswood, its profitability assisted by the railway, economies of scale, and flexibility in ore-treatment methods. Barton utilised roasting, chlorination (by 1889), and smelting, and employed Chinese workers at the Mabel Mill. Along with their market gardens along Elphinstone Creek, Chinese employment at the Mabel Mill also influenced the location of the Chinese settlement area in Ravenswood. Meanwhile, the landscape was being altered by mining. The need for timber for boilers and for timbering-up mine shafts led to the loss of native trees in the locality, and goats also helped shape the landscape by eating regrowth.

 

By the mid-1890s, Barton was in debt to the Queensland National Bank, and his properties were seized in 1896, with the General Grant, Black Jack, and Mabel Mill being let on tribute (where a party of miners worked a mine, while giving the mine owner a percentage of any results) in 1897. The tributers refused to employ Barton’s experienced Chinese workers at the Mabel Mill, leading to disastrous attempts at chlorination. However, the goldfield’s production was boosted in the late 1890s when work resumed on the Donnybrook reefs for the first time in 20 years, and the Hillsborough (Eight Mile) reefs were taken up.

 

The New Ravenswood Company era (1899 - 1917):

 

Ravenswood’s boom period of gold production (1900 - 1908, with 1905 the year of highest production) is reflected in the town’s surviving mining infrastructure and commercial and public buildings. This boom occurred due to the efforts of Archibald Laurence Wilson (1852 - 1935). After gaining a diploma in mining engineering in Edinburgh, and working in New Zealand and on the Palmer River, Wilson arrived in Ravenswood in 1878. He was publican of the Silver King Hotel in Totley in the 1880s. As manager of the John Bull mine at Sandy Creek in the mid-1890s, he raised capital in London and installed a cyanide plant.

 

Wilson later travelled to London in 1898, where he floated both the Donnybrook Blocks Mining Syndicate and the New Ravenswood Company in 1899. Wilson was the General Manager of both companies, under their London directorates. Until 1917, the New Ravenswood Company was the largest mining operation on the Ravenswood goldfield. Registered with a capital of £50,000, the company purchased the General Grant, Sunset, Black Jack, Melaneur, and Shelmalier mines, and the Mabel Mill, from the Queensland National Bank (and later obtained the Saratoga, Duke of Edinburgh and London North mines), and initiated a new era in ore and metallurgical extraction. Using British capital, Wilson introduced modern machinery to work the mines, and effectively reshaped Ravenswood’s landscape. Wilson was known as ‘the uncrowned king of Ravenswood’. He was also Chairman of the Ravenswood Shire Council for some years, and was later on the Dalrymple Shire Council, until he resigned from poor health in 1934.

 

From 1900, both the Sunset and General Grant (also known as the Grant) mines were redeveloped by Wilson. These became the key earners for the New Ravenswood Company; by 1903 the two mines employed about 205 men, and were ‘the “backbone” of the town’.

 

The Sunset reef, which runs roughly northwest-southeast through the Ravenswood Mining Landscape, was the largest producer on the goldfield (almost a quarter of the total). It produced 14,722oz of gold from 1870 - 1894, and by 1900 it was worked from an underlie (an inclined shaft, following the dip of a reef) branching off from a vertical shaft 130ft (40m) deep. It was stated at this time that the reef had ‘much the same history as the General Grant, the two being generally worked together’. By 1903 the New Ravenswood Company had extended the underlie shaft right up to the surface, where a headframe was constructed to haul ore directly up the slope. The Sunset’s yield of ‘free gold’ (pure gold not combined with other minerals), which could be extracted at the Mabel Mill, peaked in 1904, then fell slowly. In 1905 an average of 170 men were employed at the mine. In 1908 the reef was being worked by the main underlie shaft, 900ft (274m) deep (Sunset No. 1); and a vertical shaft, 556ft (169m) deep (Sunset No. 2). As the Sunset reef was worked in conjunction with the General Grant and the Duke of Edinburgh reefs in the New Ravenswood Company era, its exact total production of gold is hard to calculate; but from 1876 to 1912 the reef probably produced about 177,000oz of gold; and probably most of the 22, 000oz that the company extracted from 1912 - 1917.

 

The General Grant, one of the most productive reefs on the goldfield, running roughly north-south just east of the Sunset reef, was worked almost continuously to the late 1880s, and periodically thereafter. By 1895 returns had diminished, due to the small size of the reef and its highly refractory ore. In 1900, the General Grant had a vertical shaft to 110ft (34m), and then an underlie of 610ft (186m), the bottom of the latter being 450ft (137m) below the level of the shaft mouth; but operations were ‘almost completely suspended’ as the New Ravenswood Company concentrated on the Sunset reef. To 1900 the General Grant had produced 23, 651oz of gold; and after crushing of ore from the mine resumed at the beginning of 1903, it was treated with ore from the Sunset. On average, 40 men were employed on the mine in 1905. In 1908 the powerhouse for both the Sunset and the General Grant mines was situated on the General Grant lease, with three Cornish boilers. By 1912 the General Grant had produced about 36,000oz of gold.

 

To the east of the General Grant was the Duke of Edinburgh reef, running roughly northwest-southeast. This was one of the early reefs discovered on the goldfield; and in 1872 it was identified by Warden TR Hackett as one of the 28 principal reefs. It was worked in several episodes prior to the 1890s, and was re-opened in 1891, producing 1286oz of gold during 1891 - 1895. In 1908 the mine was taken over by the New Ravenswood Company, and was reorganised as an underlie shaft with haulage machinery from the Golden Hill mine, being worked in conjunction with the General Grant until 1917.

 

Along with his modernisation of the goldfield’s best mines, Wilson also abandoned chlorination at the Mabel Mill, increased the mill’s crushing capacity to 30 stamps (by 1904), and introduced the first Wilfley tables to Queensland. Crushing resumed in January 1900. Wilson improved metallurgical extraction by ‘postponing amalgamation of the free gold till the great bulk of the sulphides had been removed by concentration’. The ore was crushed in stampers without using mercury. Then, using the Wilfley tables, the heavier Galena (lead sulphide ore) and free gold was separated from the lighter sulphides. The free gold and galena was then ground in Berdan pans with mercury, while the remaining sulphides (containing iron, zinc and copper) were dispatched to the Aldershot works (near Maryborough) for smelting. In 1902 - 1903, a raff wheel, 14.5m in diameter, was built at the Mabel Mill to lift tailings (post-treatment residue) up to a flume, which carried them over to the south side of Elphinstone Creek, where they could be treated with cyanide. The cyanide works (of which remnants still remain south of Elphinstone Creek) was erected circa 1904. A 21m long girder bridge was constructed across the creek to carry steam water pipes and electric cable from the Mabel Mill to the new works, which eventually comprised two Krupp ball mills and 12 Wilfley’s tables.

 

Due to the New Ravenswood Company’s efforts, the goldfield’s production increased between 1899 and 1905. Gold recovery increased from 18, 016oz in 1899 to 24, 832oz in 1900 and to 42, 465oz in 1905. The New Ravenswood Company paid impressive 50% dividends to its shareholders in 1901, 1902, and 1904; and 75% in 1903.

 

The productivity of Ravenswood’s mines during the New Ravenswood Company era was also reflected in the goldfield’s population, which rose from 3420 in 1901 to its peak of 4707 in 1903. The 1903 population included 215 Chinese, 89 of these being alluvial miners. In 1905 two Chinese were listed as ‘storekeepers and grocers’.

 

The population increase led to a building boom in the first decade of the 20th Century. Hundreds of new houses, the town’s first two brick hotels – the Imperial hotel (1901) and the Railway Hotel (1902) – as well as brick shops such as Thorp’s Building (1903), and the brick Ravenswood Ambulance Station (1904) were constructed in this period; the use of brick being spurred by the threat of fire. The New Ravenswood Company also rebuilt the mining landscape in and around the town, with expansion of the Mabel Mill, and new headframes and winders, magazines, boilers, and brick smokestacks erected beside all the principal shafts.

 

However, not all Wilson’s ventures in this period were successful. In 1902 he floated Deep Mines Ltd, with a capital of £100, 000, to sink a shaft east of the New Ravenswood Company’s leases. This mine (also within the Ravenswood Mining Landscape) was an ambitious attempt to reach a presumed intersection of the General Grant and Sunset reefs at depth. Using the capital raised, Wilson built a model mine and mill. The shaft was started in late 1902-early 1903, and construction work on the buildings and machinery was completed later in 1903. The mine reached 512m, the deepest on the goldfield, with extensive crosscutting and driving, but only about 240oz of gold was recovered. No ore was crushed at all in 1908. By 1910 a new shaft was being sunk ‘near the western boundary’; but the mine was abandoned in 1911, and never worked again. Wilson’s London investors lost at least £65,000.

 

The Deep’s mill, built nearby and operational by 1906, was a smaller version of the Mabel Mill, with gravity stamps, Wilfley tables, and a cyanide plant. Its site, adjacent to the mine, ran counter to the normal practice of siting mills near water courses. With the failure of the Deep mine, it milled ore from other mines until about 1917.

 

Another mine, the Grand Junction, was located north of the New Ravenswood Company’s most productive mines, in the Ravenswood Mining Landscape. The Grand Junction Consolidated Gold Mining Company was formed in 1900, and a shaft was sunk in 1901 (probably the No. 1 shaft on the Grand Junction Lease No. 520). In 1902 another exploration ‘deep shaft’ (No. 2) was sunk at the southwest boundary of the Grand Junction Lease No.503. The Grand Junction mine was another failed attempt to locate a presumed junction of the General Grant and Sunset reefs at depth; by 1908 it was owned by the New Ravenswood Company. Total production was about 425oz of gold.

 

Slightly more successful was the Grant and Sunset Extended mine, at the southern end of the Ravenswood Mining landscape. This was a deep shaft sunk by the Grant and Sunset Extended Gold Mining Company, a Charters Towers-owned company with Wilson as its local director. During the 19th Century, small mines had been operated in the Rob Roy reef, to the southeast. The Grant and Sunset Extended was floated in 1902, the intent being to locate the General Grant and Sunset reefs south of Buck Reef. The plant and buildings of the Yellow Jack mine, southeast of Ravenswood, were re-erected on the site. The shaft was down 70ft (21m) in 1902 and 930ft (283m) by 1908, with 50 men employed at the mine by the later date. The mine closed by 1910, but was worked on tribute until 1917, with about 15,000oz of gold obtained over 1904 - 1918.

 

The boom period at Ravenswood did not last. As well as losing money on the Deep and Grand Junction mines, the New Ravenswood Company faced the closure of the Aldershot works in 1906, and declining yields from 1908 to 1912. Although Wilson experimented with flotation (agitating crushed ore in oil and water, and extracting fine gold particles on the surface of air bubbles) and cyanide processes at the Mabel Mill, it was too late to save his company. The Shelmalier had closed by 1904, the Black Jack in 1909, and the Melaneur in 1910. By that year, the General Grant, Sunset, Duke of Edinburgh, and London North (obtained 1910) were the New Ravenswood Company’s only producing mines.

 

Few new buildings were constructed in Ravenswood after 1905. The hospital closed in 1908. That year the goldfield’s population consisted of 4141 Europeans (including 2625 women and children) and 181 Chinese (including 94 alluvial miners). This dropped to 2581, including 92 Chinese, by 1914.

 

Increased costs and industrial disputes in the 1910s hastened the end of the New Ravenswood Company era. During a miner’s strike between December 1912 and July 1913, over lay-offs, the fresh vegetables and business loans provided by Ravenswood’s Chinese community helped keep the town going. Although the miners won, it was a hollow victory, as the company could only afford to re-employ a few of the men. World War I (1914 - 1918) then increased labour and material costs for the New Ravenswood Company. The London North mine closed in 1915, and on the 24th of March 1917 the New Ravenswood Company ceased operations; ending large-scale mining in Ravenswood for the next 70 years.

 

By 1917, the Ravenswood goldfield had produced over 850, 000oz of gold (nearly a quarter coming from the Sunset mine), and 1, 000, 000oz of silver; making it the fifth largest gold producer in Queensland, after Charters Towers, Mount Morgan, Gympie, and the Palmer Goldfield. Ravenswood was also the second largest producer of reef gold in north Queensland, after Charters Towers.

 

Small scale mining and re-treatment (1919 - 1960s):

 

After 1917 the Ravenswood goldfield entered a period of hibernation, with intermittent small-scale attempts at mining. In 1919, Ravenswood Gold Mines Ltd took over some of Wilson’s leases and renovated the Deep mine’s mill, but obtained poor returns. Ravenswood Gold Mines also worked the Duke of Edinburgh from 1919 to 1930, with good returns reported in 1924. The General Grant and Sunset were also worked on a small scale from 1919 - 1921, while the Mabel Mill continued to provide crushing services for the limited local mining.

 

Consequently, Ravenswood’s population declined and the town shrank physically. In 1921 the town’s population fell below 1000, and by 1923 there were 530 people left, including 8 Chinese. During the 1920s, prior to the closure of the railway branch line to Ravenswood in 1930, hundreds of the town’s timber buildings were dismantled and railed away. By 1927, only the two brick hotels remained operating as hotels. The Ravenswood Shire was abolished in 1929, and by 1934 only 357 people remained in the town.

 

Despite this decline, some gold was still being extracted. There was a small increase in gold production between 1923 and 1927, and due to the gold price rise of the 1930s, some mines were re-worked and efforts were also made to treat the old mullock heaps (waste rock from mining) and tailings dumps with improved cyanide processes. Between 1931 and 1942, 12, 253oz of gold was obtained from the goldfield, the peak year being 1940.

 

A number of companies were active in Ravenswood in the 1930s-early 1940s. In 1933, the North Queensland Gold Mining Development Company took up leases along Buck Reef and reopened the Golden Hill mine, and the following year their operations were taken over by Gold Mines of Australia Ltd. The 1870s Eureka mine (near the Imperial Hotel) was revived by James Judge in 1934. In 1935 the Ravenswood Concentrates Syndicate began re-treating the Grant mullock heaps in the remaining stampers at the Mabel Mill, and dewatering the Sunset No. 2 shaft; while the Sunset Extended Gold Mining Company, with James Judge as manager, dewatered the Grant and Sunset Extended shafts (which connected to the Sunset, General Grant and Duke of Edinburgh shafts), and re-timbered the Grant and Sunset Extended, General Grant, and Sunset underlie (No. 1) shafts. The London North mine was reopened by R J Hedlefs in 1937, and Basque miners were working the Sunset No. 2 shaft at this time.

 

The Little Grand Junction mine, located at the intersection of Siggers Street and School Street, on the old Grand Junction Lease No. 520, was operated from 1937 - 1942 by local miners Henry John Bowrey and John Thomas Blackmore. Five men were employed at the mine in 1940. The shaft had apparently been sunk previously by the Grand Junction Consolidated Gold Mining Company; and Bowrey and Party reconditioned it and extended the existing workings.

 

In 1938, Archibald and Heuir set up a mill on the bank of One Mile Creek to treat mullock dumps, and the Ravenswood Gold Mining Syndicate (formed 1937, with James Judge as manager) began treating the mullock dumps of the Sunset mine in late 1938. The same syndicate also dewatered and reopened part of the Grant and Sunset Extended; and the Grand Junction mine was reopened by Judge circa 1939 - 1942.

 

The Ravenswood Gold Mining Syndicate’s (Judge’s) mill initially consisted of 10 head of stamps obtained from the Mother Lode Mill at Mount Wright (northwest of Ravenswood), powered by a diesel engine. The ore was crushed by the stamper battery, concentrated with Wilfley tables, and then either treated with cyanide or sent to the Chillagoe smelters. Initial success with some rich ore led to enlargement of the mill to 30 stamps in 1939 - 40. A Stirling boiler and a 250hp engine were also obtained from the Burdekin meatworks (Sellheim), and a rock breaker, elevator, and conveyor were installed. However, the upgraded mill proved to be overpowered and required a lot of timber fuel; the brick foundations used for the machinery were not strong enough; and the best ore from the Sunset had already been treated, so the mill closed early in 1942 and the plant was moved to Cloncurry.

 

Also in 1938, Maxwell Partridge and William Ralston installed a new plant south of Elphinstone Creek, to the immediate west of the Mabel Mill’s old cyanide works, to re-treat the old tailings with cyanide. A ball mill, filter, and other plant were purchased from the Golden Mile, Cracow in 1939, while later that year a suction gas engine and flotation machine were also installed. This operation closed circa 1942, and the coloured sands on the site today are residues from the flotation process: the yellow sand is from the floatation of iron pyrites; the grey sands are copper tailings; and the black material is zinc tailings.

 

There was limited activity on the goldfield in the late 1940s to early 1960s. The Empire Gold Mining Syndicate treated mullock dumps from The Irish Girl, London, and Sunset mines from 1946 to 1949, as well as some of the dumps from the Grand Junction (1947). The Duke of Edinburgh mine was briefly reopened by Cuevas and Wilson in 1947, and the Cornish boilers on the site (one with the maker’s mark ‘John Danks & Son Pty Ltd makers Melbourne) may relate to this (unsuccessful) operation. Percy Kean reopened the Great Extended mine at Totley in 1947, and later purchased Partridge’s mill in 1951 to use it as a flotation plant to treat the silver-lead ore from Totley, adding a diesel engine, stonebreaker, Wilfley tables, and classifier. The Totley mines closed in 1954, although the Great Extended mine was briefly sub-leased by Silver Horizons No Liability, in 1964. Partridge’s mill was closed circa 1965.

 

Other attempts were made in the early 1950s to rework old sites. A Townsville syndicate led by Leslie Cook and George Blackmore reopened the Grand Junction mine in 1951, but it soon closed. James Judge also recommenced gold mining at Donnybrook, but closed in 1954; while 900 tons of tailings from the Deep mine’s mill site were taken for re-treatment at Heuir’s cyanide plant in the early 1950s.

 

A new industry:

 

In the 1960 and 1970s, Ravenswood’s population shrank to its nadir of about 70 people. At the same time, there was a growing nostalgic interest in old towns in Australia. In 1968 the landscape of Ravenswood was described in romantic terms: ‘Mute testimonials are the numerous mullock heaps which dot the countryside; the rusty remains of steam engines; stampers which were used to crush stone; and collapsed cyanide vats… Derelict poppet-heads…stand above deep, abandoned shafts. Colossal columns of chimney stacks rise majestically from the entanglement of rubber vines and Chinese apple trees.’ Some locals realised that preserving the town’s surviving historic buildings and structures was necessary to attract tourists and create a new local industry.

 

From this time onwards the town’s mining heritage was seen as an asset. The National Trust of Queensland met with locals in 1974, and a conservation plan for the town was published in 1975. Later, the town sites of Totley and Ravenswood were both entered into the National Trust of Queensland Register. Comments from an International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) trip to northern Australia in 1978 included ‘Ravenswood…is one of the most evocative (gold towns of Australia) and this must be preserved. A policy of “all that is necessary but as little as possible” must be strongly pursued’. The increased population of North Queensland, longer paid holidays, improved roads, and the rise of car ownership after World War II, all increased visitation to Ravenswood, as did the completion of a road past Ravenswood to the Burdekin Dam, in the 1980s. As a result, the town and its mining landscape have been represented in brochures, art, and photography. In particular, the landmark qualities of the tall brick chimneys are a distinctive feature in representations of Ravenswood.

 

Modern operations:

 

However, gold mining recommenced at Ravenswood in the 1980s, due to a rise in the gold price and the efficiencies gained from open cut mining and modern cyanide metallurgical extraction processes. From 1983 - 1986 the Northern Queensland Gold Company Ltd conducted agglomeration heap-leaching (spraying a sodium cyanide solution on previously mined material heaped on a plastic membrane), in the process removing a landmark tailings dump at King’s mine in Totley, and mullock heaps from the Grant and Sunset mines. In 1987 Carpentaria Gold commenced open cut mining of the Buck reef (the Buck Reef West pit) near the old Grant and Sunset mines on the south side of the town. Later, pits were dug further east along the reef. Some underground mining was also undertaken from the Buck Reef West pit until 1993, which broke into the old workings of the General Grant, Sunset, and Duke of Edinburgh mines. The old headframe at the Grant and Sunset Extended was demolished in 1988, and replaced with a new steel headframe, which was used until 1993 and then removed. The Melaneur-Shelmalier-Black Jack-Overlander reef complex, on the north side of the town, was mined as an open cut 1990 - 1991, before being backfilled as a golf course. The Nolan’s Gully open cut commenced in 1993.

 

Although modern mining revived the economy of the town, it did not replicate the building boom of the early 20th century.

 

The heritage significance of Ravenswood’s surviving mining infrastructure was recognised in a 1996 Queensland Mining Heritage Places Study by Jane Lennon & Associates and Howard Pearce; and a 2000 Conservation Management Plan by Peter Bell. In 2006, the population of Ravenswood, the oldest surviving inland town in north Queensland, was 191.

 

By the mid-2010s the population of Ravenswood stood at 255 people.

 

Source: Queensland Heritage Register & Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Highland Park High School / Junior College / Career Academy

In many ways, the histories of Detroit and Highland Park – a separate city located within the borders of Detroit –are very similar. Both cities experienced tremendous growth as a result of the automobile industry, and built up their city services to meet demand. Both cities lost population after the auto industry left. And today, both cities are struggling with how to provide the same city services to fewer people with less tax revenue. Budget cuts have led to the closure of most of Highland Park’s fire stations, libraries, and schools.

 

A three-block stretch of Highland Street running west from Woodward Avenue was one the civic center of the city. Along Highland and nearby streets were five schools, three churches, two hospitals, and the main library, mixed in with ornate high-rise apartment buildings. In this densely populated neighborhood one could be born, baptized, attend nursery school, elementary school, high school, and college, all without going more than three blocks in any direction. Right at the center of the neighborhood is the old Highland Park High School and Junior College, a block-long slab of quarry-faced limestone that played an important role in the development of Highland Park from an obscure village into an industrial boomtown.

 

Early days in Highland Park

 

In 1900, Highland Park was just a small village north of Detroit, population 427. Through the early 1900’s, the city grew as Detroit developed north along Woodward Avenue, spurring residential development. In 1907, Henry Ford began to move his automobile production from the Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit to a new, much larger factory located in Highland Park. The factory opened in 1909; a year later the population of Highland Park had risen to 4,120 as workers quickly built up neighborhoods around the Ford plant.

 

Like other early school districts, Highland Park Schools taught from Kindergarten to the 8th grade level, at which point young adults were expected to join the workforce. Starting in 1911, high school courses were introduced, with 42 students enrolled in 9th and 10th grade levels at Stevens Elementary, then moved to the new Ferris School when it opened in November. The next year 11th and 12th grades were introduced. Demand for higher education was enough that by 1912, plans were underway to build a dedicated high school building.

 

Building a new high school

 

Initially the board of education wanted to build the new high school east of Woodward Avenue, at Farrand and John R Streets, but instead settled a large rectangular parcel of land along Glendale Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. Though the high school would take up only a small part of the land, school officials wanted additional space to expand the school if needed. Excavation at the site began as the first high school class of 14 students graduated from Ferris School in 1913. In 1914, a contract for construction of the new building designed by Wells D. Butterfield was awarded for $460,000. It could comfortably seat 1,000 students, though it was believed that it would be quite a few years before the school reached capacity.

 

The first unit of Highland Park High School was of English type architecture, laid out with a central mass three stories tall, with two end wings linked by classrooms. The east wing had a 1,100-seat auditorium, and the west wing featured a three-story gymnasium and basement swimming pool. In the center were school offices, a library, and recitation rooms. The exterior was done up in quarry-faced gray limestone, with mouldings and detail work of dressed Bedford stone. Inside the school were long hallways of Caen stone and ornamental carved oak. Dedicated classrooms included sewing, carpentry, machine tooling, botany, chemistry, and drawing.

 

The cornerstone was laid down in October of 1914. Construction on the high school had progressed far enough that by June of 1915, the auditorium was used for graduation as work on the rest of the building continued. The new building was scheduled to formally open in September, but even before then school administrators were facing an unanticipated problem: overcrowding.

 

Expansion

 

Between 1910 and 1916, the population of Highland Park grew from 4,100 to 28,000. By 1920 there would be 46,500 residents, a staggering 1,000% increase in population over just 10 years. Workers from across the globe were drawn to Detroit and Highland Park in particular, by the Ford factory and its promise of a $5 a day wage. The assembly line had revolutionized the way that cars were made, and in doing so, made Highland Park the center of the automotive revolution. The school board found itself with hundreds of new students every year, requiring hasty additions to existing school buildings, and the construction of new schools in neighborhoods that were springing up around town.

 

By the time Highland Park High School opened in September of 1915, enrollment far exceeded expectations, with 850 students signing up. In 1916, just a year after it opened, that number grew to over 1,000 high school students, filling the school to capacity. Plans for a second unit of the high school for 1,500 additional students to be built next to the first were immediately drawn up, with construction beginning in 1917.

 

Though the second unit of the high school used identical building materials and same English styling as the first, it was laid out differently. Initially the second unit was intended to be a high school for girls and a junior college, and was built with its own separate gymnasium and swimming pool. Instead of a second auditorium, a larger library and additional classrooms were set aside for a junior college program that would share the building with the girl’s high school. The new high school for girls opened in September of 1918, with a total enrollment of 1,525 students. Highland Park Junior College opened in 1918 as well, with 35 students. Course offerings included French, rhetoric, history, chemistry, zoology, and analytic geometry.

 

Within a few years the two high school programs merged and became co-ed. In 1927, a vocational education building including an automobile repair lab was built to south of the school, connected by an overhead walkway. A further addition to the vocational wing was added in 1938, and the auditorium was renovated in 1939. The high school thrived, with as many as 3,000 students and a host of extracurricular activities, including athletics, homemaking, and a school radio station.

 

Great Depression, Second World War

 

Enrollment at Highland Park Junior College steadily increased to around 300 students by the 1920’s, but slowed in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Lack of adequate space and a drop in the number of students to 159 in 1929 nearly led to the closure of college, but the residents of Highland Park voted to keep it open. This paid off in the long run, as after the Second World War ended enrollment skyrocketed from 117 in 1943 to 1,800 in 1947 as veterans returning to Highland Park used the GI bill to pay for college education.

 

By the 1940’s, population in Highland Park had peaked. Ford had moved auto production out of Highland Park to a new factory in the suburbs in 1927, and moved its headquarters to Dearborn in 1930. The construction of freeways made it easier for people to live outside the city, hastening an outward flight or residents to the suburbs. The racial composition of Highland Park changed as well. By 1968, over half of the 4,488 students were black, while teachers and administrators were mostly white. Sit-ins protesting the lack of diversity in the school administration were frequent in 1969.

 

The high school moves out

 

As part of a district-wide modernization program, several older schools in Highland Park were demolished and replaced with newer buildings in the 1950’s and 60’s. A nursery school was built on the south side of the campus in 1950, and an elementary school was built a block south in 1961. Plans for a new, modern high school to be built north on Woodward Avenue were drawn up in the early 1970’s, which would replace the existing school. The junior college (now a community college) would take over the entire building and expand its vocational offerings.

 

Construction on the new building was already underway when on the evening of March 18th 1975, a large fire broke out in the gymnasium of the old high school. Stacks of rolled-up wrestling mats were set alight as a practical joke, but the blaze quickly spread out of control, causing the roof and floor to cave into the basement swimming pool. The fire burned for over five hours as firefighters from Highland Park, Detroit, and Hamtramck struggled to contain it to just the gymnasium. While smoke and water damage throughout the high school were repaired fairly quickly, repairing the gymnasium was estimated to cost over $600,000. Since the high school was moving out in the near future, athletics were moved over to the community college building, which had its own pool and gymnasium. In 1977, the new Highland Park Community High School on Woodward Avenue opened, and the community college took over the Glendale campus. A temporary roof was built over the shell of the burned-out gymnasium, as administrators struggled with what to do next.

 

Not wishing to demolish the handsome limestone façade of the gym, the wing sat empty until 1983, when the community college approached Bloomfield Hills landscape architect James Scott about reusing the space. Scott envisioned turning the empty hall into a “multi-purpose concourse” and performing arts space, linking the two units together. Within a few days his ideas went from sketches to planning, and work began a short time later. The swimming pool, into which burning debris from above had been dumped, was covered by a new floor and sealed off. The open area above was a mix of the old and new, retaining the limestone wall of the adjacent gym, but incorporating modern styling throughout. Hexagons were the dominant theme, with planters turning the concourse into a green space. Work on the renovation concluded in 1985. In the years after the space was used for concerts, special events, and art galleries.

 

Community college struggles

 

Though enrollment at Highland Park Community College was 2,000 to 3,000 through most of the 1980’s, the college operated at a deficit that had grown to $1.4 million dollars by 1989. In an effort to save money, school administrators cut the LPN and respiratory therapy programs, sparking a four-day sit in strike by students. Though the administration reverses its decision, the financial situation continued to deteriorate, with accusations of rampant misuse of funds. After missing two consecutive annual audits, Michigan Governer John Engler began to withhold state funding for the college, as investigators report that Highland Park Community College “had the worst facilities of any community college in the state.”

 

In February of 1995, Governor Engler announced that all funding for the college would be stripped from the budget due to chronic financial and academic problems, stating, “Though the college has a long and distinguished tradition, it has become apparent that it is no longer an economically viable institution." Local representatives fought hard to keep the school open, arguing that it was making progress in fixing its financial situation and that the loss of the school would be devastating to Highland Park’s troubled economy. By December of 1995 the college had run out of money, and closed down.

 

Highland Park Career Academy, Final Years

 

The immediate impact of the closing of Highland Park Community College was that students were stranded in mid-study, some just a semester away from graduation. Though other nearby colleges tried to accommodate students, many never finished their studies, and walked away from secondary education. While elected officials fought to get funding restored, the school reopened as the Highland Park Career Academy, offering an alternative high school program and vocational training for students and young adults in the fields of nursing, dental hygiene, and auto repair. In 2001, the Ford Motor Company opened an automotive training center in the vocational education building, complete with demonstration cars.

 

Highland Park City Schools steadily lost students through the 2000’s, with K-12 enrollment falling to 2,700 by 2008 as students were lured away to other nearby school districts. As schools were funded by the state on a per pupil basis, this led to a major revenue shortfall for Highland Park. On January 23rd, 2009 the school board shut down the career academy with no official notification to parents, laying off 36 teachers to close the budget gap. Students were again left in the lurch with the cancellation of their programs, with few options for continuing their studies elsewhere. and leaving students stranded in mid-study. Only seniors were allowed to stay at the school until the end of the school year, with the remaining students to attend night school at Highland Park Community High School. However, the first scheduled night of classes was canceled without explanation. Most students dropped out, and the building closed for good in the summer of 2009.

 

For over 90 years, the old high school and college had been the center of Highland Park’s education system. By the time the school closed, the neighborhood and city around it had changed considerably. Ferris School and the hospitals closed in the 1990’s, along with the main library in 2002. The nursery school closed permanently in 2005. Most of the apartment buildings along Glendale and Highland had been vacated years ago, leaving large gaps in the fabric of the neighborhood. In the end, the closing of the career academy wound up costing the school district a large amount of funding, as students dropped out or left for other school districts. With just 969 students enrolled in 2012, the state of Michigan declared a financial emergency, and the Highland Park City Schools were taken over by a state emergency financial manager, who converted the district into a privately operated charter school system.

 

The new charter school operator found that the three remaining school buildings – Highland Park Community High, Ford, and Barber – were in terrible disrepair, and required proximately expensive work to be brought up to standards. In early 2012, school officials started looking at consolidating all of the schools into one K-12 as a way to save money. One alternative discussed was the reopening of the old high school and college building, which was large enough to support all of the students left in the district. The emergency manager visited the closed building in February to see if it would viable to reopen.

 

Since its closing in 2009, the old high school and college had been frozen in time, with little more than security and routine maintenance being carried out in its empty halls and classrooms. Though fairly secure for a few years, when the state took over the Highland Park City Schools, patrols at the closed building had been discontinued, leaving the school briefly open to scrappers and metal thieves. In the short time between the state takeover and the resumption of security at the school, scrappers had done enough damage to make reopening the school cost prohibitive. The plan was abandoned in favor of letting the three remaining schools stay open.

 

In the years since, scrappers and vandals have dismantled the old Highland Park High School. When the local Police department set up two non-working squad cars in the back of the building to deter people from entering, the cars were vandalized and removed less than a month later. In October of 2012 the windows of the school were boarded up, but by that time the damage had been done. The property was put up for sale with an asking price of $3 million dollars.

The Ravenswood Mining Landscape and Chinese Settlement Area is situated south of Elphinstone Creek and to the west of School Street and Kerr Street, in the town of Ravenswood, about 85km south of Townsville and 65km east of Charters Towers. The Ravenswood goldfield was the fifth largest producer of gold in Queensland during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its main mining periods, prior to modern open cut operations (1987 onwards), were: alluvial gold and shallow reef mining (1868 - 1872); attempts to extract gold from sulphide ores below the water table (1872 - 1898); the New Ravenswood Company era (1899 - 1917); and small scale mining and re-treatment of old mullock heaps and tailings dumps (1919 - 1960s). In 2016 the Ravenswood Mining Landscape and Chinese Settlement Area contains surface structures from eight mines: the Grand Junction, Little Grand Junction, Sunset No. 1 and Sunset No. 2, Deep, General Grant, Duke of Edinburgh, and Grant and Sunset Extended mines, as well as the mill associated with the Deep mine, and the Mabel Mill tailings treatment plant (most structures dating from the New Ravenswood Company era). It also includes remnants of two treatment plants (Partridge and Ralston’s Mill, and Judge’s Mill) from the 1930s; and the Chinese settlement area (1870s to the early 20th century, covering the first three mining periods at Ravenswood).

 

The place contains important surviving evidence of: ore extraction (from underground shafts) and metallurgical extraction (separation of gold from the ore) conducted on and near the Ravenswood goldfield’s most productive reefs during the boom period of the town’s prosperity (1900 - 1908); later attempts to re-treat the mullock heaps and tailings dumps from these mines; and Ravenswood’s early Chinese community, which made an important contribution to the viability of the isolated settlement and was located along Deighton Street and Elphinstone Creek. The Ravenswood Mining Landscape and Chinese Settlement Area also has the potential to reveal evidence of early alluvial and shallow reef mining, as well as domestic living arrangements on the Ravenswood goldfield. It is an evocative reminder of the precarious and short-lived nature of North Queensland’s mining booms, and has a special association with Archibald Lawrence Wilson, who established the New Ravenswood Company and improved both ore and metallurgical extraction processes on the goldfield.

 

Settlement and mining in North Queensland:

 

European settlement of the Kennedy Land District in North Queensland commenced with the founding of Bowen in 1861, and the spread of pastoralists through the hinterland. Pastoral stations were established up the valley of the Burdekin River, including ‘Ravenswood’ and ‘Merri Merriwa’. Townsville and Cardwell were both established north of Bowen in 1864.

 

However, mining, not pastoralism, proved to be the main catalyst for European settlement of North Queensland. In 1865 the founders of Townsville offered a reward for the discovery of a payable goldfield, and gold rushes occurred in the region from 1866. Mining employed 19.8% of the North Queensland population in 1868, and 50% by 1876, before dropping to 15% in 1911. Although gold mining attracted people to North Queensland, alluvial finds of gold usually led to temporary townships, whereas underground reef mining held the promise of more stable and permanent settlements.

 

Alluvial gold and shallow reef mining (1868 - 1872):

 

Alluvial gold was discovered south of the later site of Ravenswood, in tributaries of Connolly Creek on Merri Merriwa Station, north of the Burdekin River, in late 1868. Prospectors soon established ‘Middle Camp’ (later Donnybrook) on Tucker’s Creek, and ‘Lower Camp’ on Trieste Creek, with about 700 miners on the field by early 1869. Further north, in April 1869, the goldfield’s richest alluvial discoveries were made in three dry creek beds close to the site of Ravenswood: Nolan’s, Jessop’s, and Buchanan’s gullies. Despite these finds, many miners soon left for the rush to the Gilbert River (over 300km west of Townsville).

 

The parent reefs of the alluvial gold found in April were located about the same time as the exodus to the Gilbert – the General Grant being discovered first, followed by the Sunset. Both were visible above ground level, and both reefs would play an important part in the future prosperity of Ravenswood. In the next 40 years, nearly £3 million of gold would come from the reefs ‘in the little triangle between Buchanan’s Gully, just east of Macrossan Street, Jessop’s Gully, southwest of the town, and Elphinstone Creek’.

 

Other reefs were soon found north of Elphinstone Creek, and in Nolan’s Gully; and meanwhile, reefs had been discovered at Middle Camp. However, a lack of water meant that miners did not establish ‘Upper Camp’ (later Ravenswood) near the General Grant and Sunset reefs until October 1869, after a storm temporarily resolved the water issue. By this time, most miners had returned from the Gilbert. The three camps on the goldfield had a population of 600 by January 1870, most in Upper Camp. Work was slowed by a lack of water, until rains in February 1870 enabled panning and sluicing, the results of which confirmed that Ravenswood was the first significant reef mining goldfield in the northern half of Australia.

 

However, the miners needed to crush the quartz ore to extract gold. The first machinery for this purpose, WO Hodkinson’s five stamp crushing battery, the Lady Marion (or Lady Marian) Mill, was operational at Burnt Point (south of Upper Camp) from the 18th of April 1870. The first month’s crushing results caused ‘an even greater “rush” than that … caused by the discovery of the alluvial gold’. A second battery was operational in Upper Camp in August 1870, when the goldfield’s population was about 1200.

 

Official recognition of the goldfield and settlement soon followed. Government Geologist Richard Daintree visited Upper Camp in August 1870, and the Ravenswood goldfield (about 300 square miles) was proclaimed on the 3rd of November 1870. By this time, the goldfield had a population of about 2000, and Upper Camp had 10 ‘public houses’, with six public houses in Middle Camp.

 

The Government Surveyor, John von Stieglitz, arrived in November 1870, but was too late to impose a regular grid pattern on the settlement. Instead he formalised the existing plan, which was centred on the crossing of Elphinstone Creek by the main road (Macrossan Street), with tracks radiating out to the various diggings. Most commercial buildings were located along Macrossan Street. The resulting juxtaposition of mining, habitation and commerce gave the town its distinctive character.

 

The town was proclaimed on the 19th of May 1871, with an area of one square mile (259ha). This was later expanded to four square miles (1036ha) on the 13th of July 1883. Although gold had been discovered on Merri Merriwa Station, the name Ravenswood, after the run located further southeast, downstream on the Burdekin River, was preferred.

 

In 1871 the population of the goldfield was 900, with over half being in Upper Camp/Ravenswood, and by the end of 1871 there were five machines in Ravenswood. Hodgkinson’s mill had been moved into town, to a site just north of Elphinstone Creek, and was renamed the Mabel Mill. In 1871 the town had 30 licensed hotels, although these were referred to as ‘shanties’ and did not offer accommodation.

 

By this time Ravenswood also had a Chinese population, due to an influx of Chinese miners who had been forcefully evicted from the Western Creek diggings near Gilberton in mid-1871. At least three of the hotels of 1871 had Chinese licensees. The first Chinese had arrived in North Queensland in 1867, during the rush to the Cape River, and there were 200 Chinese looking for alluvial gold at Ravenswood in 1871. In January 1872 it was estimated that there were about 1500 Chinese present on the Ravenswood goldfield, and a matching number of Europeans. As the Chinese focussed on alluvial gold, and also provided other services, they were tolerated at Ravenswood, because the Europeans were now focusing on reef mining. The quartz reefs were originally worked at shallow depths by means of a windlass (hand-wound rope and bucket), or a horse-powered whip or whim (using poles, ropes and pulleys) raising the ore from shallow shafts.

 

Extracting gold from sulphide ores (1872 - 1898):

 

Despite its promising start, in 1872 the Ravenswood goldfield entered a ‘period of depression’, as its most important mines reached the water table at about 70ft (21m) deep – starting with the Sunset in 1871, followed by the General Grant, Black Jack, and Melaneur in 1872. Although the oxidised quartz (‘red stone’ or ‘brown stone’ quartz) close to the surface yielded its gold to traditional methods of mechanical crushing, below the water table the gold was in fine particles, which was not easily recovered by mechanical means. It was also mixed with sulphide ores; mainly iron sulphide (pyrite, or ‘mundic’ ore) but also sulphides containing lead, copper, zinc, arsenic, and antimony, which interfered with chemical treatments such as amalgamation (amalgamating the gold with mercury; then heating the resulting amalgam in a retort to vaporise the mercury) and chlorination (exposing roasted, concentrated ore to chlorine gas, and then precipitating gold out of the chloride solution). A process that worked on the ore from one reef might not work for an adjacent reef, due to a varying distribution of different types of sulphides. In addition, even if a process worked on a small scale, it could be uneconomical on a larger scale, given the price of transporting fuel to Ravenswood for smelting, or transporting concentrates for smelting elsewhere.

 

Once the mundic had been struck, ‘mining was "worse than dull" as the field grappled with the realisation that to break below the waterline, the days of the individual miner were over and the time of companies was looming’. The 1870s was a decade of major gold discoveries in Queensland, and miners keen on quick profits had plenty of new goldfields from which to choose. Many miners joined the rushes to Charters Towers (1872) and the Palmer River (1873). Charters Towers soon overtook Ravenswood as the most important inland town in north Queensland; and the Hodgkinson rush (southwest of Port Douglas) in 1876 also drew away miners.

 

However, Ravenswood grew during the 1870s and 1880s, despite the goldfield’s ‘refractory’ ores, and ‘mundic problem’. The goldfield had a population of 950 in 1877 (with 50 Chinese), rising to 1100 in 1880 (including 250 Chinese), and 2000 in 1883 (including 300 Chinese; with 190 working the alluvial, and 10 quartz miners).

 

The 1877 Pugh’s Almanac listed one Chinese hotelkeeper (out of seven hotelkeepers) in Ravenswood, and one Chinese storekeeper. The Chinese, as well as working alluvial claims and operating hotels and stores, were employed as wage labour in some mines; worked as roasters and chlorinators at the Mabel Mill; and operated 24 licensed gardens on the Ravenswood goldfield in 1883. Chinese gardens were vital in providing fresh vegetables to North Queensland’s goldfield populations.

 

For 19th Century diasporic Chinese communities such as Ravenswood’s, the establishment of specific cultural settlement areas, or ‘Chinatowns’, that ‘provided a range of sacred and secular services, including temples, stores, and accommodation’, was an important aspect of community building. Deighton Street, west of Macrossan Street, was the centre of Chinese life in Ravenswood. There were two eating houses close to Macrossan Street’s bridge across Elphinstone Creek, in the 1870s; and market gardens were located between Deighton Street and Elphinstone Creek, as well as north of Elphinstone Creek, interspersed amongst several crushing machine operations. There was also a temple south of Deighton Street. Temples were not just places of religious worship; rather, they were an integral part of a Chinese village. ‘They were places to meet, to check one's horoscope before embarking on a new venture and places where ancestors were venerated’. As well as being a place where the community could worship at any time, major gatherings were held at temples on festival days, with feasts and processions. The Ravenswood temple appears on an 1874 survey plan, making it the earliest known Chinese temple in Queensland. The nearby pig roasting oven is also a rare example of its type, and demonstrates the usual spatial arrangement of temple and oven, for community feasts.

 

Ravenswood continued to develop during the 1880s. By 1885, the Ravenswood goldfield had an estimated population of 2294 Europeans and 227 Chinese, with 1490 Europeans and 148 Chinese located in Ravenswood itself. Ravenswood at this time had four Chinese storekeepers, and two Chinese produce merchants, but all six hotel licensees were European. The Ravenswood National School, which began in late 1873, had an average attendance of 110 students in 1878, and reached its peak enrolment of 390 by 1889.

 

The 1880s were also a period of experimentation in metallurgical (gold extraction) technology. In 1883, the only method for dealing with sulphide ores was stamper mills and rotary buddles (which used water and gravity to separate and concentrate the crushed ores), but later Ravenswood ‘was the first place where the chlorination process and Wilfley tables, developed in 1896, to shake the ore and separate out different sized particles, and were used in Queensland, and probably the first place where the cyanide process (dissolving fine gold in a cyanide solution, and later precipitating the gold out of the solution) for extracting gold was used in Australia’. Other techniques attempted included fine grinding (using ball mills), roasting (burning off the sulphides), and smelting (prohibitively expensive, as it required high temperatures and thus a lot of fuel). By 1888 a new company at One Mile Creek, formed by Duncan and Peter Macintyre, had adapted an abandoned Cassell’s patent plant (a version of the chlorination process which was applied and failed in Ravenswood in 1886), to work on a ‘secret process’ (cyaniding).

 

Ravenswood mining continued to be viable, although only a (fluctuating) percentage of the gold was being recovered from the ore. In the mid-1880s there was even a temporary increase in the goldfield’s production, due to good returns from the Sandy Creek mines on the John Bull reef. For the next eight years, the principal producers of the district were the General Grant, Sunset, New England, Wild Irish Girl, Melaneur, and John Bull reefs, plus the silver lodes of the One Mile (at Totley).

 

Ravenswood’s economy survived the 1880s due to the development of silver mines at Totley, a township established about 2km north of Ravenswood. The silver mines opened circa 1879 - 1880, and Richard King floated the Ravenswood Silver Mining Company Ltd in 1882 – the year of Ravenswood’s lowest gold production between 1878 and 1898. Silver prices were high during the 1880s, and the Totley mines encouraged the Queensland Government to approve a branch railway line (off the Northern Railway between Townsville and Charters Towers) to Ravenswood in 1882, completed in 1884. The railway meant that some gold ores could be crushed, concentrated and sent for treatment at the Aldershot works just north of Maryborough or overseas to Swansea, in Wales. However, all silver mining had stopped by 1891, due to falling silver prices and over-expenditure on treatment plants.

 

Gold mining at Ravenswood continued during the 1880s and 1890s. Hugh Hawthorne Barton, who had operated Brothers Mill on Elphinstone Creek from the late 1870s, took over the General Grant, Sunset, and Black Jack mines, and the Mabel Mill (and later the Melaneur and Duke of Edinburgh mines), and floated the Ravenswood Gold Mining Company in 1887, with £100,000 in capital. From 1884 to 1896 Barton’s group was the largest and most successful operation in Ravenswood, its profitability assisted by the railway, economies of scale, and flexibility in ore-treatment methods. Barton utilised roasting, chlorination (by 1889), and smelting, and employed Chinese workers at the Mabel Mill. Along with their market gardens along Elphinstone Creek, Chinese employment at the Mabel Mill also influenced the location of the Chinese settlement area in Ravenswood. Meanwhile, the landscape was being altered by mining. The need for timber for boilers and for timbering-up mine shafts led to the loss of native trees in the locality, and goats also helped shape the landscape by eating regrowth.

 

By the mid-1890s, Barton was in debt to the Queensland National Bank, and his properties were seized in 1896, with the General Grant, Black Jack, and Mabel Mill being let on tribute (where a party of miners worked a mine, while giving the mine owner a percentage of any results) in 1897. The tributers refused to employ Barton’s experienced Chinese workers at the Mabel Mill, leading to disastrous attempts at chlorination. However, the goldfield’s production was boosted in the late 1890s when work resumed on the Donnybrook reefs for the first time in 20 years, and the Hillsborough (Eight Mile) reefs were taken up.

 

The New Ravenswood Company era (1899 - 1917):

 

Ravenswood’s boom period of gold production (1900 - 1908, with 1905 the year of highest production) is reflected in the town’s surviving mining infrastructure and commercial and public buildings. This boom occurred due to the efforts of Archibald Laurence Wilson (1852 - 1935). After gaining a diploma in mining engineering in Edinburgh, and working in New Zealand and on the Palmer River, Wilson arrived in Ravenswood in 1878. He was publican of the Silver King Hotel in Totley in the 1880s. As manager of the John Bull mine at Sandy Creek in the mid-1890s, he raised capital in London and installed a cyanide plant.

 

Wilson later travelled to London in 1898, where he floated both the Donnybrook Blocks Mining Syndicate and the New Ravenswood Company in 1899. Wilson was the General Manager of both companies, under their London directorates. Until 1917, the New Ravenswood Company was the largest mining operation on the Ravenswood goldfield. Registered with a capital of £50,000, the company purchased the General Grant, Sunset, Black Jack, Melaneur, and Shelmalier mines, and the Mabel Mill, from the Queensland National Bank (and later obtained the Saratoga, Duke of Edinburgh and London North mines), and initiated a new era in ore and metallurgical extraction. Using British capital, Wilson introduced modern machinery to work the mines, and effectively reshaped Ravenswood’s landscape. Wilson was known as ‘the uncrowned king of Ravenswood’. He was also Chairman of the Ravenswood Shire Council for some years, and was later on the Dalrymple Shire Council, until he resigned from poor health in 1934.

 

From 1900, both the Sunset and General Grant (also known as the Grant) mines were redeveloped by Wilson. These became the key earners for the New Ravenswood Company; by 1903 the two mines employed about 205 men, and were ‘the “backbone” of the town’.

 

The Sunset reef, which runs roughly northwest-southeast through the Ravenswood Mining Landscape, was the largest producer on the goldfield (almost a quarter of the total). It produced 14,722oz of gold from 1870 - 1894, and by 1900 it was worked from an underlie (an inclined shaft, following the dip of a reef) branching off from a vertical shaft 130ft (40m) deep. It was stated at this time that the reef had ‘much the same history as the General Grant, the two being generally worked together’. By 1903 the New Ravenswood Company had extended the underlie shaft right up to the surface, where a headframe was constructed to haul ore directly up the slope. The Sunset’s yield of ‘free gold’ (pure gold not combined with other minerals), which could be extracted at the Mabel Mill, peaked in 1904, then fell slowly. In 1905 an average of 170 men were employed at the mine. In 1908 the reef was being worked by the main underlie shaft, 900ft (274m) deep (Sunset No. 1); and a vertical shaft, 556ft (169m) deep (Sunset No. 2). As the Sunset reef was worked in conjunction with the General Grant and the Duke of Edinburgh reefs in the New Ravenswood Company era, its exact total production of gold is hard to calculate; but from 1876 to 1912 the reef probably produced about 177,000oz of gold; and probably most of the 22, 000oz that the company extracted from 1912 - 1917.

 

The General Grant, one of the most productive reefs on the goldfield, running roughly north-south just east of the Sunset reef, was worked almost continuously to the late 1880s, and periodically thereafter. By 1895 returns had diminished, due to the small size of the reef and its highly refractory ore. In 1900, the General Grant had a vertical shaft to 110ft (34m), and then an underlie of 610ft (186m), the bottom of the latter being 450ft (137m) below the level of the shaft mouth; but operations were ‘almost completely suspended’ as the New Ravenswood Company concentrated on the Sunset reef. To 1900 the General Grant had produced 23, 651oz of gold; and after crushing of ore from the mine resumed at the beginning of 1903, it was treated with ore from the Sunset. On average, 40 men were employed on the mine in 1905. In 1908 the powerhouse for both the Sunset and the General Grant mines was situated on the General Grant lease, with three Cornish boilers. By 1912 the General Grant had produced about 36,000oz of gold.

 

To the east of the General Grant was the Duke of Edinburgh reef, running roughly northwest-southeast. This was one of the early reefs discovered on the goldfield; and in 1872 it was identified by Warden TR Hackett as one of the 28 principal reefs. It was worked in several episodes prior to the 1890s, and was re-opened in 1891, producing 1286oz of gold during 1891 - 1895. In 1908 the mine was taken over by the New Ravenswood Company, and was reorganised as an underlie shaft with haulage machinery from the Golden Hill mine, being worked in conjunction with the General Grant until 1917.

 

Along with his modernisation of the goldfield’s best mines, Wilson also abandoned chlorination at the Mabel Mill, increased the mill’s crushing capacity to 30 stamps (by 1904), and introduced the first Wilfley tables to Queensland. Crushing resumed in January 1900. Wilson improved metallurgical extraction by ‘postponing amalgamation of the free gold till the great bulk of the sulphides had been removed by concentration’. The ore was crushed in stampers without using mercury. Then, using the Wilfley tables, the heavier Galena (lead sulphide ore) and free gold was separated from the lighter sulphides. The free gold and galena was then ground in Berdan pans with mercury, while the remaining sulphides (containing iron, zinc and copper) were dispatched to the Aldershot works (near Maryborough) for smelting. In 1902 - 1903, a raff wheel, 14.5m in diameter, was built at the Mabel Mill to lift tailings (post-treatment residue) up to a flume, which carried them over to the south side of Elphinstone Creek, where they could be treated with cyanide. The cyanide works (of which remnants still remain south of Elphinstone Creek) was erected circa 1904. A 21m long girder bridge was constructed across the creek to carry steam water pipes and electric cable from the Mabel Mill to the new works, which eventually comprised two Krupp ball mills and 12 Wilfley’s tables.

 

Due to the New Ravenswood Company’s efforts, the goldfield’s production increased between 1899 and 1905. Gold recovery increased from 18, 016oz in 1899 to 24, 832oz in 1900 and to 42, 465oz in 1905. The New Ravenswood Company paid impressive 50% dividends to its shareholders in 1901, 1902, and 1904; and 75% in 1903.

 

The productivity of Ravenswood’s mines during the New Ravenswood Company era was also reflected in the goldfield’s population, which rose from 3420 in 1901 to its peak of 4707 in 1903. The 1903 population included 215 Chinese, 89 of these being alluvial miners. In 1905 two Chinese were listed as ‘storekeepers and grocers’.

 

The population increase led to a building boom in the first decade of the 20th Century. Hundreds of new houses, the town’s first two brick hotels – the Imperial hotel (1901) and the Railway Hotel (1902) – as well as brick shops such as Thorp’s Building (1903), and the brick Ravenswood Ambulance Station (1904) were constructed in this period; the use of brick being spurred by the threat of fire. The New Ravenswood Company also rebuilt the mining landscape in and around the town, with expansion of the Mabel Mill, and new headframes and winders, magazines, boilers, and brick smokestacks erected beside all the principal shafts.

 

However, not all Wilson’s ventures in this period were successful. In 1902 he floated Deep Mines Ltd, with a capital of £100, 000, to sink a shaft east of the New Ravenswood Company’s leases. This mine (also within the Ravenswood Mining Landscape) was an ambitious attempt to reach a presumed intersection of the General Grant and Sunset reefs at depth. Using the capital raised, Wilson built a model mine and mill. The shaft was started in late 1902-early 1903, and construction work on the buildings and machinery was completed later in 1903. The mine reached 512m, the deepest on the goldfield, with extensive crosscutting and driving, but only about 240oz of gold was recovered. No ore was crushed at all in 1908. By 1910 a new shaft was being sunk ‘near the western boundary’; but the mine was abandoned in 1911, and never worked again. Wilson’s London investors lost at least £65,000.

 

The Deep’s mill, built nearby and operational by 1906, was a smaller version of the Mabel Mill, with gravity stamps, Wilfley tables, and a cyanide plant. Its site, adjacent to the mine, ran counter to the normal practice of siting mills near water courses. With the failure of the Deep mine, it milled ore from other mines until about 1917.

 

Another mine, the Grand Junction, was located north of the New Ravenswood Company’s most productive mines, in the Ravenswood Mining Landscape. The Grand Junction Consolidated Gold Mining Company was formed in 1900, and a shaft was sunk in 1901 (probably the No. 1 shaft on the Grand Junction Lease No. 520). In 1902 another exploration ‘deep shaft’ (No. 2) was sunk at the southwest boundary of the Grand Junction Lease No.503. The Grand Junction mine was another failed attempt to locate a presumed junction of the General Grant and Sunset reefs at depth; by 1908 it was owned by the New Ravenswood Company. Total production was about 425oz of gold.

 

Slightly more successful was the Grant and Sunset Extended mine, at the southern end of the Ravenswood Mining landscape. This was a deep shaft sunk by the Grant and Sunset Extended Gold Mining Company, a Charters Towers-owned company with Wilson as its local director. During the 19th Century, small mines had been operated in the Rob Roy reef, to the southeast. The Grant and Sunset Extended was floated in 1902, the intent being to locate the General Grant and Sunset reefs south of Buck Reef. The plant and buildings of the Yellow Jack mine, southeast of Ravenswood, were re-erected on the site. The shaft was down 70ft (21m) in 1902 and 930ft (283m) by 1908, with 50 men employed at the mine by the later date. The mine closed by 1910, but was worked on tribute until 1917, with about 15,000oz of gold obtained over 1904 - 1918.

 

The boom period at Ravenswood did not last. As well as losing money on the Deep and Grand Junction mines, the New Ravenswood Company faced the closure of the Aldershot works in 1906, and declining yields from 1908 to 1912. Although Wilson experimented with flotation (agitating crushed ore in oil and water, and extracting fine gold particles on the surface of air bubbles) and cyanide processes at the Mabel Mill, it was too late to save his company. The Shelmalier had closed by 1904, the Black Jack in 1909, and the Melaneur in 1910. By that year, the General Grant, Sunset, Duke of Edinburgh, and London North (obtained 1910) were the New Ravenswood Company’s only producing mines.

 

Few new buildings were constructed in Ravenswood after 1905. The hospital closed in 1908. That year the goldfield’s population consisted of 4141 Europeans (including 2625 women and children) and 181 Chinese (including 94 alluvial miners). This dropped to 2581, including 92 Chinese, by 1914.

 

Increased costs and industrial disputes in the 1910s hastened the end of the New Ravenswood Company era. During a miner’s strike between December 1912 and July 1913, over lay-offs, the fresh vegetables and business loans provided by Ravenswood’s Chinese community helped keep the town going. Although the miners won, it was a hollow victory, as the company could only afford to re-employ a few of the men. World War I (1914 - 1918) then increased labour and material costs for the New Ravenswood Company. The London North mine closed in 1915, and on the 24th of March 1917 the New Ravenswood Company ceased operations; ending large-scale mining in Ravenswood for the next 70 years.

 

By 1917, the Ravenswood goldfield had produced over 850, 000oz of gold (nearly a quarter coming from the Sunset mine), and 1, 000, 000oz of silver; making it the fifth largest gold producer in Queensland, after Charters Towers, Mount Morgan, Gympie, and the Palmer Goldfield. Ravenswood was also the second largest producer of reef gold in north Queensland, after Charters Towers.

 

Small scale mining and re-treatment (1919 - 1960s):

 

After 1917 the Ravenswood goldfield entered a period of hibernation, with intermittent small-scale attempts at mining. In 1919, Ravenswood Gold Mines Ltd took over some of Wilson’s leases and renovated the Deep mine’s mill, but obtained poor returns. Ravenswood Gold Mines also worked the Duke of Edinburgh from 1919 to 1930, with good returns reported in 1924. The General Grant and Sunset were also worked on a small scale from 1919 - 1921, while the Mabel Mill continued to provide crushing services for the limited local mining.

 

Consequently, Ravenswood’s population declined and the town shrank physically. In 1921 the town’s population fell below 1000, and by 1923 there were 530 people left, including 8 Chinese. During the 1920s, prior to the closure of the railway branch line to Ravenswood in 1930, hundreds of the town’s timber buildings were dismantled and railed away. By 1927, only the two brick hotels remained operating as hotels. The Ravenswood Shire was abolished in 1929, and by 1934 only 357 people remained in the town.

 

Despite this decline, some gold was still being extracted. There was a small increase in gold production between 1923 and 1927, and due to the gold price rise of the 1930s, some mines were re-worked and efforts were also made to treat the old mullock heaps (waste rock from mining) and tailings dumps with improved cyanide processes. Between 1931 and 1942, 12, 253oz of gold was obtained from the goldfield, the peak year being 1940.

 

A number of companies were active in Ravenswood in the 1930s-early 1940s. In 1933, the North Queensland Gold Mining Development Company took up leases along Buck Reef and reopened the Golden Hill mine, and the following year their operations were taken over by Gold Mines of Australia Ltd. The 1870s Eureka mine (near the Imperial Hotel) was revived by James Judge in 1934. In 1935 the Ravenswood Concentrates Syndicate began re-treating the Grant mullock heaps in the remaining stampers at the Mabel Mill, and dewatering the Sunset No. 2 shaft; while the Sunset Extended Gold Mining Company, with James Judge as manager, dewatered the Grant and Sunset Extended shafts (which connected to the Sunset, General Grant and Duke of Edinburgh shafts), and re-timbered the Grant and Sunset Extended, General Grant, and Sunset underlie (No. 1) shafts. The London North mine was reopened by R J Hedlefs in 1937, and Basque miners were working the Sunset No. 2 shaft at this time.

 

The Little Grand Junction mine, located at the intersection of Siggers Street and School Street, on the old Grand Junction Lease No. 520, was operated from 1937 - 1942 by local miners Henry John Bowrey and John Thomas Blackmore. Five men were employed at the mine in 1940. The shaft had apparently been sunk previously by the Grand Junction Consolidated Gold Mining Company; and Bowrey and Party reconditioned it and extended the existing workings.

 

In 1938, Archibald and Heuir set up a mill on the bank of One Mile Creek to treat mullock dumps, and the Ravenswood Gold Mining Syndicate (formed 1937, with James Judge as manager) began treating the mullock dumps of the Sunset mine in late 1938. The same syndicate also dewatered and reopened part of the Grant and Sunset Extended; and the Grand Junction mine was reopened by Judge circa 1939 - 1942.

 

The Ravenswood Gold Mining Syndicate’s (Judge’s) mill initially consisted of 10 head of stamps obtained from the Mother Lode Mill at Mount Wright (northwest of Ravenswood), powered by a diesel engine. The ore was crushed by the stamper battery, concentrated with Wilfley tables, and then either treated with cyanide or sent to the Chillagoe smelters. Initial success with some rich ore led to enlargement of the mill to 30 stamps in 1939 - 40. A Stirling boiler and a 250hp engine were also obtained from the Burdekin meatworks (Sellheim), and a rock breaker, elevator, and conveyor were installed. However, the upgraded mill proved to be overpowered and required a lot of timber fuel; the brick foundations used for the machinery were not strong enough; and the best ore from the Sunset had already been treated, so the mill closed early in 1942 and the plant was moved to Cloncurry.

 

Also in 1938, Maxwell Partridge and William Ralston installed a new plant south of Elphinstone Creek, to the immediate west of the Mabel Mill’s old cyanide works, to re-treat the old tailings with cyanide. A ball mill, filter, and other plant were purchased from the Golden Mile, Cracow in 1939, while later that year a suction gas engine and flotation machine were also installed. This operation closed circa 1942, and the coloured sands on the site today are residues from the flotation process: the yellow sand is from the floatation of iron pyrites; the grey sands are copper tailings; and the black material is zinc tailings.

 

There was limited activity on the goldfield in the late 1940s to early 1960s. The Empire Gold Mining Syndicate treated mullock dumps from The Irish Girl, London, and Sunset mines from 1946 to 1949, as well as some of the dumps from the Grand Junction (1947). The Duke of Edinburgh mine was briefly reopened by Cuevas and Wilson in 1947, and the Cornish boilers on the site (one with the maker’s mark ‘John Danks & Son Pty Ltd makers Melbourne) may relate to this (unsuccessful) operation. Percy Kean reopened the Great Extended mine at Totley in 1947, and later purchased Partridge’s mill in 1951 to use it as a flotation plant to treat the silver-lead ore from Totley, adding a diesel engine, stonebreaker, Wilfley tables, and classifier. The Totley mines closed in 1954, although the Great Extended mine was briefly sub-leased by Silver Horizons No Liability, in 1964. Partridge’s mill was closed circa 1965.

 

Other attempts were made in the early 1950s to rework old sites. A Townsville syndicate led by Leslie Cook and George Blackmore reopened the Grand Junction mine in 1951, but it soon closed. James Judge also recommenced gold mining at Donnybrook, but closed in 1954; while 900 tons of tailings from the Deep mine’s mill site were taken for re-treatment at Heuir’s cyanide plant in the early 1950s.

 

A new industry:

 

In the 1960 and 1970s, Ravenswood’s population shrank to its nadir of about 70 people. At the same time, there was a growing nostalgic interest in old towns in Australia. In 1968 the landscape of Ravenswood was described in romantic terms: ‘Mute testimonials are the numerous mullock heaps which dot the countryside; the rusty remains of steam engines; stampers which were used to crush stone; and collapsed cyanide vats… Derelict poppet-heads…stand above deep, abandoned shafts. Colossal columns of chimney stacks rise majestically from the entanglement of rubber vines and Chinese apple trees.’ Some locals realised that preserving the town’s surviving historic buildings and structures was necessary to attract tourists and create a new local industry.

 

From this time onwards the town’s mining heritage was seen as an asset. The National Trust of Queensland met with locals in 1974, and a conservation plan for the town was published in 1975. Later, the town sites of Totley and Ravenswood were both entered into the National Trust of Queensland Register. Comments from an International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) trip to northern Australia in 1978 included ‘Ravenswood…is one of the most evocative (gold towns of Australia) and this must be preserved. A policy of “all that is necessary but as little as possible” must be strongly pursued’. The increased population of North Queensland, longer paid holidays, improved roads, and the rise of car ownership after World War II, all increased visitation to Ravenswood, as did the completion of a road past Ravenswood to the Burdekin Dam, in the 1980s. As a result, the town and its mining landscape have been represented in brochures, art, and photography. In particular, the landmark qualities of the tall brick chimneys are a distinctive feature in representations of Ravenswood.

 

Modern operations:

 

However, gold mining recommenced at Ravenswood in the 1980s, due to a rise in the gold price and the efficiencies gained from open cut mining and modern cyanide metallurgical extraction processes. From 1983 - 1986 the Northern Queensland Gold Company Ltd conducted agglomeration heap-leaching (spraying a sodium cyanide solution on previously mined material heaped on a plastic membrane), in the process removing a landmark tailings dump at King’s mine in Totley, and mullock heaps from the Grant and Sunset mines. In 1987 Carpentaria Gold commenced open cut mining of the Buck reef (the Buck Reef West pit) near the old Grant and Sunset mines on the south side of the town. Later, pits were dug further east along the reef. Some underground mining was also undertaken from the Buck Reef West pit until 1993, which broke into the old workings of the General Grant, Sunset, and Duke of Edinburgh mines. The old headframe at the Grant and Sunset Extended was demolished in 1988, and replaced with a new steel headframe, which was used until 1993 and then removed. The Melaneur-Shelmalier-Black Jack-Overlander reef complex, on the north side of the town, was mined as an open cut 1990 - 1991, before being backfilled as a golf course. The Nolan’s Gully open cut commenced in 1993.

 

Although modern mining revived the economy of the town, it did not replicate the building boom of the early 20th century.

 

The heritage significance of Ravenswood’s surviving mining infrastructure was recognised in a 1996 Queensland Mining Heritage Places Study by Jane Lennon & Associates and Howard Pearce; and a 2000 Conservation Management Plan by Peter Bell. In 2006, the population of Ravenswood, the oldest surviving inland town in north Queensland, was 191.

 

By the mid-2010s the population of Ravenswood stood at 255 people.

 

Source: Queensland Heritage Register & Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The Imperial Hotel, a striking two storey brick hotel in the main Street of Ravenswood, is one of a handful of buildings which survive from this once important mining town. Constructed in 1901 for James Delaney and run by members of this family for most of the twentieth century, it is evidence of Ravenswood's prosperity during its boom period.

 

The discovery of several important goldfields in Queensland in the nineteenth century formed a major component in the development of the North.. The need to access and exploit gold finds determined the path of railways, the establishment of related industries and commerce and the location of settlements. Some of these were short lived 'rushes', where tent and shanty townships disappeared almost as quickly as they rose. Other settlements based on goldfields became established towns with government and civic buildings, shops and family homes and survived as such. A few became important centres, only to fade away as gold yields fell. Ravenswood was one of these.

 

The area was first settled by Europeans following the establishment of Bowen in 1861. Pastoral runs were soon set up in the hinterland, including the area on which the Ravenswood field was to develop. Gold had been found in north Queensland at Star River in 1865 and this triggered further exploration. Gold was found at Merri Merriwa, the run on which the town of Ravenswood stands, in 1867, although it was reported as being on the adjoining property of Ravenswood, the name by which the field was always known. The first claim made was the 'Perseverance', later to be known as the 'Donnybrook' mine. This has a connection with the Imperial since the success of the mine is said to have provided James Delaney with the capital with which to build the hotel.

 

Much of the gold initially found was in a triangle in and around three dry creeks which soon formed the focus for a tent and shanty settlement. Ravenswood gold was in reefs and a small battery was first set up in 1869, followed by the Lady Marian Mill in 1870. The settlement was also surveyed at this time, but by then the goldfield itself and the buildings and streets already established had shaped the town and the survey merely formalised what was already in place. This can still be seen clearly in the irregularity of the major streets. Ravenswood was gazetted as a town in 1871 and at this time it had 30 hotels and a population of about 1000.

 

It was also beginning to have problems as gold at deeper levels proved to be finely distributed in ore containing other minerals and was difficult to separate either by mechanical or chemical means. This required greater capital to fund various technologies for extraction. Many miners left for other fields, such as Charters Towers, discovered in 1871 and which quickly overtook Ravenswood as a gold producer and as the most important inland North Queensland town. Despite this, Ravenswood continued to prosper due to a steady, though reduced, production of gold, the discovery of silver at nearby Totley in 1878 and as a commercial centre. Shanties were replaced by sawn timber buildings and as single miners left, more families moved in. The stability of the town was assisted by linking of Ravenswood to the Townsville/Charters Towers railway line in 1884. In this year the Ravenswood Gold Company was formed and experimented with better means to process local ore. In 1899 the New Ravenswood Company was formed by A.L. Wilson who raised overseas capital, reopened old mines and used modern methods to rework tailings more efficiently. The shareholders recouped their investment in the first two years and this drew world-wide interest. It was the beginning of Ravenswood's most prosperous period.

 

In 1900 James Delaney applied for a licence for a new 18 bedroom hotel. He had been the licensee of the Commercial Hotel since 1896 when he married Anne Browne, possibly a connection of the owner of the town's most prominent hostelry, Browne's Ravenswood Hotel. The site purchased by Delaney was separated from Browne's by only 2 shops and he opened his splendid two storey Imperial Hotel in early 1901. On the night of the 18 April, 1901, the Imperial burned to the ground taking with it the whole block of buildings, with the exception of Browne's hotel, which had been protected by a brick wall. The damage was estimated at £20,000. The wall had possibly been erected as a firewall as both the Ravenswood Hotel and the shops Browne owned alongside it were timber, as were virtually all of the buildings in Ravenswood. Closely built timber structures and the lack of an adequate water supply for fire fighting made it possible for fires to race along a block until reaching a gap which acted as a fire break, a fact underlined by a similar fire on the opposite side of the street only three months later. The owners agreed to use the same architect, Eaton, Bates and Polin, to redesign the whole block and tenders were called in early May 1901. The shops between the Ravenswood and the Imperial were replaced by 'Browne's Buildings', Trehearn built a new shop for his former tenant, James Tait & Co. and the bakery and Commercial Hotel, both owned by the Estate of Michael Franzman, were replaced by 3 shops.

 

Ravenswood had produced bricks since its early years and a team of bricklayers is thought to have already been on the field, brought in by A.L. Wilson to rebuild mining structures such as chimneys. It is said that bricks were brought in from Townsville, but these may have been the cream face bricks applied in bands as a feature of the new buildings and seen to striking effect on the Imperial, which became the centrepiece of two rows of handsome shops.

 

Delaney died in July 1902 but had already made the hotel over the his wife in 1901. The Delaney's had four daughters, Mary Ellen (1896), Kathleen (1898), Teresa (1899) and Johanna (1901) who at the time of his death were aged between six years and eleven months. In the early years Mrs Delaney appears to have employed a manager, but in 1906 took over the management herself, pending a proposed transfer of the license. In the event, she continued to run the hotel, assisted by her daughters as they grew up.

 

The population of Ravenswood peaked in 1903 at 4700 but after 1908 the town began to decline. As time went by the cost of extraction grew as returns lessened and Wilson lost money searching for 'mother' lodes at deep levels and began to lay off miners. A strike in 1912 dragged out for eight months causing hardship and although judgement eventually favoured the miners, Wilson could no longer afford to employ many of them. The decline of the Ravenswood mines continued with the outbreak of war in 1914 increasing costs and disruptions to the labour supply. Buildings began to be sold for removal and in 1916 rail services were cut. In 1917 the New Ravenswood Company closed.

 

In the 1920s most of the buildings in Ravenswood were moved away, but the Imperial, being a brick building, could not be moved and continued to trade. Ravenswood Shire ceased to exist in 1929 and was absorbed into Dalrymple Shire. In 1930 Ravenswood became the first Queensland town to lose its railway connection. A small revival occurred during the 1930s and a shaft was sunk next to the hotel, but most gold was gained by applying more modern extraction processes to known sites. This did not make much difference to the life of the town and by the 1960s it had reached its lowest ebb with a population of about 70. At this point, tourists began to take an interest in the town, studies were made of the buildings and work began to conserve them. In the 1980s the whole town was listed by the Australian Heritage Commission and the National Trust of Queensland. In 1987 Carpentaria Gold Ltd opened a new open cut mine using modern heap leaching processes.

 

Throughout the difficult times in Ravenswood, the hotel continued to trade. Anne Delaney died in 1968 and the hotel was then run by Teresa (Tessa) who died in 1980 and Jo who died in 1989. The hotel then passed to Mary (Maisie), the only married daughter, and her three daughters, Kathleen having died early. In 1994 it was sold to local owners and still operates as a hotel. Ravenswood's two hotels have helped to maintain an economic life in the town and continue to offer accommodation and recreational facilities.

 

The buildings which flanked the hotel have been demolished, the last bay of Browne's Buildings within recent years, so the hotel now stands alone. The new owners have redecorated some of the bedrooms on the first floor and have removed some of the dining room furniture into storage to create a pool room at the front of the hotel.

 

Source: Queensland Heritage Register.

Explored #24. thanks guys :)

 

we're all struggling today.. boredom and frustration are at their limit. we took ourselves for a walk today.. just a round loop around the houses, we're prob not meant to but i needed to see the sky and feel the air on my face.

 

but instead of helping, within 15 minutes we were exhausted.. then it started to rain and i swear a car deliberately aimed at a puddle in the road right next to us.. we practically dived out the way to avoid getting soaked.. asshole.

 

decided to throw this into nerboo's group pick for FGR "what the fluff".. so critique me people.. inspire me.. cause right now i feel like i've lost my mojo.

LOVE the colour scheme of this delightful skirt from British Retro. Sadly, their size 14 is somewhat incompatible with my (currently) 14-and-a-bit waistline. I really must lay off the pies!

View On Black Explore No 77. Thanks everyone!

 

This is Britannia Beach back in September. We'd been having a series of very red sunsets so I tried to capture that back in September.

 

Sorry for the slow down in postings. I hope to get back to finish the Queen Mary tour soon. Unfortunately life continues to be eventful. We're in the midst of lay-offs at work. Friday night my mother was getting in the car and suddenly had a pain in her arm followed by severe chills. We thought she was having a heart attack and rushed her to the hospital. Fortunately it looks like it was a case of flu, possibly H1N1. We'll know for sure tomorrow as it takes 48 hours to run the H1N1 tests. She's just been moved out of Emergency today into a regular bed. Went to see her and she's looking well and sounds strong, which is great news as after smoking all her life she suffers from emphysema so flus tend to run the risk of pneumonia. Unfortunately while I was waiting to see her I started having dizzy spells, so for the first time in 20 years I actually went into the Emergency to see a doctor. They even had a record of my last visit which was after a car accident - in 1989, LOL! Literally 20 years back. And no, I wasn't driving! :-)

 

Anyway the Doctor says the dizziness was 'indeterminate" which means I have to wait and see if I have H1N1, another flu, or if it's just stress related or something else... like alien microbes, I suppose. So I should have some time to post and comment in the next few days as I'm supposed take it easy, though I still plan on going back to the hospital tomorrow. Right now I'm still slightly light-headed but otherwise fine.

 

Hope everyone is else is well! Watch your health. Some of these symptoms that H1N1 comes with aren't normal ones. Dizziness without nausea, pains in the arm or chest, chills and hot flashes, etc. can all be symptoms so play it safe and if you come down with it see a doctor and get yourself put on Tamiflu to fight it. If you've got it and your temperature drops and spikes up again go to the doctor as it could mean complications. Beside my Mom I know several others who are fighting this flu. It's quite nasty, so treat it with respect and take care of yourselves!

August 17th, 2010

+3 in comments

I took this around midnight.

I must stop taking pictures so late at night. It's becoming a really bad habit.

But, in my defence, it was really icky out today.

and, I promise I'll try to lay off the candles, I know you guys are probably tired of them already.

90|365

 

For this week Project SoulPancake's Theme: Tech Detox we are suppose to lay off technology for a whole day. That means no phone, no facebook, no tv, and most importantly no "How I Met Your Mother", my favorite tv show. today wasn't unbearable since i made it out alive. however a simple task such as this allows me to evaluate myself and see how much dependent i really am upon technology. at work, i constantly catches myself attempting to reach for my phone and "checking" the time. it really made me feel not myself...

 

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One of dozens of spiral staircases that led into the basement of Curtis Specialty Papers, which was a paper manufactory that made specialty papers for candy manufacturers and other firms when it closed in 2003, laying off 213 workers. The former paper mill became an EPA Superfund site in 2009.

 

In 2016, 20-year-old Rachel Elizabeth Curry was at the site with friends at approximately midnight when she fell off a catwalk near a smokestack, killing her instantly.

 

The mill originally opened as the Riegel Paper Co., having opened in 1907 with 75 employees. At one point, some 700 people worked there. In 1978, members of the Riegel family sold their remaining company stock and the mill went through a number of owners, including Crown Vantage, which, after filing for bankruptcy, sold it to Curtis in 2001.

After a morning at the dentist having a filling (I need to lay off the biscuits) I found myself with enough time to head up to Alport to catch some of the glorious sunshine.

The small lake was looking good with a skim of ice on it's surface and some good reflections.

Thank goodness my boots are watertight as I had to wade out over the reeds to get what I wanted.

Killer Whales of the west coast of Whalsay, weather conditions were low cloud and mostly calm dry conditions. The Killer Whales (Orcas) were first spotted on the east side of the calf of Linga an Island which is situated of Symbister Harbour. The whales then proceeded into the north west traveling between islands Bruceholm and Hunderholm headed to a bight which lays off mainland Shetland called Bunnydale, here the whales frolicked around breaching and playing swimming upside down etc. Here as you will see in one of the photos the whale also grabbed a tystie for a snack. They then left this location and headed south again around the island of Hunderholm and carried on proceeding south towards nesting and Lerwick area. In the pod there were 2 large Killer Whales and three smaller cubs. The whales travelled at a speed around 6-7 knots into the south.

  

Scanned slide from June 1998, the CCP could put together some consists of shit somedays, but then somedays they looked damn good. I had to lay off on call at work to go get this eastbound grain train leaving Waterloo. Those damn flat tires! This was way more important looking back now, then moving another IMRL train.

They sounded so lovely on the phone.

 

Yup.

 

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Couldn't think of a decent title for this one. Maybe you can suggest a better one? Oh... and I should probably lay off the PhotoShop for a while...

 

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I know you'd love to:

 

Follow me on Twitter

 

Like my Facebook page

 

Visit my Blog

  

Strobist:

Bowens Gemini Pro 500 with brilliantly big softbox camera left at 45 degrees, set on 3, Second Bowens with disappointingly smaller softbox camera right at 45 degrees set on 3 too. Triggered by cable.

Optare Excel OP24 ex Go North East 8148 (S148OCU) and Leyland Lynx 2 ex Cardiff Bus 263 (J263UDW) are seen on a Summer lay-off in Galway August 2007

For Macro Mondays. October 20, 2014 ~ Music. HMM!

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1Ond-OwgU8

Taken at The Regency, Laguna Woods, California. © 2013 All Rights Reserved.

My images are not to be used, copied, edited, or blogged without my explicit permission.

Please!! NO Glittery Awards or Large Graphics...Buddy Icons are OK. Thank You!

 

"Blue Suede Shoes", Elvis Presley

 

Well, it's one for the money

Two for the show

Three to get ready

Now go, cat, go

 

But don't you

Step on my blue suede shoes

Well, you can do anything

But lay off of my blue suede shoes

Molly: *gazes around distractedly, as she signs* “Yeah. They fit fine—a smidge tight in the waist, but, otherwise, fine. Course, after I get done eating all of this, I doubt they’ll button at all. Damn, I gotta get laid. Burns off calories, you know?” *cranes her neck, spotting the candy aisle, hurries off*

 

Charley (smugly): “Just so you know, saying ‘I told you so’ is beneath me.”

 

Diego: *snorts* “Since when?”

 

Charley: “Since now. I’m feeling benevolent in the presence of all this most excellent…*flourishes theatrically* peanut butter.”

 

Diego: “If I’d known that’s all it took, I’d have been smearing PB all over myself since day one.”

 

Charley: *stares at Diego, slowly turning pink*

 

Diego: *lips twist up teasingly* “Seriously? Is that all it takes? Gimme a jar. I’ll start right now.” *grabs a jar off the shelf, starts to twist off the lid*

 

Charley: *grabs the jar out of his hand, voice husky* “The only way PB will help you is if you shove it in your mouth…*clears her throat, trying to get her voice back to normal* ’Cuz at least it’d shut you up for a while. And I think I’ve proven that I eat fine without your help, so I want you to lay off. Okay?”

 

Diego: *holds up hands* “Okay. I guess I’m just not used to seeing you in clothes that show any discernable shape. When you were with us, you wore about five layers, each one baggier than the last. So, you may actually be heavier than you were…but you don’t look it, since you’re dressing so sexy now.”

 

Charley: *looks down at her baggy jeans, tee, and worn sneakers* “Sexy, huh?”

 

Diego: “Well, actually, you’re always sexy to me, baggy clothes or not. And, for the record, I sure wouldn’t mind seeing you smeared in peanut butter. *drawls suggestively* Whaddya say, Bug, wanna get sticky?”

 

Charley: *face slowly turns pink again, as she meets Diego’s heated gaze and shakes her head, refusing to respond verbally*

 

Diego: *smiles knowingly* “Gonna go get my skulk on, see if I can make the clerks freak, thinking they’ve got a shoplifter on their hands.” *saunters off*

 

Charley: *stares after Diego, eyes involuntarily drawn to the enticing way his butt moves beneath his jeans, mutters irritably* “Can and Sun, why couldn’t you just keep your big, pervy mouths shut!” *sighs loudly, turns around, and begins stocking up on peanut butter*

 

Lizzy: *runs over to the bakery case, pressing her nose to it* “I want that one…that one…annnnd that one!” *stabs her finger at the glass, leaving smudges behind*

 

Hermione: *follows behind Lizzy, slurping obnoxiously on a smoothie* “Miz Yuri said we’d bake cookies while we were over today, Lizard. And you know hers are better than any of the stuff they got here.”

 

Lizzy: *straightens up, nodding* “Yeah, you’re right. I guess I can wait until…*spots Charley, eyes widening, whispers frantically* Mione-Mo! I think that’s Miz Sweeney over there!”

 

Fashion Credits

***Any doll enhancements (i.e. freckles, piercings, eye color changes, haircuts) were done by me unless otherwise stated.***

 

Charley

Jeans: Clear lan

Top: Sekiguchi Momko – Lazy Seventeen

Belt: Cangaway (etsy.com)

Sneakers: Sekiguchi Momoko Accessory

Glasses: Sekiguchi Momoko Accessory

Necklace: Me

 

Doll is a Morning Dew Giselle transplanted to a Poppy body, re-rooted by the superlative valmaxi(!!!)

 

Lizzy

Dress: Sugar Mag

Sweater: Michelle Tucker

Belt: Cangaway (etsy.com)

Socks: Unknown

Boots: Snow’s Shopping Paradise (eBay)

Hat: Jennifer Sue

Bag: Sekiguchi Momoko – Sweetheart of the Cosmos

Hello Kitty Bag Charm & Pins: Nikki in Wales

Necklace: Me

 

Doll is a Lacy Modernist Momoko.

 

Hermione

Pants: A gift. (Thank you FMIL!)

Shirt: Jakks Pacific – Hannah Montana Doll

Belt: Volks – WTG – Selfish

Sneakers: Sekiguchi Momoko – Preppy Girl

Hat: IT – 2012 – Color Infusion Style Lab: Experiment 2

 

Doll is a Preppy Girl Momoko.

  

Lay-offs by Rockwell International in Columbus Ohio in 1970 led my father to a new position as head draftsman for G. E. In Schenectady NY. This was his co-workers' farewell "card" (measuring 19x15"). The art is by Warren Walker, who found his new job doing animation art at Disney in Florida. My father lured some of his co-workers into cycling and I'm sure he missed that companionship on the roads in NY. He threw a lot of his efforts into helping my generation enjoy the sport, making our time trials work, creating maps and certificates and driving us to events such as TOSRV back in Ohio and Konski's 24 hour time trial in 1973. His avid interest in the sport only ended when he passed away at 94 in 2013.

Finishing up its work at Airscule at MP 54.6 on the UP Jonesboro Sub. is UP Train LSI55 18. They spotted a load and pulled an empty anhydrous tank from the fertilizer spot at the dealer on the old Malden Airbase. Hot on their tail laying off crossings behind them is UP Train MCHPB 17 with C40-8 leading. The name "Airscule" is unique; a portmanteau phonetic spelling of "Air School", since trainer planes once flew out of here.

 

The lead unit on the local was built as MP 949 in 3-1973, builder and frame number 71702-27. It was renumbered MP 2100, and then UP 2100 before going back to Helm. It was leased to several railroads in the 1990's as HATX 205, and even acquired a nose mounted oscillating headlight while leased to KCS, which has of course since been blanked over.

 

They were leased back to UP, and this engine became UP 1835 on 4-15-1997, and was renumbered to UP 335 on 8-8-2003. The unit went back to Helm as HLCX 335 on 11-25-09, renumbered again to HLCX 3885 on 10-24-2012

 

Locomotives: UP 335, UP 1527, UP 9159, UP 9848

 

5-18-06

Malden, MO

Here seen modelling my most awesome wreath that I made for mayday.

 

which *is* a craft

 

though personally I think munkie should lay off the fertility rites, they are eating me out of house and home.

Nail technicians and skin-care specialists (the salon workers who do the most waxing) earn a mean annual pre-tax wage of $22,150 to $31,990. This figure doesn't include tips, which can total another $4,430 to $6,398—a clear financial incentive to befriend your clients in this service-based, nonreciprocal way.

 

And yet. When it came to 38, I wanted the cash, not the compliment, to show the value of my abilities. And maybe, to compensate for how she got to leave feeling so clean and sexy—but I could still smell her body on me, ever so faintly, even after I threw away the gloves and washed my hands.

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I’m not sure what the phrase “owning your sexuality” means to you, but for me, one thing it entails is responsibility: doing my best to make sexual choices that are sound for me and a partner. (That’s also part of doing consent well.)

 

If I am offering something sexually light and fun but anticipate that it will be emotionally or interpersonally complex–or if I’m feeling stressed, confused and worried about it–then I can know that easy-breezy is neither what I can expect nor earnestly offer.

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Can Sex “Just for Fun” Be Emotionally Healthy?

October 11, 2011 by Heather Corinna

 

msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/10/11/can-sex-just-for-fun-...

 

This week’s installment of Heather Corinna‘s sex-and-relationships advice column tackles the issue of casual sex.

 

...Q: So excited for this new blog spot! Can you discuss whether it’s emotionally healthy to have sex outside of relationships? I want to own my sexuality, but all of the advice around me seems to be no-sex-outside-of-relationships-or-marriage. I know this depends on the individual, but any insight would be great! I’ve been toying with asking an ex–whom I am friends with–to have sex just for fun. I’m 98 percent sure he’ll agree, but I am worried about emotional health consequences. He has always wanted a much closer relationship than I do. I’m worried I’ll feel guilty for possibly leading him (or myself) into wanting more.

 

You’re right: this is a very individual and situational decision. To give some context, a recent study found that, on average, for 20-year-olds, casual sex and committed relationships led to the same level of psychological health. But individuals aren’t averages. Not everyone wants or is comfortable with sex in the same kinds of relationships or scenarios (including committed relationships). Context and interpersonal dynamics factor in, too.

 

There are some guidelines, however, that everyone can apply. When a sexual situation is likely to be sound, we usually feel good heading into it, as does anyone else involved. If we feel uncertain or predict negative feelings on anyone’s part, those are strong cues not to proceed.

 

I’m not sure what the phrase “owning your sexuality” means to you, but for me, one thing it entails is responsibility: doing my best to make sexual choices that are sound for me and a partner. (That’s also part of doing consent well.) If I am offering something sexually light and fun but anticipate that it will be emotionally or interpersonally complex–or if I’m feeling stressed, confused and worried about it–then I can know that easy-breezy is neither what I can expect nor earnestly offer.

 

Even when I’m having sex-for-sex’s-sake–which I would define as sex that takes place outside of a larger intimate relationship, without any agreed-upon, intended or implied commitment–that doesn’t mean I have zero responsibility for my emotional health or that of others. My partner (or wanna-be partner) and I still owe one another respect, care and consideration, which includes considering possible outcomes, even if we don’t intend to be there with each other for them.

 

It sounds like you’re on board with that, and you’ve already voiced your own sense that this specific situation probably isn’t sound for you or your ex. While he’d likely agree to sex, clearly some of this wouldn’t be fun for him or you, and could be an emotional landmine. While your romantic relationship may be over, you two are in a relationship: you have a history and a friendship, and it sounds like you have strong feelings for and about one another that are not only or primarily sexual. If what you want is just a roll in the proverbial hay, this isn’t likely to be it.

 

It also sounds like you’ve been curious about sex outside of romantic relationships, but you haven’t felt supported in or exposed to alternatives. So you might also want to give yourself more time to take a bit more stock of what you want and to find people to talk with who aren’t all saying the same things. If that’s not currently available to you, Sex & Single Girls is a great anthology with a diverse array of women writing about various sexual experiences. I also think Jaclyn Friedman’s new book, What You Really Really Want, could be just the thing for you.

 

My best advice is that you hold out for an opportunity to explore casual sex if and when you feel a lot better about it. That will also likely entail a partner or scenario you don’t feel so conflicted about; that feels more likely to be explosive in the ways you want, rather than the ways you don’t.

 

Check out last week’s advice about lube blues.

 

Have a sex, sexual-health or relationships question you want answered? Email it to Heather at sexandrelationships@msmagazine.com. By sending a question to that address, you acknowledge you give permission for your question to be published. Your email address and any other personally identifying information will remain private. Not all questions will receive answers.

Photo from Flickr user skampy under Creative Commons 2.0.

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When the Sweet Spot Becomes a Sore Spot

October 31, 2011 by Heather Corinna

 

msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/10/31/when-the-sweet-spot-b...

  

Q: I’m a 21-year-old lesbian. A problem has popped up in me and my girlfriend’s sex life. When we practice tribadism with just skin, after a while a very small raw spot will show up, bringing with it a sharp pain. Both of us have this problem. Neither of us is clean-shaven, but we do trim–would shaving help? Is there anything else we can do?

 

A: Ah, friction. Sometimes it feels so awesome. Other times it hurts. Part of what makes genitals so sensitive is that genital tissue is far more delicate than other kinds of skin on our bodies. With genital friction, there’s a tipping point after which a wowie can turn into an owie.

 

To avoid being rubbed raw, first make sure you and your partner are always very well-lubricated. Lube from a bottle tends to do the job better than our bodies’ lubricant when it comes to friction-intensive sex.

 

Apply lube before you start and add more as needed throughout. Be generous and don’t skimp.

 

I checked in with Searah Deysach, the fantastic owner of Early to Bed, to see if she had any specific lube suggestions; she keeps up with brands and types like nobody’s business. She suggested a high-quality silicone lube, such as Uberlube or Sliquid Silver–they tend to be longer-lasting and slicker than water-based lubricants. But if you prefer water-based, she suggests glycerin-free brands such as Sliquid Sea or Liquid Silk (my fave), which are kinder to vulvas and vaginas than those with glycerin.

Searah and I are of one mind about hairy issues. She says, “Hair that is growing back after shaving can be especially irritating, as stubble can be vicious on delicate tissues. “ I agree. Stubble from hair removal is more likely to irritate than the softer pubic hair we tend to have when we don’t shave. If all you do is trim, chances are hair isn’t the problem.

 

Consider positioning. I’d suggest experimenting with an eye for reducing how much weight is being put on each of your genitals. Try finding ways you can scissor without anyone really being “on top” at all, like lying on your backs toe to head. Searah suggested straddling your lover’s thigh as an alternative. Similar feeling, less pain. If you do like a missionary-style V-on-V position, whoever’s on top can try to balance so less weight rests on the other person’s tender bits–e.g., by bracing their hands on a headboard. Mixing up positions often helps, too. And if and when either of you start feeling raw, don’t keep going with the activity that got you there–take a break from genital sex or at least consider that spot done for the day. If it remains raw the next day, lay off the intense pressure for as long as it takes to heal.

 

Now and then this still might happen, especially because, when we’re very aroused, pleasure can cause us to space out on signals of pain. But with these adjustments, you can probably make it a rarity instead of a norm.

 

Check out last week’s advice to a woman whose fiancé monitored her vagina’s size.

 

Have a sex, sexual-health or relationships question you want answered? Email it to Heather at sexandrelationships@msmagazine.com. By sending a question to that address, you acknowledge you give permission for your question to be published. Your email address and any other personally identifying information will remain private. Not all questions will receive answers.

 

Photo from Flickr user Gray Marchiori-Simpson under license from Creative Commons 2.0

 

Line drawing from Wikimedia Commons.

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My Year in Waxing School

Naked people don't tip well, and more tricks of the trade.

By Virginia Sole-Smith|Posted Friday, Nov. 19, 2010, at 12:08 PM ET

 

www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2010/11/my_year_i...

 

The 38th client I worked on at Beauty U. was my first full Brazilian wax—the kind where you remove all (or almost all) of your hair below the belt. I'd waxed many bikini lines and other body parts. I'd also assisted on Brazilians, handing my teachers wax-dipped Popsicle sticks the way nurses hand over scalpels. But now, it was my turn to wield the wax, solo. "I know—I'm a hairy beast!" Client 38 apologized, hopping onto the waxing table, clad in disposable thong. "You have to fix me. I'm going on vacation with my boyfriend."

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She spread her legs. I put on some vinyl gloves and worked down and across her pelvis, twirling clumps of hair and trimming them free. You have to trim any hair longer than eyebrow-length to prevent "locking" with the wax. You also have to act like this is normal, even though a part of your brain is thinking, "Pubic hair, pubic hair, oh my God, pubic hair." But I was getting better at trimming, and also at acting. And so clouds of hair piled up on the paper-covered table while 38 chatted about her vacation plans (the Poconos; if she was lucky, a proposal), her C-section scar, and how she liked my red glasses.

 

The $1.8 billion business of superfluous hair removal is our most intimate and uncomfortable kind of beauty labor. When I enrolled in a 600-hour aesthetics program at my local strip mall beauty school, I knew the standard feminist rhetoric against hair removal: Women wax because we've been culturally indoctrinated to hate our bodies in their natural state. I also knew the women's magazine defense, that removing excess hair celebrates our femininity and increases sexual pleasure. And I'd been in 38's position enough to know that waxing can make you feel vulnerable in ways feminists haven't even considered and hurts more than women's magazines (or at least, their beauty advertisers) let you believe.

 

But being on the other side of the waxing table turns out to feel simultaneously more exploitative and more empowering than I ever expected. There is, for example, the moment when your client shuts off from you, closing her eyes to "relax." Your client is in charge, having commissioned you to perform this service. And yet they are also terribly vulnerable, half naked, exposed and—eyes closed—hoping for the best.

 

After I trimmed, I tested the temperature of the hot wax on the inside of my wrist and painted a stripe along 38's inner thigh, quickly covering it with a muslin strip. She tensed before I ripped, then relaxed even as her brown skin tinted pink: "That hurt so much less than last time!" I watched some spots of blood well up. "I'm going to have you do my eyebrows, too," she added. And as I waxed my way along the crevice of her inner thigh to some very sensitive parts, 38 closed her eyes, drifting into that blissful state we enter whenever a spa service goes well.

 

With most Beauty U. clients, I liked offering this respite from their harried lives and from the even more harried relationship they had with their bodies. Before beauty school began, I hoped this body shame part wouldn't be so true. Instead, I saw women hating their bodies—in subtle ways, like 38's matter-of-fact "I'm a hairy beast!"—with every spa service I performed. So I saw my role as providing a kind of safe haven of acceptance, where a client could feel comfortable enough to drift away

 

Two hours into 38's appointment, I was the one who could not relax. I had waxed right through my dinner break and my back ached from hunching over the table. I removed all the hair 38 had asked me to (all but a delicate landing strip) and cleaned up her brows. I held a hand mirror between her legs, angling it so she could decide if she was satisfied. I'd snipped off her paper thong, so we looked together like those consciousness-raising women's groups from the 1970s. Only with me still wearing my vinyl gloves, now sticky with a layer of wax.

 

By that time, I knew that 38 had two kids, was divorced, and was going back to college. I liked 38. I wanted her to enjoy vacation and get engaged and have a good life. But we weren't friends. There was nothing reciprocal in our conversation. We were taught to avoid sharing personal information about ourselves whenever possible. "Customers don't care about your life," teachers told us. "They're buying your full attention." And that seemed to work. Once clients relaxed, they told us all sorts of personal things, like when they next expected to have sex and why their mothers made them crazy. And we learned that letting clients share these intimate details was good for business. "Remember to mention something about them or their life that they've talked about previously. Keep notes about each customer on file if you need to," advised one handout. It was much like being a therapist, serving soul and body.

 

In April, the New York Post reported that "NYC Women are Strangely Bonded to the Beauticians who Wax Their Brazilians," quoting smitten spa-goers who viewed their waxers as surrogate moms. But the story didn't explain how this one-sided friendship is made all the more awkward by socioeconomic differences. No matter how friendly their relationship, the client still pays and the waxer still needs that money. Nail technicians and skin-care specialists (the salon workers who do the most waxing) earn a mean annual pre-tax wage of $22,150 to $31,990. This figure doesn't include tips, which can total another $4,430 to $6,398—a clear financial incentive to befriend your clients in this service-based, nonreciprocal way.

 

Before starting, I assumed that most clients tip the industry's expected standard of 20 percent. They don't. I wasn't surprised, for example, when 38 tipped me just $5 (under 15 percent) because we never got big tips when clients got naked. Like johns who mistake their hooker's acrobatics for true love, clients can put such emphasis on the girlfriend-bonding time that slipping us a wad of cash would destroy the fantasy.

 

If her tip had been bigger, I would have been more delighted that 38 had taken time to write a "Client Kudos!" card about me: "She was professional and friendly at the same time. … Thanks so much!" She even drew a star on top next to my name. "That makes up for the bad tip," said my classmate Campbell about my Client Kudos. "Look how happy you made her!" Most salon workers say making clients feel good is their biggest source of job satisfaction. But I'm not convinced it's enough to balance out the often exhausting, difficult, and underpaid labor. No matter how much we liked our clients, we still had to brush stray pubic hairs off our sleeves, pick seaweed-stained disposable thongs out of the shower, and work around the occasional menstruating bikini wax client.

 

But it's also true that many waxers find this work empowering because the services require such skill and our clients are so thrilled with the results. Even if we don't totally return our clients' affections, we feel a kind of sisterhood with them and our fellow salon workers, because we're all toiling away together to meet some impossible beauty standard. When Campbell and I practiced our first Brazilian together, she rubbed the back of our "client" (another classmate), singing songs to distract her from the pain. We all traded stories about waxing and then, childbirth—that other time when a woman spreads her legs in pain and the support of other women gets her through.

 

And yet. When it came to 38, I wanted the cash, not the compliment, to show the value of my abilities. And maybe, to compensate for how she got to leave feeling so clean and sexy—but I could still smell her body on me, ever so faintly, even after I threw away the gloves and washed my hands.

 

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sometimes I wanna cry

well you've seen it in my eyes

and I sorta like this place

so, why d'you wanna brace

 

it's a funny little thing

ghostly arrows seem to come and go

with an "Oh, no"

we had a quiet thing on the soft ground

I hear a sad rain killed the calm sound

 

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me amélie.11

 

kiev.88

analog.

 

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avey tare & kria brekkan . lay lay off, faselam

Matron said it would just end in tears, but I decided to give my head a squish today to see what it would feel like.

 

Good I think.

 

Probably need to lay off the steroids though...

 

Yup.

 

I know you'd love to:

 

Follow me on Twitter

 

Like my Facebook page

 

Visit my Blog

  

Strobist:

Brilliant big Bowens Gemini Pro 500 with softbox camera left at 80 degrees, set on 4, Second Bowens with disappointingly smaller softbox camera right at 80 degrees set on 4. Triggered by cable, as usual even if the connection is crazily temperamental and drives me insane.

Highland Park High School / Junior College / Career Academy

In many ways, the histories of Detroit and Highland Park – a separate city located within the borders of Detroit –are very similar. Both cities experienced tremendous growth as a result of the automobile industry, and built up their city services to meet demand. Both cities lost population after the auto industry left. And today, both cities are struggling with how to provide the same city services to fewer people with less tax revenue. Budget cuts have led to the closure of most of Highland Park’s fire stations, libraries, and schools.

 

A three-block stretch of Highland Street running west from Woodward Avenue was one the civic center of the city. Along Highland and nearby streets were five schools, three churches, two hospitals, and the main library, mixed in with ornate high-rise apartment buildings. In this densely populated neighborhood one could be born, baptized, attend nursery school, elementary school, high school, and college, all without going more than three blocks in any direction. Right at the center of the neighborhood is the old Highland Park High School and Junior College, a block-long slab of quarry-faced limestone that played an important role in the development of Highland Park from an obscure village into an industrial boomtown.

 

Early days in Highland Park

 

In 1900, Highland Park was just a small village north of Detroit, population 427. Through the early 1900’s, the city grew as Detroit developed north along Woodward Avenue, spurring residential development. In 1907, Henry Ford began to move his automobile production from the Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit to a new, much larger factory located in Highland Park. The factory opened in 1909; a year later the population of Highland Park had risen to 4,120 as workers quickly built up neighborhoods around the Ford plant.

 

Like other early school districts, Highland Park Schools taught from Kindergarten to the 8th grade level, at which point young adults were expected to join the workforce. Starting in 1911, high school courses were introduced, with 42 students enrolled in 9th and 10th grade levels at Stevens Elementary, then moved to the new Ferris School when it opened in November. The next year 11th and 12th grades were introduced. Demand for higher education was enough that by 1912, plans were underway to build a dedicated high school building.

 

Building a new high school

 

Initially the board of education wanted to build the new high school east of Woodward Avenue, at Farrand and John R Streets, but instead settled a large rectangular parcel of land along Glendale Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. Though the high school would take up only a small part of the land, school officials wanted additional space to expand the school if needed. Excavation at the site began as the first high school class of 14 students graduated from Ferris School in 1913. In 1914, a contract for construction of the new building designed by Wells D. Butterfield was awarded for $460,000. It could comfortably seat 1,000 students, though it was believed that it would be quite a few years before the school reached capacity.

 

The first unit of Highland Park High School was of English type architecture, laid out with a central mass three stories tall, with two end wings linked by classrooms. The east wing had a 1,100-seat auditorium, and the west wing featured a three-story gymnasium and basement swimming pool. In the center were school offices, a library, and recitation rooms. The exterior was done up in quarry-faced gray limestone, with mouldings and detail work of dressed Bedford stone. Inside the school were long hallways of Caen stone and ornamental carved oak. Dedicated classrooms included sewing, carpentry, machine tooling, botany, chemistry, and drawing.

 

The cornerstone was laid down in October of 1914. Construction on the high school had progressed far enough that by June of 1915, the auditorium was used for graduation as work on the rest of the building continued. The new building was scheduled to formally open in September, but even before then school administrators were facing an unanticipated problem: overcrowding.

 

Expansion

 

Between 1910 and 1916, the population of Highland Park grew from 4,100 to 28,000. By 1920 there would be 46,500 residents, a staggering 1,000% increase in population over just 10 years. Workers from across the globe were drawn to Detroit and Highland Park in particular, by the Ford factory and its promise of a $5 a day wage. The assembly line had revolutionized the way that cars were made, and in doing so, made Highland Park the center of the automotive revolution. The school board found itself with hundreds of new students every year, requiring hasty additions to existing school buildings, and the construction of new schools in neighborhoods that were springing up around town.

 

By the time Highland Park High School opened in September of 1915, enrollment far exceeded expectations, with 850 students signing up. In 1916, just a year after it opened, that number grew to over 1,000 high school students, filling the school to capacity. Plans for a second unit of the high school for 1,500 additional students to be built next to the first were immediately drawn up, with construction beginning in 1917.

 

Though the second unit of the high school used identical building materials and same English styling as the first, it was laid out differently. Initially the second unit was intended to be a high school for girls and a junior college, and was built with its own separate gymnasium and swimming pool. Instead of a second auditorium, a larger library and additional classrooms were set aside for a junior college program that would share the building with the girl’s high school. The new high school for girls opened in September of 1918, with a total enrollment of 1,525 students. Highland Park Junior College opened in 1918 as well, with 35 students. Course offerings included French, rhetoric, history, chemistry, zoology, and analytic geometry.

 

Within a few years the two high school programs merged and became co-ed. In 1927, a vocational education building including an automobile repair lab was built to south of the school, connected by an overhead walkway. A further addition to the vocational wing was added in 1938, and the auditorium was renovated in 1939. The high school thrived, with as many as 3,000 students and a host of extracurricular activities, including athletics, homemaking, and a school radio station.

 

Great Depression, Second World War

 

Enrollment at Highland Park Junior College steadily increased to around 300 students by the 1920’s, but slowed in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Lack of adequate space and a drop in the number of students to 159 in 1929 nearly led to the closure of college, but the residents of Highland Park voted to keep it open. This paid off in the long run, as after the Second World War ended enrollment skyrocketed from 117 in 1943 to 1,800 in 1947 as veterans returning to Highland Park used the GI bill to pay for college education.

 

By the 1940’s, population in Highland Park had peaked. Ford had moved auto production out of Highland Park to a new factory in the suburbs in 1927, and moved its headquarters to Dearborn in 1930. The construction of freeways made it easier for people to live outside the city, hastening an outward flight or residents to the suburbs. The racial composition of Highland Park changed as well. By 1968, over half of the 4,488 students were black, while teachers and administrators were mostly white. Sit-ins protesting the lack of diversity in the school administration were frequent in 1969.

 

The high school moves out

 

As part of a district-wide modernization program, several older schools in Highland Park were demolished and replaced with newer buildings in the 1950’s and 60’s. A nursery school was built on the south side of the campus in 1950, and an elementary school was built a block south in 1961. Plans for a new, modern high school to be built north on Woodward Avenue were drawn up in the early 1970’s, which would replace the existing school. The junior college (now a community college) would take over the entire building and expand its vocational offerings.

 

Construction on the new building was already underway when on the evening of March 18th 1975, a large fire broke out in the gymnasium of the old high school. Stacks of rolled-up wrestling mats were set alight as a practical joke, but the blaze quickly spread out of control, causing the roof and floor to cave into the basement swimming pool. The fire burned for over five hours as firefighters from Highland Park, Detroit, and Hamtramck struggled to contain it to just the gymnasium. While smoke and water damage throughout the high school were repaired fairly quickly, repairing the gymnasium was estimated to cost over $600,000. Since the high school was moving out in the near future, athletics were moved over to the community college building, which had its own pool and gymnasium. In 1977, the new Highland Park Community High School on Woodward Avenue opened, and the community college took over the Glendale campus. A temporary roof was built over the shell of the burned-out gymnasium, as administrators struggled with what to do next.

 

Not wishing to demolish the handsome limestone façade of the gym, the wing sat empty until 1983, when the community college approached Bloomfield Hills landscape architect James Scott about reusing the space. Scott envisioned turning the empty hall into a “multi-purpose concourse” and performing arts space, linking the two units together. Within a few days his ideas went from sketches to planning, and work began a short time later. The swimming pool, into which burning debris from above had been dumped, was covered by a new floor and sealed off. The open area above was a mix of the old and new, retaining the limestone wall of the adjacent gym, but incorporating modern styling throughout. Hexagons were the dominant theme, with planters turning the concourse into a green space. Work on the renovation concluded in 1985. In the years after the space was used for concerts, special events, and art galleries.

 

Community college struggles

 

Though enrollment at Highland Park Community College was 2,000 to 3,000 through most of the 1980’s, the college operated at a deficit that had grown to $1.4 million dollars by 1989. In an effort to save money, school administrators cut the LPN and respiratory therapy programs, sparking a four-day sit in strike by students. Though the administration reverses its decision, the financial situation continued to deteriorate, with accusations of rampant misuse of funds. After missing two consecutive annual audits, Michigan Governer John Engler began to withhold state funding for the college, as investigators report that Highland Park Community College “had the worst facilities of any community college in the state.”

 

In February of 1995, Governor Engler announced that all funding for the college would be stripped from the budget due to chronic financial and academic problems, stating, “Though the college has a long and distinguished tradition, it has become apparent that it is no longer an economically viable institution." Local representatives fought hard to keep the school open, arguing that it was making progress in fixing its financial situation and that the loss of the school would be devastating to Highland Park’s troubled economy. By December of 1995 the college had run out of money, and closed down.

 

Highland Park Career Academy, Final Years

 

The immediate impact of the closing of Highland Park Community College was that students were stranded in mid-study, some just a semester away from graduation. Though other nearby colleges tried to accommodate students, many never finished their studies, and walked away from secondary education. While elected officials fought to get funding restored, the school reopened as the Highland Park Career Academy, offering an alternative high school program and vocational training for students and young adults in the fields of nursing, dental hygiene, and auto repair. In 2001, the Ford Motor Company opened an automotive training center in the vocational education building, complete with demonstration cars.

 

Highland Park City Schools steadily lost students through the 2000’s, with K-12 enrollment falling to 2,700 by 2008 as students were lured away to other nearby school districts. As schools were funded by the state on a per pupil basis, this led to a major revenue shortfall for Highland Park. On January 23rd, 2009 the school board shut down the career academy with no official notification to parents, laying off 36 teachers to close the budget gap. Students were again left in the lurch with the cancellation of their programs, with few options for continuing their studies elsewhere. and leaving students stranded in mid-study. Only seniors were allowed to stay at the school until the end of the school year, with the remaining students to attend night school at Highland Park Community High School. However, the first scheduled night of classes was canceled without explanation. Most students dropped out, and the building closed for good in the summer of 2009.

 

For over 90 years, the old high school and college had been the center of Highland Park’s education system. By the time the school closed, the neighborhood and city around it had changed considerably. Ferris School and the hospitals closed in the 1990’s, along with the main library in 2002. The nursery school closed permanently in 2005. Most of the apartment buildings along Glendale and Highland had been vacated years ago, leaving large gaps in the fabric of the neighborhood. In the end, the closing of the career academy wound up costing the school district a large amount of funding, as students dropped out or left for other school districts. With just 969 students enrolled in 2012, the state of Michigan declared a financial emergency, and the Highland Park City Schools were taken over by a state emergency financial manager, who converted the district into a privately operated charter school system.

 

The new charter school operator found that the three remaining school buildings – Highland Park Community High, Ford, and Barber – were in terrible disrepair, and required proximately expensive work to be brought up to standards. In early 2012, school officials started looking at consolidating all of the schools into one K-12 as a way to save money. One alternative discussed was the reopening of the old high school and college building, which was large enough to support all of the students left in the district. The emergency manager visited the closed building in February to see if it would viable to reopen.

 

Since its closing in 2009, the old high school and college had been frozen in time, with little more than security and routine maintenance being carried out in its empty halls and classrooms. Though fairly secure for a few years, when the state took over the Highland Park City Schools, patrols at the closed building had been discontinued, leaving the school briefly open to scrappers and metal thieves. In the short time between the state takeover and the resumption of security at the school, scrappers had done enough damage to make reopening the school cost prohibitive. The plan was abandoned in favor of letting the three remaining schools stay open.

 

In the years since, scrappers and vandals have dismantled the old Highland Park High School. When the local Police department set up two non-working squad cars in the back of the building to deter people from entering, the cars were vandalized and removed less than a month later. In October of 2012 the windows of the school were boarded up, but by that time the damage had been done. The property was put up for sale with an asking price of $3 million dollars.

From the Sunday Mirror, Sunday 17/04/05. In the picture, he is 44 stone. At what point do you think he turned round and said, "Better lay off the puddings"?

 

When he stopped being able to get through doors, maybe?

Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its construction was the result of a massive effort involving thousands of workers, and cost over one hundred lives. It was referred to as Hoover Dam after President Herbert Hoover in bills passed by Congress during its construction, but was named Boulder Dam by the Roosevelt administration. The Hoover Dam name was restored by Congress in 1947.

 

Since about 1900, the Black Canyon and nearby Boulder Canyon had been investigated for their potential to support a dam that would control floods, provide irrigation water and produce hydroelectric power. In 1928, Congress authorized the project. The winning bid to build the dam was submitted by a consortium named Six Companies, Inc., which began construction of the dam in early 1931. Such a large concrete structure had never been built before, and some of the techniques were unproven. The torrid summer weather and lack of facilities near the site also presented difficulties. Nevertheless, Six Companies turned the dam over to the federal government on March 1, 1936, more than two years ahead of schedule.

 

Hoover Dam impounds Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States by volume when full. The dam is located near Boulder City, Nevada, a municipality originally constructed for workers on the construction project, about 30 mi (48 km) southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. The dam's generators provide power for public and private utilities in Nevada, Arizona, and California. Hoover Dam is a major tourist attraction; nearly a million people tour the dam each year. The heavily traveled U.S. Route 93 (US 93) ran along the dam's crest until October 2010, when the Hoover Dam Bypass opened.

 

As the United States developed the Southwest, the Colorado River was seen as a potential source of irrigation water. An initial attempt at diverting the river for irrigation purposes occurred in the late 1890s, when land speculator William Beatty built the Alamo Canal just north of the Mexican border; the canal dipped into Mexico before running to a desolate area Beatty named the Imperial Valley. Though water from the Imperial Canal allowed for the widespread settlement of the valley, the canal proved expensive to operate. After a catastrophic breach that caused the Colorado River to fill the Salton Sea, the Southern Pacific Railroad spent $3 million in 1906–07 to stabilize the waterway, an amount it hoped in vain would be reimbursed by the federal government. Even after the waterway was stabilized, it proved unsatisfactory because of constant disputes with landowners on the Mexican side of the border.

 

As the technology of electric power transmission improved, the Lower Colorado was considered for its hydroelectric-power potential. In 1902, the Edison Electric Company of Los Angeles surveyed the river in the hope of building a 40-foot (12 m) rock dam which could generate 10,000 horsepower (7,500 kW). However, at the time, the limit of transmission of electric power was 80 miles (130 km), and there were few customers (mostly mines) within that limit. Edison allowed land options it held on the river to lapse—including an option for what became the site of Hoover Dam.

 

In the following years, the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), known as the Reclamation Service at the time, also considered the Lower Colorado as the site for a dam. Service chief Arthur Powell Davis proposed using dynamite to collapse the walls of Boulder Canyon, 20 miles (32 km) north of the eventual dam site, into the river. The river would carry off the smaller pieces of debris, and a dam would be built incorporating the remaining rubble. In 1922, after considering it for several years, the Reclamation Service finally rejected the proposal, citing doubts about the unproven technique and questions as to whether it would, in fact, save money.

 

Soon after the dam was authorized, increasing numbers of unemployed people converged on southern Nevada. Las Vegas, then a small city of some 5,000, saw between 10,000 and 20,000 unemployed descend on it. A government camp was established for surveyors and other personnel near the dam site; this soon became surrounded by a squatters' camp. Known as McKeeversville, the camp was home to men hoping for work on the project, together with their families. Another camp, on the flats along the Colorado River, was officially called Williamsville, but was known to its inhabitants as "Ragtown". When construction began, Six Companies hired large numbers of workers, with more than 3,000 on the payroll by 1932 and with employment peaking at 5,251 in July 1934. "Mongolian" (Chinese) labor was prevented by the construction contract, while the number of black people employed by Six Companies never exceeded thirty, mostly lowest-pay-scale laborers in a segregated crew, who were issued separate water buckets.

 

As part of the contract, Six Companies, Inc. was to build Boulder City to house the workers. The original timetable called for Boulder City to be built before the dam project began, but President Hoover ordered work on the dam to begin in March 1931 rather than in October. The company built bunkhouses, attached to the canyon wall, to house 480 single men at what became known as River Camp. Workers with families were left to provide their own accommodations until Boulder City could be completed, and many lived in Ragtown. The site of Hoover Dam endures extremely hot weather, and the summer of 1931 was especially torrid, with the daytime high averaging 119.9 °F (48.8 °C). Sixteen workers and other riverbank residents died of heat prostration between June 25 and July 26, 1931.

 

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or "Wobblies"), though much-reduced from their heyday as militant labor organizers in the early years of the century, hoped to unionize the Six Companies workers by capitalizing on their discontent. They sent eleven organizers, several of whom were arrested by Las Vegas police. On August 7, 1931, the company cut wages for all tunnel workers. Although the workers sent the organizers away, not wanting to be associated with the "Wobblies", they formed a committee to represent them with the company. The committee drew up a list of demands that evening and presented them to Crowe the following morning. He was noncommittal. The workers hoped that Crowe, the general superintendent of the job, would be sympathetic; instead, he gave a scathing interview to a newspaper, describing the workers as "malcontents".

 

On the morning of the 9th, Crowe met with the committee and told them that management refused their demands, was stopping all work, and was laying off the entire work force, except for a few office workers and carpenters. The workers were given until 5 p.m. to vacate the premises. Concerned that a violent confrontation was imminent, most workers took their paychecks and left for Las Vegas to await developments. Two days later, the remainder were talked into leaving by law enforcement. On August 13, the company began hiring workers again, and two days later, the strike was called off. While the workers received none of their demands, the company guaranteed there would be no further reductions in wages. Living conditions began to improve as the first residents moved into Boulder City in late 1931.

 

A second labor action took place in July 1935, as construction on the dam wound down. When a Six Companies manager altered working times to force workers to take lunch on their own time, workers responded with a strike. Emboldened by Crowe's reversal of the lunch decree, workers raised their demands to include a $1-per-day raise. The company agreed to ask the Federal government to supplement the pay, but no money was forthcoming from Washington. The strike ended.

 

Before the dam could be built, the Colorado River needed to be diverted away from the construction site. To accomplish this, four diversion tunnels were driven through the canyon walls, two on the Nevada side and two on the Arizona side. These tunnels were 56 ft (17 m) in diameter. Their combined length was nearly 16,000 ft, or more than 3 miles (5 km). The contract required these tunnels to be completed by October 1, 1933, with a $3,000-per-day fine to be assessed for any delay. To meet the deadline, Six Companies had to complete work by early 1933, since only in late fall and winter was the water level in the river low enough to safely divert.

 

Tunneling began at the lower portals of the Nevada tunnels in May 1931. Shortly afterward, work began on two similar tunnels in the Arizona canyon wall. In March 1932, work began on lining the tunnels with concrete. First the base, or invert, was poured. Gantry cranes, running on rails through the entire length of each tunnel were used to place the concrete. The sidewalls were poured next. Movable sections of steel forms were used for the sidewalls. Finally, using pneumatic guns, the overheads were filled in. The concrete lining is 3 feet (1 m) thick, reducing the finished tunnel diameter to 50 ft (15 m). The river was diverted into the two Arizona tunnels on November 13, 1932; the Nevada tunnels were kept in reserve for high water. This was done by exploding a temporary cofferdam protecting the Arizona tunnels while at the same time dumping rubble into the river until its natural course was blocked.

 

Following the completion of the dam, the entrances to the two outer diversion tunnels were sealed at the opening and halfway through the tunnels with large concrete plugs. The downstream halves of the tunnels following the inner plugs are now the main bodies of the spillway tunnels. The inner diversion tunnels were plugged at approximately one-third of their length, beyond which they now carry steel pipes connecting the intake towers to the power plant and outlet works. The inner tunnels' outlets are equipped with gates that can be closed to drain the tunnels for maintenance.

 

To protect the construction site from the Colorado River and to facilitate the river's diversion, two cofferdams were constructed. Work on the upper cofferdam began in September 1932, even though the river had not yet been diverted. The cofferdams were designed to protect against the possibility of the river's flooding a site at which two thousand men might be at work, and their specifications were covered in the bid documents in nearly as much detail as the dam itself. The upper cofferdam was 96 ft (29 m) high, and 750 feet (230 m) thick at its base, thicker than the dam itself. It contained 650,000 cubic yards (500,000 m3) of material.

 

When the cofferdams were in place and the construction site was drained of water, excavation for the dam foundation began. For the dam to rest on solid rock, it was necessary to remove accumulated erosion soils and other loose materials in the riverbed until sound bedrock was reached. Work on the foundation excavations was completed in June 1933. During this excavation, approximately 1,500,000 cu yd (1,100,000 m3) of material was removed. Since the dam was an arch-gravity type, the side-walls of the canyon would bear the force of the impounded lake. Therefore, the side-walls were also excavated to reach virgin rock, as weathered rock might provide pathways for water seepage. Shovels for the excavation came from the Marion Power Shovel Company.

 

The men who removed this rock were called "high scalers". While suspended from the top of the canyon with ropes, the high-scalers climbed down the canyon walls and removed the loose rock with jackhammers and dynamite. Falling objects were the most common cause of death on the dam site; the high scalers' work thus helped ensure worker safety. One high scaler was able to save a life in a more direct manner: when a government inspector lost his grip on a safety line and began tumbling down a slope towards almost certain death, a high scaler was able to intercept him and pull him into the air. The construction site had become a magnet for tourists. The high scalers were prime attractions and showed off for the watchers. The high scalers received considerable media attention, with one worker dubbed the "Human Pendulum" for swinging co-workers (and, at other times, cases of dynamite) across the canyon. To protect themselves against falling objects, some high scalers dipped cloth hats in tar and allowed them to harden. When workers wearing such headgear were struck hard enough to inflict broken jaws, they sustained no skull damage. Six Companies ordered thousands of what initially were called "hard boiled hats" (later "hard hats") and strongly encouraged their use.

 

The cleared, underlying rock foundation of the dam site was reinforced with grout, forming a grout curtain. Holes were driven into the walls and base of the canyon, as deep as 150 feet (46 m) into the rock, and any cavities encountered were to be filled with grout. This was done to stabilize the rock, to prevent water from seeping past the dam through the canyon rock, and to limit "uplift"—upward pressure from water seeping under the dam. The workers were under severe time constraints due to the beginning of the concrete pour. When they encountered hot springs or cavities too large to readily fill, they moved on without resolving the problem. A total of 58 of the 393 holes were incompletely filled. After the dam was completed and the lake began to fill, large numbers of significant leaks caused the Bureau of Reclamation to examine the situation. It found that the work had been incompletely done, and was based on less than a full understanding of the canyon's geology. New holes were drilled from inspection galleries inside the dam into the surrounding bedrock. It took nine years (1938–47) under relative secrecy to complete the supplemental grout curtain.

 

The first concrete was poured into the dam on June 6, 1933, 18 months ahead of schedule. Since concrete heats and contracts as it cures, the potential for uneven cooling and contraction of the concrete posed a serious problem. Bureau of Reclamation engineers calculated that if the dam were to be built in a single continuous pour, the concrete would take 125 years to cool, and the resulting stresses would cause the dam to crack and crumble. Instead, the ground where the dam would rise was marked with rectangles, and concrete blocks in columns were poured, some as large as 50 ft square (15 m) and 5 feet (1.5 m) high. Each five-foot form contained a set of 1-inch (25 mm) steel pipes; cool river water would be poured through the pipes, followed by ice-cold water from a refrigeration plant. When an individual block had cured and had stopped contracting, the pipes were filled with grout. Grout was also used to fill the hairline spaces between columns, which were grooved to increase the strength of the joints.

 

The concrete was delivered in huge steel buckets 7 feet high (2.1 m) and almost 7 feet in diameter; Crowe was awarded two patents for their design. These buckets, which weighed 20 short tons (18.1 t; 17.9 long tons) when full, were filled at two massive concrete plants on the Nevada side, and were delivered to the site in special railcars. The buckets were then suspended from aerial cableways which were used to deliver the bucket to a specific column. As the required grade of aggregate in the concrete differed depending on placement in the dam (from pea-sized gravel to 9 inches [230 mm] stones), it was vital that the bucket be maneuvered to the proper column. When the bottom of the bucket opened up, disgorging 8 cu yd (6.1 m3) of concrete, a team of men worked it throughout the form. Although there are myths that men were caught in the pour and are entombed in the dam to this day, each bucket deepened the concrete in a form by only 1 inch (25 mm), and Six Companies engineers would not have permitted a flaw caused by the presence of a human body.

 

A total of 3,250,000 cubic yards (2,480,000 cubic meters) of concrete was used in the dam before concrete pouring ceased on May 29, 1935. In addition, 1,110,000 cu yd (850,000 m3) were used in the power plant and other works. More than 582 miles (937 km) of cooling pipes were placed within the concrete. Overall, there is enough concrete in the dam to pave a two-lane highway from San Francisco to New York. Concrete cores were removed from the dam for testing in 1995; they showed that "Hoover Dam's concrete has continued to slowly gain strength" and the dam is composed of a "durable concrete having a compressive strength exceeding the range typically found in normal mass concrete". Hoover Dam concrete is not subject to alkali–silica reaction (ASR), as the Hoover Dam builders happened to use nonreactive aggregate, unlike that at downstream Parker Dam, where ASR has caused measurable deterioration.

 

With most work finished on the dam itself (the powerhouse remained uncompleted), a formal dedication ceremony was arranged for September 30, 1935, to coincide with a western tour being made by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The morning of the dedication, it was moved forward three hours from 2 p.m. Pacific time to 11 a.m.; this was done because Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes had reserved a radio slot for the President for 2 p.m. but officials did not realize until the day of the ceremony that the slot was for 2 p.m. Eastern Time. Despite the change in the ceremony time, and temperatures of 102 °F (39 °C), 10,000 people were present for the President's speech, in which he avoided mentioning the name of former President Hoover, who was not invited to the ceremony. To mark the occasion, a three-cent stamp was issued by the United States Post Office Department—bearing the name "Boulder Dam", the official name of the dam between 1933 and 1947. After the ceremony, Roosevelt made the first visit by any American president to Las Vegas.

 

Most work had been completed by the dedication, and Six Companies negotiated with the government through late 1935 and early 1936 to settle all claims and arrange for the formal transfer of the dam to the Federal Government. The parties came to an agreement and on March 1, 1936, Secretary Ickes formally accepted the dam on behalf of the government. Six Companies was not required to complete work on one item, a concrete plug for one of the bypass tunnels, as the tunnel had to be used to take in irrigation water until the powerhouse went into operation.

 

There were 112 deaths reported as associated with the construction of the dam. The first was Bureau of Reclamation employee Harold Connelly who died on May 15, 1921, after falling from a barge while surveying the Colorado River for an ideal spot for the dam. Surveyor John Gregory ("J.G.") Tierney, who drowned on December 20, 1922, in a flash flood while looking for an ideal spot for the dam was the second person. The official list's final death occurred on December 20, 1935, when Patrick Tierney, electrician's helper and the son of J.G. Tierney, fell from one of the two Arizona-side intake towers. Included in the fatality list are three workers who took their own lives on site, one in 1932 and two in 1933. Of the 112 fatalities, 91 were Six Companies employees, three were Bureau of Reclamation employees, and one was a visitor to the site; the remainder were employees of various contractors not part of Six Companies.

 

Ninety-six of the deaths occurred during construction at the site. Not included in the official number of fatalities were deaths that were recorded as pneumonia. Workers alleged that this diagnosis was a cover for death from carbon monoxide poisoning (brought on by the use of gasoline-fueled vehicles in the diversion tunnels), and a classification used by Six Companies to avoid paying compensation claims. The site's diversion tunnels frequently reached 140 °F (60 °C), enveloped in thick plumes of vehicle exhaust gases. A total of 42 workers were recorded as having died from pneumonia and were not included in the above total; none were listed as having died from carbon monoxide poisoning. No deaths of non-workers from pneumonia were recorded in Boulder City during the construction period.

 

The initial plans for the facade of the dam, the power plant, the outlet tunnels and ornaments clashed with the modern look of an arch dam. The Bureau of Reclamation, more concerned with the dam's functionality, adorned it with a Gothic-inspired balustrade and eagle statues. This initial design was criticized by many as being too plain and unremarkable for a project of such immense scale, so Los Angeles-based architect Gordon B. Kaufmann, then the supervising architect to the Bureau of Reclamation, was brought in to redesign the exteriors. Kaufmann greatly streamlined the design and applied an elegant Art Deco style to the entire project. He designed sculpted turrets rising seamlessly from the dam face and clock faces on the intake towers set for the time in Nevada and Arizona—both states are in different time zones, but since Arizona does not observe daylight saving time, the clocks display the same time for more than half the year.

 

At Kaufmann's request, Denver artist Allen Tupper True was hired to handle the design and decoration of the walls and floors of the new dam. True's design scheme incorporated motifs of the Navajo and Pueblo tribes of the region. Although some were initially opposed to these designs, True was given the go-ahead and was officially appointed consulting artist. With the assistance of the National Laboratory of Anthropology, True researched authentic decorative motifs from Indian sand paintings, textiles, baskets and ceramics. The images and colors are based on Native American visions of rain, lightning, water, clouds, and local animals—lizards, serpents, birds—and on the Southwestern landscape of stepped mesas. In these works, which are integrated into the walkways and interior halls of the dam, True also reflected on the machinery of the operation, making the symbolic patterns appear both ancient and modern.

 

With the agreement of Kaufmann and the engineers, True also devised for the pipes and machinery an innovative color-coding which was implemented throughout all BOR projects. True's consulting artist job lasted through 1942; it was extended so he could complete design work for the Parker, Shasta and Grand Coulee dams and power plants. True's work on the Hoover Dam was humorously referred to in a poem published in The New Yorker, part of which read, "lose the spark, and justify the dream; but also worthy of remark will be the color scheme".

 

Complementing Kaufmann and True's work, sculptor Oskar J. W. Hansen designed many of the sculptures on and around the dam. His works include the monument of dedication plaza, a plaque to memorialize the workers killed and the bas-reliefs on the elevator towers. In his words, Hansen wanted his work to express "the immutable calm of intellectual resolution, and the enormous power of trained physical strength, equally enthroned in placid triumph of scientific accomplishment", because "the building of Hoover Dam belongs to the sagas of the daring." Hansen's dedication plaza, on the Nevada abutment, contains a sculpture of two winged figures flanking a flagpole.

 

Surrounding the base of the monument is a terrazzo floor embedded with a "star map". The map depicts the Northern Hemisphere sky at the moment of President Roosevelt's dedication of the dam. This is intended to help future astronomers, if necessary, calculate the exact date of dedication. The 30-foot-high (9.1 m) bronze figures, dubbed "Winged Figures of the Republic", were both formed in a continuous pour. To put such large bronzes into place without marring the highly polished bronze surface, they were placed on ice and guided into position as the ice melted. Hansen's bas-relief on the Nevada elevator tower depicts the benefits of the dam: flood control, navigation, irrigation, water storage, and power. The bas-relief on the Arizona elevator depicts, in his words, "the visages of those Indian tribes who have inhabited mountains and plains from ages distant."

 

Excavation for the powerhouse was carried out simultaneously with the excavation for the dam foundation and abutments. The excavation of this U-shaped structure located at the downstream toe of the dam was completed in late 1933 with the first concrete placed in November 1933. Filling of Lake Mead began February 1, 1935, even before the last of the concrete was poured that May. The powerhouse was one of the projects uncompleted at the time of the formal dedication on September 30, 1935; a crew of 500 men remained to finish it and other structures. To make the powerhouse roof bombproof, it was constructed of layers of concrete, rock, and steel with a total thickness of about 3.5 feet (1.1 m), topped with layers of sand and tar.

 

In the latter half of 1936, water levels in Lake Mead were high enough to permit power generation, and the first three Allis Chalmers built Francis turbine-generators, all on the Nevada side, began operating. In March 1937, one more Nevada generator went online and the first Arizona generator by August. By September 1939, four more generators were operating, and the dam's power plant became the largest hydroelectricity facility in the world. The final generator was not placed in service until 1961, bringing the maximum generating capacity to 1,345 megawatts at the time. Original plans called for 16 large generators, eight on each side of the river, but two smaller generators were installed instead of one large one on the Arizona side for a total of 17. The smaller generators were used to serve smaller communities at a time when the output of each generator was dedicated to a single municipality, before the dam's total power output was placed on the grid and made arbitrarily distributable.

 

Before water from Lake Mead reaches the turbines, it enters the intake towers and then four gradually narrowing penstocks which funnel the water down towards the powerhouse. The intakes provide a maximum hydraulic head (water pressure) of 590 ft (180 m) as the water reaches a speed of about 85 mph (140 km/h). The entire flow of the Colorado River usually passes through the turbines. The spillways and outlet works (jet-flow gates) are rarely used. The jet-flow gates, located in concrete structures 180 feet (55 m) above the river and also at the outlets of the inner diversion tunnels at river level, may be used to divert water around the dam in emergency or flood conditions, but have never done so, and in practice are used only to drain water from the penstocks for maintenance. Following an uprating project from 1986 to 1993, the total gross power rating for the plant, including two 2.4 megawatt Pelton turbine-generators that power Hoover Dam's own operations is a maximum capacity of 2080 megawatts. The annual generation of Hoover Dam varies. The maximum net generation was 10.348 TWh in 1984, and the minimum since 1940 was 2.648 TWh in 1956. The average power generated was 4.2 TWh/year for 1947–2008. In 2015, the dam generated 3.6 TWh.

 

The amount of electricity generated by Hoover Dam has been decreasing along with the falling water level in Lake Mead due to the prolonged drought since year 2000 and high demand for the Colorado River's water. By 2014 its generating capacity was downrated by 23% to 1592 MW and was providing power only during periods of peak demand. Lake Mead fell to a new record low elevation of 1,071.61 feet (326.63 m) on July 1, 2016, before beginning to rebound slowly. Under its original design, the dam would no longer be able to generate power once the water level fell below 1,050 feet (320 m), which might have occurred in 2017 had water restrictions not been enforced. To lower the minimum power pool elevation from 1,050 to 950 feet (320 to 290 m), five wide-head turbines, designed to work efficiently with less flow, were installed.[102] Water levels were maintained at over 1,075 feet (328 m) in 2018 and 2019, but fell to a new record low of 1,071.55 feet (326.61 m) on June 10, 2021[104] and were projected to fall below 1,066 feet (325 m) by the end of 2021.

 

Control of water was the primary concern in the building of the dam. Power generation has allowed the dam project to be self-sustaining: proceeds from the sale of power repaid the 50-year construction loan, and those revenues also finance the multimillion-dollar yearly maintenance budget. Power is generated in step with and only with the release of water in response to downstream water demands.

 

Lake Mead and downstream releases from the dam also provide water for both municipal and irrigation uses. Water released from the Hoover Dam eventually reaches several canals. The Colorado River Aqueduct and Central Arizona Project branch off Lake Havasu while the All-American Canal is supplied by the Imperial Dam. In total, water from Lake Mead serves 18 million people in Arizona, Nevada, and California and supplies the irrigation of over 1,000,000 acres (400,000 ha) of land.

 

In 2018, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) proposed a $3 billion pumped-storage hydroelectricity project—a "battery" of sorts—that would use wind and solar power to recirculate water back up to Lake Mead from a pumping station 20 miles (32 km) downriver.

 

Electricity from the dam's powerhouse was originally sold pursuant to a fifty-year contract, authorized by Congress in 1934, which ran from 1937 to 1987. In 1984, Congress passed a new statute which set power allocations to southern California, Arizona, and Nevada from the dam from 1987 to 2017. The powerhouse was run under the original authorization by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Southern California Edison; in 1987, the Bureau of Reclamation assumed control. In 2011, Congress enacted legislation extending the current contracts until 2067, after setting aside 5% of Hoover Dam's power for sale to Native American tribes, electric cooperatives, and other entities. The new arrangement began on October 1, 2017.

 

The dam is protected against over-topping by two spillways. The spillway entrances are located behind each dam abutment, running roughly parallel to the canyon walls. The spillway entrance arrangement forms a classic side-flow weir with each spillway containing four 100-foot-long (30 m) and 16-foot-wide (4.9 m) steel-drum gates. Each gate weighs 5,000,000 pounds (2,300 metric tons) and can be operated manually or automatically. Gates are raised and lowered depending on water levels in the reservoir and flood conditions. The gates cannot entirely prevent water from entering the spillways but can maintain an extra 16 ft (4.9 m) of lake level.

 

Water flowing over the spillways falls dramatically into 600-foot-long (180 m), 50-foot-wide (15 m) spillway tunnels before connecting to the outer diversion tunnels and reentering the main river channel below the dam. This complex spillway entrance arrangement combined with the approximate 700-foot (210 m) elevation drop from the top of the reservoir to the river below was a difficult engineering problem and posed numerous design challenges. Each spillway's capacity of 200,000 cu ft/s (5,700 m3/s) was empirically verified in post-construction tests in 1941.

 

The large spillway tunnels have only been used twice, for testing in 1941 and because of flooding in 1983. Both times, when inspecting the tunnels after the spillways were used, engineers found major damage to the concrete linings and underlying rock. The 1941 damage was attributed to a slight misalignment of the tunnel invert (or base), which caused cavitation, a phenomenon in fast-flowing liquids in which vapor bubbles collapse with explosive force. In response to this finding, the tunnels were patched with special heavy-duty concrete and the surface of the concrete was polished mirror-smooth. The spillways were modified in 1947 by adding flip buckets, which both slow the water and decrease the spillway's effective capacity, in an attempt to eliminate conditions thought to have contributed to the 1941 damage. The 1983 damage, also due to cavitation, led to the installation of aerators in the spillways. Tests at Grand Coulee Dam showed that the technique worked, in principle.

 

There are two lanes for automobile traffic across the top of the dam, which formerly served as the Colorado River crossing for U.S. Route 93. In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, authorities expressed security concerns and the Hoover Dam Bypass project was expedited. Pending the completion of the bypass, restricted traffic was permitted over Hoover Dam. Some types of vehicles were inspected prior to crossing the dam while semi-trailer trucks, buses carrying luggage, and enclosed-box trucks over 40 ft (12 m) long were not allowed on the dam at all, and were diverted to U.S. Route 95 or Nevada State Routes 163/68. The four-lane Hoover Dam Bypass opened on October 19, 2010. It includes a composite steel and concrete arch bridge, the Mike O'Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, 1,500 ft (460 m) downstream from the dam. With the opening of the bypass, through traffic is no longer allowed across Hoover Dam; dam visitors are allowed to use the existing roadway to approach from the Nevada side and cross to parking lots and other facilities on the Arizona side.

 

Hoover Dam opened for tours in 1937 after its completion but following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, it was closed to the public when the United States entered World War II, during which only authorized traffic, in convoys, was permitted. After the war, it reopened September 2, 1945, and by 1953, annual attendance had risen to 448,081. The dam closed on November 25, 1963, and March 31, 1969, days of mourning in remembrance of Presidents Kennedy and Eisenhower. In 1995, a new visitors' center was built, and the following year, visits exceeded one million for the first time. The dam closed again to the public on September 11, 2001; modified tours were resumed in December and a new "Discovery Tour" was added the following year. Today, nearly a million people per year take the tours of the dam offered by the Bureau of Reclamation. Increased security concerns by the government have led to most of the interior structure's being inaccessible to tourists. As a result, few of True's decorations can now be seen by visitors. Visitors can only purchase tickets on-site and have the options of a guided tour of the whole facility or only the power plant area. The only self-guided tour option is for the visitor center itself, where visitors can view various exhibits and enjoy a 360-degree view of the dam.

 

The changes in water flow and use caused by Hoover Dam's construction and operation have had a large impact on the Colorado River Delta. The construction of the dam has been implicated in causing the decline of this estuarine ecosystem. For six years after the construction of the dam, while Lake Mead filled, virtually no water reached the mouth of the river. The delta's estuary, which once had a freshwater-saltwater mixing zone stretching 40 miles (64 km) south of the river's mouth, was turned into an inverse estuary where the level of salinity was higher close to the river's mouth.

 

The Colorado River had experienced natural flooding before the construction of the Hoover Dam. The dam eliminated the natural flooding, threatening many species adapted to the flooding, including both plants and animals. The construction of the dam devastated the populations of native fish in the river downstream from the dam. Four species of fish native to the Colorado River, the Bonytail chub, Colorado pikeminnow, Humpback chub, and Razorback sucker, are listed as endangered.

 

During the years of lobbying leading up to the passage of legislation authorizing the dam in 1928, the press generally referred to the dam as "Boulder Dam" or as "Boulder Canyon Dam", even though the proposed site had shifted to Black Canyon. The Boulder Canyon Project Act of 1928 (BCPA) never mentioned a proposed name or title for the dam. The BCPA merely allows the government to "construct, operate, and maintain a dam and incidental works in the main stream of the Colorado River at Black Canyon or Boulder Canyon".

 

When Secretary of the Interior Ray Wilbur spoke at the ceremony starting the building of the railway between Las Vegas and the dam site on September 17, 1930, he named the dam "Hoover Dam", citing a tradition of naming dams after Presidents, though none had been so honored during their terms of office. Wilbur justified his choice on the ground that Hoover was "the great engineer whose vision and persistence ... has done so much to make [the dam] possible". One writer complained in response that "the Great Engineer had quickly drained, ditched, and dammed the country."

 

After Hoover's election defeat in 1932 and the accession of the Roosevelt administration, Secretary Ickes ordered on May 13, 1933, that the dam be referred to as Boulder Dam. Ickes stated that Wilbur had been imprudent in naming the dam after a sitting president, that Congress had never ratified his choice, and that it had long been referred to as Boulder Dam. Unknown to the general public, Attorney General Homer Cummings informed Ickes that Congress had indeed used the name "Hoover Dam" in five different bills appropriating money for construction of the dam. The official status this conferred to the name "Hoover Dam" had been noted on the floor of the House of Representatives by Congressman Edward T. Taylor of Colorado on December 12, 1930, but was likewise ignored by Ickes.

 

When Ickes spoke at the dedication ceremony on September 30, 1935, he was determined, as he recorded in his diary, "to try to nail down for good and all the name Boulder Dam." At one point in the speech, he spoke the words "Boulder Dam" five times within thirty seconds. Further, he suggested that if the dam were to be named after any one person, it should be for California Senator Hiram Johnson, a lead sponsor of the authorizing legislation. Roosevelt also referred to the dam as Boulder Dam, and the Republican-leaning Los Angeles Times, which at the time of Ickes' name change had run an editorial cartoon showing Ickes ineffectively chipping away at an enormous sign "HOOVER DAM", reran it showing Roosevelt reinforcing Ickes, but having no greater success.

 

In the following years, the name "Boulder Dam" failed to fully take hold, with many Americans using both names interchangeably and mapmakers divided as to which name should be printed. Memories of the Great Depression faded, and Hoover to some extent rehabilitated himself through good works during and after World War II. In 1947, a bill passed both Houses of Congress unanimously restoring the name "Hoover Dam." Ickes, who was by then a private citizen, opposed the change, stating, "I didn't know Hoover was that small a man to take credit for something he had nothing to do with."

 

Hoover Dam was recognized as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1984. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985, cited for its engineering innovations.

Do you know who I am? Well I'm a gorilla! I love Bananas, and if you take my Banana...I will get my gear, I will find you you Banana thief, and I will take you down...So let this be a lesson to you all, lay OFF my Bananas! However if you do steal my Banana I will unleash a full assault of Gorilla Warfare on you!

Chasewater ParkRun January 22nd 2022. Back again after a lay-off due to Avian Influenza at Chasewater Country Park.

Maybe it's just me but the longer I looked at this the more I saw the heads of at least four birds and a green elephant. Maybe it's time to lay off the caffeine? Covid-19 has a lot to answer for . . .

Here's just a nice tidy station shot to add to the depot collection. This text is courtesy of the City of Etowah, Tennessee which owns and maintains the historic structure which still sits in its original location beside CSXT's busy Atlanta Knoxville mainline at MP 00C 335.1.

 

The Etowah Depot and the town of Etowah began when the Louisville & Nashville railroad planned a new more direct route in 1902, between Cincinnati and Atlanta, thus bypassing the Hiwassee River Gorge and the Great Hiwassee Loop. There was a need for a terminal for crew changes to service steam engines and to serve as the Atlanta Division Headquarters. 1454 acres were set aside for the depot, shops and the proposed township to support the railroad workforce. The 15 room, yellow pine, Victorian structure was the first permanent building in the planned township of Etowah, Tennessee. The land was purchased for $10 to $20 per acre by L&N Railroad creating a major rail center in the town of Etowah.

 

After the 25 acres chosen for the terminal & yard were drained and raised over 3 feet, the first building to be constructed was the L&N Depot at a cost of $13,000. The totally electrified railroad complex and shops, tracks and grounds cost the L&N railroad $200,000 at the close of 1906.

 

In 1916 the Portico room, on the front of the building, was added to provide more office space for the engineering department. By 1927 there were over 2000 men working in the shops and 250 more working the 14 passenger trains that moved through Etowah daily.

 

During the early 1920's, the Etowah complex was active and thriving, but in 1928 the L&N began replacing the wooden "rolling stock" with steel freight and passenger cars, which forced the lay-off of 200 shopmen in Etowah. The same year the Atlanta and Knoxville division was combined and the Etowah offices were moved to Knoxville. By 1931, the Etowah shop force shrank from 2,100 to 80 workers.

 

The passenger service came to an end in 1968 and by 1974 the Etowah Depot had outlived its purpose and was closed. The Depot was in operation for 68 years. Etowah is still an active rail center. The track next to the Depot is the CSX Railroad's mainline from Cincinnati to Atlanta. The CSX Yard Office, where the crew changes are made, is located just north of the Depot & Museum.

 

In 1977 the Depot was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. L&N agreed to sell the property for $35,000 and donated the building to the City of Etowah. The Tennessee Historic Commission and the City of Etowah raised the money. In 1981, after years of hard work the Depot was completely restored and once again opened for a cost of $200,000, the original cost of construction for the Depot. In 2012 the City of Etowah once again showed its dedication to preserving the Depot by undertaking another $250,000 restoration project in which the entire structure from foundation to roof was professionally renovated.

 

Today the Depot houses a museum entitled "Growing UP With The L&N: Life and Times in a Railroad Town," the Etowah Chamber of Commerce and the Tennessee Overhill Heritage Tourism Association.

 

Etowah, Tennessee

Friday June 12, 2009

The Mike O'Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge is an arch bridge in the United States that spans the Colorado River between the states of Arizona and Nevada. The bridge is located within the Lake Mead National Recreation Area approximately 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Las Vegas, and carries Interstate 11 and U.S. Route 93 over the Colorado River. Opened in 2010, it was the key component of the Hoover Dam Bypass project, which rerouted US 93 from its previous routing along the top of Hoover Dam and removed several hairpin turns and blind curves from the route. It is jointly named for Mike O'Callaghan, Governor of Nevada from 1971 to 1979, and Pat Tillman, an American football player who left his career with the Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the United States Army and was killed in Afghanistan in 2004 by friendly fire.

 

As early as the 1960s, officials identified the US 93 route over Hoover Dam to be dangerous and inadequate for projected traffic volumes. From 1998 to 2001, officials from Arizona, Nevada, and several federal government agencies collaborated to determine the best routing for an alternative river crossing. In March 2001, the Federal Highway Administration selected the route, which crosses the Colorado River approximately 1,500 feet (460 m) downstream of Hoover Dam. Construction of the bridge approaches began in 2003, and construction of the bridge itself began in February 2005. The bridge was completed in 2010 and the entire bypass route opened to vehicle traffic on October 19, 2010. The Hoover Dam Bypass project was completed within budget at a cost of $240 million; the bridge portion cost $114 million.

 

The bridge was the first concrete-steel composite deck arch bridge built in the United States, and incorporates the widest concrete arch in the Western Hemisphere. At 890 feet (270 m) above the Colorado River, it is the second highest bridge in the United States after the Royal Gorge Bridge near Cañon City, Colorado, and is the world's highest concrete arch bridge.

 

In 1935, the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO, later AASHTO) authorized a southward extension of U.S. Route 93 from its previous southern terminus in Glendale, Nevada to Kingman, Arizona via Las Vegas, Boulder City, and a crossing of the Colorado River on the newly-constructed Hoover Dam (then known as Boulder Dam). Clark County was sparsely populated at the time, with a population of less than 9,000 at the 1930 U.S. Census (compared to an estimated 2 million in 2013). Development in and around Las Vegas in the latter half of the 20th century made Las Vegas and its surrounding area a tourist attraction, and US 93 became an important transportation corridor for passenger and commercial traffic between Las Vegas and Phoenix. In 1995, the portion of US 93 over Hoover Dam was included as part of the CANAMEX Corridor, a high-priority transportation corridor established under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This bridge is a key component of the proposed Interstate 11 project.

 

Through traffic on US 93 combined with pedestrian and tourist traffic at Hoover Dam itself led to major traffic congestion on the dam and on the approaches to the dam. The approaches featured hairpin turns on both the Nevada and Arizona sides of the dam, and the terrain caused limited sight distances around curves. In addition to traffic safety considerations, officials were also concerned about the safety and security of Hoover Dam, specifically the impact a vehicle accident could have on the dam's operation and the waters of Lake Mead. Officials first discussed the need for a new Colorado River crossing that would bypass the dam in the 1960s. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the dam, began work on the "Colorado River Bridge Project" in 1989, but the project was put on hold in 1995. In 1997 the Federal Highway Administration took over the project and released a draft environmental impact statement in 1998. From 1998 to 2001 state officials from Arizona and Nevada as well as several federal government agencies studied the feasibility of several alternative routes and river crossings, as well as the feasibility of modifying the roadway over the dam, restricting traffic over the dam, or doing nothing.

 

In March 2001, the Federal Highway Administration issued a Record of Decision indicating its selection of the "Sugarloaf Mountain Alternative" routing. The project called for approximately 2.2 miles (3.5 km) of highway in Nevada, 1.1 miles (1.8 km) of highway in Arizona, and a bridge length of 1,900 feet (580 m) that would cross the river 1,500 feet (460 m) downstream (south) of Hoover Dam. Design work began in July 2001.

 

Security measures implemented following the September 11 attacks prohibited commercial truck traffic from driving across Hoover Dam. Prior to the completion of the bridge, commercial vehicles were required to follow a detour between Boulder City and Kingman via US 95, Nevada State Route 163, the Colorado River crossing between Laughlin, Nevada and Bullhead City, Arizona, and Arizona State Route 68. The detour was 104 miles (167 km) long, but only added 23 miles (37 km) to the normal journey on US 93.

 

Project design was by the Hoover Support team, led by HDR, Inc. and including T.Y. Lin International, Sverdrup Civil, Inc., and other specialist contributors.

 

The bridge has a length of 1,900 feet (579 m) and a 1,060 ft (320 m) span. The roadway is 900 ft (270 m)[1] above the Colorado River and four lanes wide. This is the first concrete-and-steel composite arch bridge built in the United States. It includes the widest concrete arch in the Western Hemisphere and is also the second highest bridge in the nation, with the arch 840 ft (260 m) above the river. The twin arch ribs are connected by steel struts.

 

The composite design, using concrete for the arch and columns with steel construction for the roadway deck, was selected for schedule and cost control while being aesthetically compatible with the Hoover Dam. Sean Holstege in The Arizona Republic has called the bridge "an American triumph". USA Today called it "America's Newest Wonder" on October 18, 2010.

 

Pedestrian access is provided over the bridge to tourists who wish to take in a different view of the nearby dam and river below, but the dam is not visible for those driving across it. A parking area is provided near the bridge on the Nevada side at what was a staging area during construction. A set of stairs and disabled access ramps lead to the sidewalk across the bridge.

 

Work began in 2003 on the approaches in both states and the construction contract for the arch bridge was awarded in October 2004. The largest obstacle to the project was the river crossing. The bridge and the bypass were constructed by a consortium of different government agencies and contractors, among them the Federal Highway Administration, the Arizona Department of Transportation, and Nevada Department of Transportation, with RE Monks Construction and Vastco, Inc, constructing the Arizona Approach, Edward Kraemer & Sons, Inc, the Nevada Approach and Las Vegas Paving Corporation undertaking the roadway surfacing on both approaches. The bridge itself was built by Obayashi Corporation and PSM Construction USA, Inc., while Frehner Construction Company, Inc. was responsible for completing the final roadway installations. A permit problem between Clark County and the subcontractor Casino Ready Mix arose in May 2006 over the operation of a concrete-batch plant for the project, and this caused a four-month delay.

 

Construction required hoisting workers and up to 50 short tons (45 t) of materials 890 feet (270 m) above the Colorado River using 2,300 ft (700 m)-long steel cables held aloft by a "high-line" crane system. High winds caused a cableway failure in September 2006, resulting in a further two-year delay. The approach spans, consisting of seven pairs of concrete columns—five on the Nevada side and two on the Arizona side—were completed in March 2008. In November 2008, construction worker Sherman Jones died in an accident.

 

The arches are made of 106 pieces—53 per arch—mostly 24 ft (7.3 m) cast in place sections. The arch was constructed from both sides of the bridge concurrently, supported by diagonal cable stays strung from temporary towers. The twin arch spans were completed with the casting of the center segments in August 2009. That same month, the two halves of the arch were completed, and were 3⁄8 inch (9.5 mm) apart; the gap was filled with a block of reinforced concrete. The temporary cable stays were removed, leaving the arch self-supporting. By December, all eight of the vertical piers on the arch had been set and capped, and at the end of the month the first two of thirty-six 50-short-ton (45 t) steel girders had been set into place.

 

By mid-April 2010, all of the girders were set in place, and for the first time construction crews could walk across the structure from Arizona to Nevada. Shortly thereafter, the pouring of the bridge deck began. The bridge deck was fully paved in July, and the high-line cranes were removed from the site as the overall project neared completion.[citation needed] The bridge was completed with a dedication ceremony on October 14, 2010. and a grand opening party on October 16. It was opened to bicycle and pedestrian traffic on October 18 and to vehicular traffic on October 19, a few weeks earlier than estimated. The building of the bridge was featured in episode 5x02 of the TV series Extreme Engineering. The filming of this episode took place before the start of work on the arch.

 

When the bridge opened to traffic, the roadway over Hoover Dam was closed to through traffic, and all visitor access to the dam was routed to the Nevada side; vehicles are still allowed to drive across the dam to the Arizona side following a security inspection, but must return to the Nevada side to return to US 93. The former US 93 route between the dam and its junction with the present US 93 route has been re-designated as Nevada State Route 172. The highway using the bridge was given the added designation of Interstate 11 in 2018, after the completion of the Boulder City freeway bypass.

 

Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its construction was the result of a massive effort involving thousands of workers, and cost over one hundred lives. It was referred to as Hoover Dam after President Herbert Hoover in bills passed by Congress during its construction, but was named Boulder Dam by the Roosevelt administration. The Hoover Dam name was restored by Congress in 1947.

 

Since about 1900, the Black Canyon and nearby Boulder Canyon had been investigated for their potential to support a dam that would control floods, provide irrigation water and produce hydroelectric power. In 1928, Congress authorized the project. The winning bid to build the dam was submitted by a consortium named Six Companies, Inc., which began construction of the dam in early 1931. Such a large concrete structure had never been built before, and some of the techniques were unproven. The torrid summer weather and lack of facilities near the site also presented difficulties. Nevertheless, Six Companies turned the dam over to the federal government on March 1, 1936, more than two years ahead of schedule.

 

Hoover Dam impounds Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States by volume when full. The dam is located near Boulder City, Nevada, a municipality originally constructed for workers on the construction project, about 30 mi (48 km) southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. The dam's generators provide power for public and private utilities in Nevada, Arizona, and California. Hoover Dam is a major tourist attraction; nearly a million people tour the dam each year. The heavily traveled U.S. Route 93 (US 93) ran along the dam's crest until October 2010, when the Hoover Dam Bypass opened.

 

As the United States developed the Southwest, the Colorado River was seen as a potential source of irrigation water. An initial attempt at diverting the river for irrigation purposes occurred in the late 1890s, when land speculator William Beatty built the Alamo Canal just north of the Mexican border; the canal dipped into Mexico before running to a desolate area Beatty named the Imperial Valley. Though water from the Imperial Canal allowed for the widespread settlement of the valley, the canal proved expensive to operate. After a catastrophic breach that caused the Colorado River to fill the Salton Sea, the Southern Pacific Railroad spent $3 million in 1906–07 to stabilize the waterway, an amount it hoped in vain would be reimbursed by the federal government. Even after the waterway was stabilized, it proved unsatisfactory because of constant disputes with landowners on the Mexican side of the border.

 

As the technology of electric power transmission improved, the Lower Colorado was considered for its hydroelectric-power potential. In 1902, the Edison Electric Company of Los Angeles surveyed the river in the hope of building a 40-foot (12 m) rock dam which could generate 10,000 horsepower (7,500 kW). However, at the time, the limit of transmission of electric power was 80 miles (130 km), and there were few customers (mostly mines) within that limit. Edison allowed land options it held on the river to lapse—including an option for what became the site of Hoover Dam.

 

In the following years, the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), known as the Reclamation Service at the time, also considered the Lower Colorado as the site for a dam. Service chief Arthur Powell Davis proposed using dynamite to collapse the walls of Boulder Canyon, 20 miles (32 km) north of the eventual dam site, into the river. The river would carry off the smaller pieces of debris, and a dam would be built incorporating the remaining rubble. In 1922, after considering it for several years, the Reclamation Service finally rejected the proposal, citing doubts about the unproven technique and questions as to whether it would, in fact, save money.

 

Soon after the dam was authorized, increasing numbers of unemployed people converged on southern Nevada. Las Vegas, then a small city of some 5,000, saw between 10,000 and 20,000 unemployed descend on it. A government camp was established for surveyors and other personnel near the dam site; this soon became surrounded by a squatters' camp. Known as McKeeversville, the camp was home to men hoping for work on the project, together with their families. Another camp, on the flats along the Colorado River, was officially called Williamsville, but was known to its inhabitants as "Ragtown". When construction began, Six Companies hired large numbers of workers, with more than 3,000 on the payroll by 1932 and with employment peaking at 5,251 in July 1934. "Mongolian" (Chinese) labor was prevented by the construction contract, while the number of black people employed by Six Companies never exceeded thirty, mostly lowest-pay-scale laborers in a segregated crew, who were issued separate water buckets.

 

As part of the contract, Six Companies, Inc. was to build Boulder City to house the workers. The original timetable called for Boulder City to be built before the dam project began, but President Hoover ordered work on the dam to begin in March 1931 rather than in October. The company built bunkhouses, attached to the canyon wall, to house 480 single men at what became known as River Camp. Workers with families were left to provide their own accommodations until Boulder City could be completed, and many lived in Ragtown. The site of Hoover Dam endures extremely hot weather, and the summer of 1931 was especially torrid, with the daytime high averaging 119.9 °F (48.8 °C). Sixteen workers and other riverbank residents died of heat prostration between June 25 and July 26, 1931.

 

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or "Wobblies"), though much-reduced from their heyday as militant labor organizers in the early years of the century, hoped to unionize the Six Companies workers by capitalizing on their discontent. They sent eleven organizers, several of whom were arrested by Las Vegas police. On August 7, 1931, the company cut wages for all tunnel workers. Although the workers sent the organizers away, not wanting to be associated with the "Wobblies", they formed a committee to represent them with the company. The committee drew up a list of demands that evening and presented them to Crowe the following morning. He was noncommittal. The workers hoped that Crowe, the general superintendent of the job, would be sympathetic; instead, he gave a scathing interview to a newspaper, describing the workers as "malcontents".

 

On the morning of the 9th, Crowe met with the committee and told them that management refused their demands, was stopping all work, and was laying off the entire work force, except for a few office workers and carpenters. The workers were given until 5 p.m. to vacate the premises. Concerned that a violent confrontation was imminent, most workers took their paychecks and left for Las Vegas to await developments. Two days later, the remainder were talked into leaving by law enforcement. On August 13, the company began hiring workers again, and two days later, the strike was called off. While the workers received none of their demands, the company guaranteed there would be no further reductions in wages. Living conditions began to improve as the first residents moved into Boulder City in late 1931.

 

A second labor action took place in July 1935, as construction on the dam wound down. When a Six Companies manager altered working times to force workers to take lunch on their own time, workers responded with a strike. Emboldened by Crowe's reversal of the lunch decree, workers raised their demands to include a $1-per-day raise. The company agreed to ask the Federal government to supplement the pay, but no money was forthcoming from Washington. The strike ended.

 

Before the dam could be built, the Colorado River needed to be diverted away from the construction site. To accomplish this, four diversion tunnels were driven through the canyon walls, two on the Nevada side and two on the Arizona side. These tunnels were 56 ft (17 m) in diameter. Their combined length was nearly 16,000 ft, or more than 3 miles (5 km). The contract required these tunnels to be completed by October 1, 1933, with a $3,000-per-day fine to be assessed for any delay. To meet the deadline, Six Companies had to complete work by early 1933, since only in late fall and winter was the water level in the river low enough to safely divert.

 

Tunneling began at the lower portals of the Nevada tunnels in May 1931. Shortly afterward, work began on two similar tunnels in the Arizona canyon wall. In March 1932, work began on lining the tunnels with concrete. First the base, or invert, was poured. Gantry cranes, running on rails through the entire length of each tunnel were used to place the concrete. The sidewalls were poured next. Movable sections of steel forms were used for the sidewalls. Finally, using pneumatic guns, the overheads were filled in. The concrete lining is 3 feet (1 m) thick, reducing the finished tunnel diameter to 50 ft (15 m). The river was diverted into the two Arizona tunnels on November 13, 1932; the Nevada tunnels were kept in reserve for high water. This was done by exploding a temporary cofferdam protecting the Arizona tunnels while at the same time dumping rubble into the river until its natural course was blocked.

 

Following the completion of the dam, the entrances to the two outer diversion tunnels were sealed at the opening and halfway through the tunnels with large concrete plugs. The downstream halves of the tunnels following the inner plugs are now the main bodies of the spillway tunnels. The inner diversion tunnels were plugged at approximately one-third of their length, beyond which they now carry steel pipes connecting the intake towers to the power plant and outlet works. The inner tunnels' outlets are equipped with gates that can be closed to drain the tunnels for maintenance.

 

To protect the construction site from the Colorado River and to facilitate the river's diversion, two cofferdams were constructed. Work on the upper cofferdam began in September 1932, even though the river had not yet been diverted. The cofferdams were designed to protect against the possibility of the river's flooding a site at which two thousand men might be at work, and their specifications were covered in the bid documents in nearly as much detail as the dam itself. The upper cofferdam was 96 ft (29 m) high, and 750 feet (230 m) thick at its base, thicker than the dam itself. It contained 650,000 cubic yards (500,000 m3) of material.

 

When the cofferdams were in place and the construction site was drained of water, excavation for the dam foundation began. For the dam to rest on solid rock, it was necessary to remove accumulated erosion soils and other loose materials in the riverbed until sound bedrock was reached. Work on the foundation excavations was completed in June 1933. During this excavation, approximately 1,500,000 cu yd (1,100,000 m3) of material was removed. Since the dam was an arch-gravity type, the side-walls of the canyon would bear the force of the impounded lake. Therefore, the side-walls were also excavated to reach virgin rock, as weathered rock might provide pathways for water seepage. Shovels for the excavation came from the Marion Power Shovel Company.

 

The men who removed this rock were called "high scalers". While suspended from the top of the canyon with ropes, the high-scalers climbed down the canyon walls and removed the loose rock with jackhammers and dynamite. Falling objects were the most common cause of death on the dam site; the high scalers' work thus helped ensure worker safety. One high scaler was able to save a life in a more direct manner: when a government inspector lost his grip on a safety line and began tumbling down a slope towards almost certain death, a high scaler was able to intercept him and pull him into the air. The construction site had become a magnet for tourists. The high scalers were prime attractions and showed off for the watchers. The high scalers received considerable media attention, with one worker dubbed the "Human Pendulum" for swinging co-workers (and, at other times, cases of dynamite) across the canyon. To protect themselves against falling objects, some high scalers dipped cloth hats in tar and allowed them to harden. When workers wearing such headgear were struck hard enough to inflict broken jaws, they sustained no skull damage. Six Companies ordered thousands of what initially were called "hard boiled hats" (later "hard hats") and strongly encouraged their use.

 

The cleared, underlying rock foundation of the dam site was reinforced with grout, forming a grout curtain. Holes were driven into the walls and base of the canyon, as deep as 150 feet (46 m) into the rock, and any cavities encountered were to be filled with grout. This was done to stabilize the rock, to prevent water from seeping past the dam through the canyon rock, and to limit "uplift"—upward pressure from water seeping under the dam. The workers were under severe time constraints due to the beginning of the concrete pour. When they encountered hot springs or cavities too large to readily fill, they moved on without resolving the problem. A total of 58 of the 393 holes were incompletely filled. After the dam was completed and the lake began to fill, large numbers of significant leaks caused the Bureau of Reclamation to examine the situation. It found that the work had been incompletely done, and was based on less than a full understanding of the canyon's geology. New holes were drilled from inspection galleries inside the dam into the surrounding bedrock. It took nine years (1938–47) under relative secrecy to complete the supplemental grout curtain.

 

The first concrete was poured into the dam on June 6, 1933, 18 months ahead of schedule. Since concrete heats and contracts as it cures, the potential for uneven cooling and contraction of the concrete posed a serious problem. Bureau of Reclamation engineers calculated that if the dam were to be built in a single continuous pour, the concrete would take 125 years to cool, and the resulting stresses would cause the dam to crack and crumble. Instead, the ground where the dam would rise was marked with rectangles, and concrete blocks in columns were poured, some as large as 50 ft square (15 m) and 5 feet (1.5 m) high. Each five-foot form contained a set of 1-inch (25 mm) steel pipes; cool river water would be poured through the pipes, followed by ice-cold water from a refrigeration plant. When an individual block had cured and had stopped contracting, the pipes were filled with grout. Grout was also used to fill the hairline spaces between columns, which were grooved to increase the strength of the joints.

 

The concrete was delivered in huge steel buckets 7 feet high (2.1 m) and almost 7 feet in diameter; Crowe was awarded two patents for their design. These buckets, which weighed 20 short tons (18.1 t; 17.9 long tons) when full, were filled at two massive concrete plants on the Nevada side, and were delivered to the site in special railcars. The buckets were then suspended from aerial cableways which were used to deliver the bucket to a specific column. As the required grade of aggregate in the concrete differed depending on placement in the dam (from pea-sized gravel to 9 inches [230 mm] stones), it was vital that the bucket be maneuvered to the proper column. When the bottom of the bucket opened up, disgorging 8 cu yd (6.1 m3) of concrete, a team of men worked it throughout the form. Although there are myths that men were caught in the pour and are entombed in the dam to this day, each bucket deepened the concrete in a form by only 1 inch (25 mm), and Six Companies engineers would not have permitted a flaw caused by the presence of a human body.

 

A total of 3,250,000 cubic yards (2,480,000 cubic meters) of concrete was used in the dam before concrete pouring ceased on May 29, 1935. In addition, 1,110,000 cu yd (850,000 m3) were used in the power plant and other works. More than 582 miles (937 km) of cooling pipes were placed within the concrete. Overall, there is enough concrete in the dam to pave a two-lane highway from San Francisco to New York. Concrete cores were removed from the dam for testing in 1995; they showed that "Hoover Dam's concrete has continued to slowly gain strength" and the dam is composed of a "durable concrete having a compressive strength exceeding the range typically found in normal mass concrete". Hoover Dam concrete is not subject to alkali–silica reaction (ASR), as the Hoover Dam builders happened to use nonreactive aggregate, unlike that at downstream Parker Dam, where ASR has caused measurable deterioration.

 

With most work finished on the dam itself (the powerhouse remained uncompleted), a formal dedication ceremony was arranged for September 30, 1935, to coincide with a western tour being made by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The morning of the dedication, it was moved forward three hours from 2 p.m. Pacific time to 11 a.m.; this was done because Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes had reserved a radio slot for the President for 2 p.m. but officials did not realize until the day of the ceremony that the slot was for 2 p.m. Eastern Time. Despite the change in the ceremony time, and temperatures of 102 °F (39 °C), 10,000 people were present for the President's speech, in which he avoided mentioning the name of former President Hoover, who was not invited to the ceremony. To mark the occasion, a three-cent stamp was issued by the United States Post Office Department—bearing the name "Boulder Dam", the official name of the dam between 1933 and 1947. After the ceremony, Roosevelt made the first visit by any American president to Las Vegas.

 

Most work had been completed by the dedication, and Six Companies negotiated with the government through late 1935 and early 1936 to settle all claims and arrange for the formal transfer of the dam to the Federal Government. The parties came to an agreement and on March 1, 1936, Secretary Ickes formally accepted the dam on behalf of the government. Six Companies was not required to complete work on one item, a concrete plug for one of the bypass tunnels, as the tunnel had to be used to take in irrigation water until the powerhouse went into operation.

 

There were 112 deaths reported as associated with the construction of the dam. The first was Bureau of Reclamation employee Harold Connelly who died on May 15, 1921, after falling from a barge while surveying the Colorado River for an ideal spot for the dam. Surveyor John Gregory ("J.G.") Tierney, who drowned on December 20, 1922, in a flash flood while looking for an ideal spot for the dam was the second person. The official list's final death occurred on December 20, 1935, when Patrick Tierney, electrician's helper and the son of J.G. Tierney, fell from one of the two Arizona-side intake towers. Included in the fatality list are three workers who took their own lives on site, one in 1932 and two in 1933. Of the 112 fatalities, 91 were Six Companies employees, three were Bureau of Reclamation employees, and one was a visitor to the site; the remainder were employees of various contractors not part of Six Companies.

 

Ninety-six of the deaths occurred during construction at the site. Not included in the official number of fatalities were deaths that were recorded as pneumonia. Workers alleged that this diagnosis was a cover for death from carbon monoxide poisoning (brought on by the use of gasoline-fueled vehicles in the diversion tunnels), and a classification used by Six Companies to avoid paying compensation claims. The site's diversion tunnels frequently reached 140 °F (60 °C), enveloped in thick plumes of vehicle exhaust gases. A total of 42 workers were recorded as having died from pneumonia and were not included in the above total; none were listed as having died from carbon monoxide poisoning. No deaths of non-workers from pneumonia were recorded in Boulder City during the construction period.

 

The initial plans for the facade of the dam, the power plant, the outlet tunnels and ornaments clashed with the modern look of an arch dam. The Bureau of Reclamation, more concerned with the dam's functionality, adorned it with a Gothic-inspired balustrade and eagle statues. This initial design was criticized by many as being too plain and unremarkable for a project of such immense scale, so Los Angeles-based architect Gordon B. Kaufmann, then the supervising architect to the Bureau of Reclamation, was brought in to redesign the exteriors. Kaufmann greatly streamlined the design and applied an elegant Art Deco style to the entire project. He designed sculpted turrets rising seamlessly from the dam face and clock faces on the intake towers set for the time in Nevada and Arizona—both states are in different time zones, but since Arizona does not observe daylight saving time, the clocks display the same time for more than half the year.

 

At Kaufmann's request, Denver artist Allen Tupper True was hired to handle the design and decoration of the walls and floors of the new dam. True's design scheme incorporated motifs of the Navajo and Pueblo tribes of the region. Although some were initially opposed to these designs, True was given the go-ahead and was officially appointed consulting artist. With the assistance of the National Laboratory of Anthropology, True researched authentic decorative motifs from Indian sand paintings, textiles, baskets and ceramics. The images and colors are based on Native American visions of rain, lightning, water, clouds, and local animals—lizards, serpents, birds—and on the Southwestern landscape of stepped mesas. In these works, which are integrated into the walkways and interior halls of the dam, True also reflected on the machinery of the operation, making the symbolic patterns appear both ancient and modern.

 

With the agreement of Kaufmann and the engineers, True also devised for the pipes and machinery an innovative color-coding which was implemented throughout all BOR projects. True's consulting artist job lasted through 1942; it was extended so he could complete design work for the Parker, Shasta and Grand Coulee dams and power plants. True's work on the Hoover Dam was humorously referred to in a poem published in The New Yorker, part of which read, "lose the spark, and justify the dream; but also worthy of remark will be the color scheme".

 

Complementing Kaufmann and True's work, sculptor Oskar J. W. Hansen designed many of the sculptures on and around the dam. His works include the monument of dedication plaza, a plaque to memorialize the workers killed and the bas-reliefs on the elevator towers. In his words, Hansen wanted his work to express "the immutable calm of intellectual resolution, and the enormous power of trained physical strength, equally enthroned in placid triumph of scientific accomplishment", because "the building of Hoover Dam belongs to the sagas of the daring." Hansen's dedication plaza, on the Nevada abutment, contains a sculpture of two winged figures flanking a flagpole.

 

Surrounding the base of the monument is a terrazzo floor embedded with a "star map". The map depicts the Northern Hemisphere sky at the moment of President Roosevelt's dedication of the dam. This is intended to help future astronomers, if necessary, calculate the exact date of dedication. The 30-foot-high (9.1 m) bronze figures, dubbed "Winged Figures of the Republic", were both formed in a continuous pour. To put such large bronzes into place without marring the highly polished bronze surface, they were placed on ice and guided into position as the ice melted. Hansen's bas-relief on the Nevada elevator tower depicts the benefits of the dam: flood control, navigation, irrigation, water storage, and power. The bas-relief on the Arizona elevator depicts, in his words, "the visages of those Indian tribes who have inhabited mountains and plains from ages distant."

 

Excavation for the powerhouse was carried out simultaneously with the excavation for the dam foundation and abutments. The excavation of this U-shaped structure located at the downstream toe of the dam was completed in late 1933 with the first concrete placed in November 1933. Filling of Lake Mead began February 1, 1935, even before the last of the concrete was poured that May. The powerhouse was one of the projects uncompleted at the time of the formal dedication on September 30, 1935; a crew of 500 men remained to finish it and other structures. To make the powerhouse roof bombproof, it was constructed of layers of concrete, rock, and steel with a total thickness of about 3.5 feet (1.1 m), topped with layers of sand and tar.

 

In the latter half of 1936, water levels in Lake Mead were high enough to permit power generation, and the first three Allis Chalmers built Francis turbine-generators, all on the Nevada side, began operating. In March 1937, one more Nevada generator went online and the first Arizona generator by August. By September 1939, four more generators were operating, and the dam's power plant became the largest hydroelectricity facility in the world. The final generator was not placed in service until 1961, bringing the maximum generating capacity to 1,345 megawatts at the time. Original plans called for 16 large generators, eight on each side of the river, but two smaller generators were installed instead of one large one on the Arizona side for a total of 17. The smaller generators were used to serve smaller communities at a time when the output of each generator was dedicated to a single municipality, before the dam's total power output was placed on the grid and made arbitrarily distributable.

 

Before water from Lake Mead reaches the turbines, it enters the intake towers and then four gradually narrowing penstocks which funnel the water down towards the powerhouse. The intakes provide a maximum hydraulic head (water pressure) of 590 ft (180 m) as the water reaches a speed of about 85 mph (140 km/h). The entire flow of the Colorado River usually passes through the turbines. The spillways and outlet works (jet-flow gates) are rarely used. The jet-flow gates, located in concrete structures 180 feet (55 m) above the river and also at the outlets of the inner diversion tunnels at river level, may be used to divert water around the dam in emergency or flood conditions, but have never done so, and in practice are used only to drain water from the penstocks for maintenance. Following an uprating project from 1986 to 1993, the total gross power rating for the plant, including two 2.4 megawatt Pelton turbine-generators that power Hoover Dam's own operations is a maximum capacity of 2080 megawatts. The annual generation of Hoover Dam varies. The maximum net generation was 10.348 TWh in 1984, and the minimum since 1940 was 2.648 TWh in 1956. The average power generated was 4.2 TWh/year for 1947–2008. In 2015, the dam generated 3.6 TWh.

 

The amount of electricity generated by Hoover Dam has been decreasing along with the falling water level in Lake Mead due to the prolonged drought since year 2000 and high demand for the Colorado River's water. By 2014 its generating capacity was downrated by 23% to 1592 MW and was providing power only during periods of peak demand. Lake Mead fell to a new record low elevation of 1,071.61 feet (326.63 m) on July 1, 2016, before beginning to rebound slowly. Under its original design, the dam would no longer be able to generate power once the water level fell below 1,050 feet (320 m), which might have occurred in 2017 had water restrictions not been enforced. To lower the minimum power pool elevation from 1,050 to 950 feet (320 to 290 m), five wide-head turbines, designed to work efficiently with less flow, were installed.[102] Water levels were maintained at over 1,075 feet (328 m) in 2018 and 2019, but fell to a new record low of 1,071.55 feet (326.61 m) on June 10, 2021[104] and were projected to fall below 1,066 feet (325 m) by the end of 2021.

 

Control of water was the primary concern in the building of the dam. Power generation has allowed the dam project to be self-sustaining: proceeds from the sale of power repaid the 50-year construction loan, and those revenues also finance the multimillion-dollar yearly maintenance budget. Power is generated in step with and only with the release of water in response to downstream water demands.

 

Lake Mead and downstream releases from the dam also provide water for both municipal and irrigation uses. Water released from the Hoover Dam eventually reaches several canals. The Colorado River Aqueduct and Central Arizona Project branch off Lake Havasu while the All-American Canal is supplied by the Imperial Dam. In total, water from Lake Mead serves 18 million people in Arizona, Nevada, and California and supplies the irrigation of over 1,000,000 acres (400,000 ha) of land.

 

In 2018, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) proposed a $3 billion pumped-storage hydroelectricity project—a "battery" of sorts—that would use wind and solar power to recirculate water back up to Lake Mead from a pumping station 20 miles (32 km) downriver.

 

Electricity from the dam's powerhouse was originally sold pursuant to a fifty-year contract, authorized by Congress in 1934, which ran from 1937 to 1987. In 1984, Congress passed a new statute which set power allocations to southern California, Arizona, and Nevada from the dam from 1987 to 2017. The powerhouse was run under the original authorization by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Southern California Edison; in 1987, the Bureau of Reclamation assumed control. In 2011, Congress enacted legislation extending the current contracts until 2067, after setting aside 5% of Hoover Dam's power for sale to Native American tribes, electric cooperatives, and other entities. The new arrangement began on October 1, 2017.

 

The dam is protected against over-topping by two spillways. The spillway entrances are located behind each dam abutment, running roughly parallel to the canyon walls. The spillway entrance arrangement forms a classic side-flow weir with each spillway containing four 100-foot-long (30 m) and 16-foot-wide (4.9 m) steel-drum gates. Each gate weighs 5,000,000 pounds (2,300 metric tons) and can be operated manually or automatically. Gates are raised and lowered depending on water levels in the reservoir and flood conditions. The gates cannot entirely prevent water from entering the spillways but can maintain an extra 16 ft (4.9 m) of lake level.

 

Water flowing over the spillways falls dramatically into 600-foot-long (180 m), 50-foot-wide (15 m) spillway tunnels before connecting to the outer diversion tunnels and reentering the main river channel below the dam. This complex spillway entrance arrangement combined with the approximate 700-foot (210 m) elevation drop from the top of the reservoir to the river below was a difficult engineering problem and posed numerous design challenges. Each spillway's capacity of 200,000 cu ft/s (5,700 m3/s) was empirically verified in post-construction tests in 1941.

 

The large spillway tunnels have only been used twice, for testing in 1941 and because of flooding in 1983. Both times, when inspecting the tunnels after the spillways were used, engineers found major damage to the concrete linings and underlying rock. The 1941 damage was attributed to a slight misalignment of the tunnel invert (or base), which caused cavitation, a phenomenon in fast-flowing liquids in which vapor bubbles collapse with explosive force. In response to this finding, the tunnels were patched with special heavy-duty concrete and the surface of the concrete was polished mirror-smooth. The spillways were modified in 1947 by adding flip buckets, which both slow the water and decrease the spillway's effective capacity, in an attempt to eliminate conditions thought to have contributed to the 1941 damage. The 1983 damage, also due to cavitation, led to the installation of aerators in the spillways. Tests at Grand Coulee Dam showed that the technique worked, in principle.

 

There are two lanes for automobile traffic across the top of the dam, which formerly served as the Colorado River crossing for U.S. Route 93. In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, authorities expressed security concerns and the Hoover Dam Bypass project was expedited. Pending the completion of the bypass, restricted traffic was permitted over Hoover Dam. Some types of vehicles were inspected prior to crossing the dam while semi-trailer trucks, buses carrying luggage, and enclosed-box trucks over 40 ft (12 m) long were not allowed on the dam at all, and were diverted to U.S. Route 95 or Nevada State Routes 163/68. The four-lane Hoover Dam Bypass opened on October 19, 2010. It includes a composite steel and concrete arch bridge, the Mike O'Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, 1,500 ft (460 m) downstream from the dam. With the opening of the bypass, through traffic is no longer allowed across Hoover Dam; dam visitors are allowed to use the existing roadway to approach from the Nevada side and cross to parking lots and other facilities on the Arizona side.

 

Hoover Dam opened for tours in 1937 after its completion but following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, it was closed to the public when the United States entered World War II, during which only authorized traffic, in convoys, was permitted. After the war, it reopened September 2, 1945, and by 1953, annual attendance had risen to 448,081. The dam closed on November 25, 1963, and March 31, 1969, days of mourning in remembrance of Presidents Kennedy and Eisenhower. In 1995, a new visitors' center was built, and the following year, visits exceeded one million for the first time. The dam closed again to the public on September 11, 2001; modified tours were resumed in December and a new "Discovery Tour" was added the following year. Today, nearly a million people per year take the tours of the dam offered by the Bureau of Reclamation. Increased security concerns by the government have led to most of the interior structure's being inaccessible to tourists. As a result, few of True's decorations can now be seen by visitors. Visitors can only purchase tickets on-site and have the options of a guided tour of the whole facility or only the power plant area. The only self-guided tour option is for the visitor center itself, where visitors can view various exhibits and enjoy a 360-degree view of the dam.

 

The changes in water flow and use caused by Hoover Dam's construction and operation have had a large impact on the Colorado River Delta. The construction of the dam has been implicated in causing the decline of this estuarine ecosystem. For six years after the construction of the dam, while Lake Mead filled, virtually no water reached the mouth of the river. The delta's estuary, which once had a freshwater-saltwater mixing zone stretching 40 miles (64 km) south of the river's mouth, was turned into an inverse estuary where the level of salinity was higher close to the river's mouth.

 

The Colorado River had experienced natural flooding before the construction of the Hoover Dam. The dam eliminated the natural flooding, threatening many species adapted to the flooding, including both plants and animals. The construction of the dam devastated the populations of native fish in the river downstream from the dam. Four species of fish native to the Colorado River, the Bonytail chub, Colorado pikeminnow, Humpback chub, and Razorback sucker, are listed as endangered.

 

During the years of lobbying leading up to the passage of legislation authorizing the dam in 1928, the press generally referred to the dam as "Boulder Dam" or as "Boulder Canyon Dam", even though the proposed site had shifted to Black Canyon. The Boulder Canyon Project Act of 1928 (BCPA) never mentioned a proposed name or title for the dam. The BCPA merely allows the government to "construct, operate, and maintain a dam and incidental works in the main stream of the Colorado River at Black Canyon or Boulder Canyon".

 

When Secretary of the Interior Ray Wilbur spoke at the ceremony starting the building of the railway between Las Vegas and the dam site on September 17, 1930, he named the dam "Hoover Dam", citing a tradition of naming dams after Presidents, though none had been so honored during their terms of office. Wilbur justified his choice on the ground that Hoover was "the great engineer whose vision and persistence ... has done so much to make [the dam] possible". One writer complained in response that "the Great Engineer had quickly drained, ditched, and dammed the country."

 

After Hoover's election defeat in 1932 and the accession of the Roosevelt administration, Secretary Ickes ordered on May 13, 1933, that the dam be referred to as Boulder Dam. Ickes stated that Wilbur had been imprudent in naming the dam after a sitting president, that Congress had never ratified his choice, and that it had long been referred to as Boulder Dam. Unknown to the general public, Attorney General Homer Cummings informed Ickes that Congress had indeed used the name "Hoover Dam" in five different bills appropriating money for construction of the dam. The official status this conferred to the name "Hoover Dam" had been noted on the floor of the House of Representatives by Congressman Edward T. Taylor of Colorado on December 12, 1930, but was likewise ignored by Ickes.

 

When Ickes spoke at the dedication ceremony on September 30, 1935, he was determined, as he recorded in his diary, "to try to nail down for good and all the name Boulder Dam." At one point in the speech, he spoke the words "Boulder Dam" five times within thirty seconds. Further, he suggested that if the dam were to be named after any one person, it should be for California Senator Hiram Johnson, a lead sponsor of the authorizing legislation. Roosevelt also referred to the dam as Boulder Dam, and the Republican-leaning Los Angeles Times, which at the time of Ickes' name change had run an editorial cartoon showing Ickes ineffectively chipping away at an enormous sign "HOOVER DAM", reran it showing Roosevelt reinforcing Ickes, but having no greater success.

 

In the following years, the name "Boulder Dam" failed to fully take hold, with many Americans using both names interchangeably and mapmakers divided as to which name should be printed. Memories of the Great Depression faded, and Hoover to some extent rehabilitated himself through good works during and after World War II. In 1947, a bill passed both Houses of Congress unanimously restoring the name "Hoover Dam." Ickes, who was by then a private citizen, opposed the change, stating, "I didn't know Hoover was that small a man to take credit for something he had nothing to do with."

 

Hoover Dam was recognized as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1984. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985, cited for its engineering innovations.

Bluebirds Logg:

 

Hello dear Log, today we got some action on base, somehow a twenty or so Pirate fighters have breached out defenses and started bombing the base, we had no rides of our own to counter their onslaught on HQ,

Since we have this vintage old rides convention on Moon-base 6b, yes that is how old our fighters are...

 

Anyhow, they we are lent to that show on the white orb, we only had one fighter, a really old Bt-22g Gunhawk "hummingbird", that was transported here for the show,but since it had a faulty Shield generator and some glitchy circuits it could not participate in the show and was the only ride on our runway...

 

So Commande Blinkenfeld who was in command managed to get a big-bot lifter robot to come to our salvation it had a mobile Reveted-void-gun so that started blasting the pirates... some of our boys and girls also picked up the blasters not that I think that anyone of them even managed to get a screw loose on the predator blasting and joyriding all over the base...

 

Irena asked to get a blaster from someone, all denied her since, they themselves wanted to become the Hero of the day...

 

Still it is kind of weird since Irena is a good marksman, really good, she knows how to handle guns among other things...

 

Irena got more frustrated by every second, she asked Blinkenfeld told her no, on repeat, he even told her, that if she didn´t lay off she would do some time in the slammer after the skirmish....

 

but the bot, really did its´s work with the reverted mega-gun, he blasted fighter after fighter until only five remained...

 

Then Irena now so frustrated that her pink uniform was almost redhot and glowing and visible steam could bee seen from her ears, she instead went to Medic Peggy Hook who was the highest rank on base when it came to medical matters, she told her that she was expecting a baby and that her water had just broken,,,

 

she gave her clearance to go to hospital by using the "hummingbird" so she boarded the ancient fighter and blew the Bot Defender a kiss and said:

"Hey Mech-muscles you are the hero of the day, the other hero will reward you after the fight

 

Irena started the launch, the old fighter oozed steam and oil and vibrated more that Irenas locker when she had forgotten to turn of her electronic toys!

 

But after a while of a hard fight agains gravity it slowly lifted above the base runway, then Irena (who off cause wasn´t pregnant and on her way to a midwife or doctor) showed that not only is she a master of fast fighters, she is the master of slow-fighting too, she really took advantage of the spaceships slowness and lured the maniac joyriders in to arial -traps, it was only a matter moments and she had blasted the buzzing pirates out of the sky...

 

Over and out!

 

/ Bluebird!

 

Epilog: The Robot didn´t get the chance to blow any more rides with his cannon since Irena beat him to them and also he was not fast enough to get away from his pink reward afterwards!)

More archival stuff. Been too busy at work the past few weeks to enjoy life outside (not to mention dark when I leave home, dark when I get home).

 

Some fun and debauchery planned for this evening though. Hopefully there willl be some postable shots from Greektown, a burlesque show, and the ever photographed 34th Street Christmas lights in Hampden. Some of them after Greektown may even been in focus if I lay off the ouzo at dinner.

Norsk Hydro Rjukan is an industrial facility operated by Norsk Hydro at Rjukan in Tinn, Norway, from 1911 to 1991. The plant manufactured chemicals related to the production of fertilizer, initially potassium nitrate from arc-produced nitric acid and later ammonia, hydrogen, and heavy water. The location was chosen for its vicinity to hydroelectric power plants built in the Måna river.

 

The Telemark power-based industry adventure started in 1902 when Sam Eyde, along with Norwegian and Swedish investors, bought Rjukan Falls—establishing A/S Rjukanfos on 30 April 1903. The same year, on 13 February, Eyde and Kristian Birkeland had met and started working on refining the electric arc to produce an electric flame; allowing Eyde to complete his process of converting air and electricity into fertilizer.

 

On 2 December 1905 Norsk Hydro was founded, and plans to start a new plant in Rjukan were initialized; moving closer to the source of power would improve efficiency.

 

On 13 April 1907 Norsk Hydro and the German group Badische Anilin- und Soda-Fabrik (today BASF) made an agreement for the creation of the factory at Rjukan, Rjukan Salpeterfabrik.

 

Accompanying the plant was housing and public facilities for the workers. Norsk Hydro employed at the most 2,500 people during construction, and many settled and took industrial jobs after the plants were finished.

 

The first potassium nitrate was shipped out on 8 December 1911, and two years later the plants were making a profit. Production increased from 110,000 tonnes per year to 250,000 tonnes in 1915, after the plant had been expanded, and up to 345,000 tonnes in 1917. The small hamlet of Rjukan had turned into a town, and in 1920 there were 11,651 people in Tinn.

 

During the 1930s there was a global depression, followed by many lay-offs, and not until 1938 was Norsk Hydro able to make a profit again. During the 1930s other products came into production, including the world's first mass-produced heavy water.

 

Because of heavy water's critical role in nuclear fission, this became a matter of strategic concern during World War II. The Norwegian Heavy Water Sabotage initiative was a series of Allied-led efforts to quash German heavy water production via hydroelectric plants in Norway, during World War II. These were successfully undertaken by Norwegian commandos, and Allied bombing raids.

 

During World War II, the Allies sought to inhibit the German development of nuclear weapons through the removal of heavy water, and the destruction of heavy water production plants. The Norwegian Heavy Water Sabotages were specifically aimed at the 60 MW Vemork power station, at the Rjukan waterfall in Telemark, Norway.

 

The hydroelectric power plant Vemork, was built in 1934. It was the world's first site to mass produce heavy water (as a byproduct of nitrogen fixing), at a capacity of 12 tonnes per year.

 

Prior to the German invasion of Norway on 9 April 1940, the French Deuxième Bureau removed 185 kilograms (408 lb) of heavy water from the plant in Vemork in then-neutral Norway.

The plant's managing director, Aubert, agreed to lend the heavy water to France for the duration of the war. The French transported it secretly to Oslo, on to Perth, Scotland, and then to France. The plant was still however capable of producing heavy water. Consequently, the Allies were concerned that occupying forces would likely use the facility to produce more heavy water.

 

Between 1940 and 1944, a sequence of sabotage actions, by the Norwegian resistance movement—as well as Allied bombing—ensured the destruction of the plant and the loss of the heavy water. These operations—codenamed Grouse, Freshman, and Gunnerside—knocked the plant out of production in early 1943.

 

In Operation Grouse, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) successfully placed four Norwegian nationals as an advance team in the region of the Hardanger Plateau above the plant in October 1942. The unsuccessful Operation Freshman was mounted the following month by British paratroopers; they were to rendezvous with the Norwegians of Operation Grouse and proceed to Vemork. This attempt failed when the military gliders (along with one of their tugs, a Handley Page Halifax) crashed short of their destination. Excepting the crew of one Halifax bomber, all the participants were killed in the crashes, or, captured, interrogated, then executed by the Gestapo.

 

In February 1943, a team of SOE-trained Norwegian commandos succeeded in destroying the production facility with a second attempt, Operation Gunnerside. This operation was later evaluated by SOE as the most successful act of sabotage in all of World War II. This was followed by Allied bombing raids. The Germans ceased operations, and went about moving the remaining heavy water to Germany. Norwegian resistance forces then sank the heavy water-laden ferry, SF Hydro, on Lake Tinn.

 

After the end of the war Norsk Hydro had a strong liquidity, while the Green Revolution and increased industrialization of agriculture in Europe boomed the demand for the products; from 1945 to 1955 production increased eightfold. In 1957 five round trips had to be made by the new ferry MF Storegut each day, while the trains made nine round trips from Rjukan to Mæl; each day transporting 100 wagon with 800 tonnes potassium nitrate and 400 tonnes ammonia; by 1962 723,482 tonnes produced a year.

 

However, by 1963, Norsk Hydro announced that new technology in the production of ammonia would force closure of the plant at Rjukan.

 

In 1988 Norsk Hydro terminated the ammonia production, and in 1991 they also closed down the production ammonium nitrate and potassium nitrate, along with the Rjukan Line. Within a few years the number of Norsk Hydro employees in Rjukan had been reduced from 1,760 to 530 people. All the employees were either retired or moved to other areas of Norsk Hydro's enterprise.

 

In 1988 the Norwegian Industrial Workers Museum was established at Vemork; by 1995 it had become a national museum. After the closing in 1991 the railway and railway ferries were preserved. In 2004 the foundation running the heritage railway was discontinued, and in 2007 the Norwegian Industry Workers Museum was launched as the new operator by the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage. This would allow the plants and Rjukan along with the railway, and equivalent closed plants at Odda to be nominated as a World Heritage Site.

update on my dog walkers :D

I am going to lay off buying anymore except for the fluffy haired ones as I desperately want one with crazy coloured hair!

The mass of man lives life quietly and desperately. Maybe the desperation can't be quiet anymore. -Thoreau

Laying off East Haven by Carnoustie after bringing the Royal Marines vehicles and equipment back from Northern Norway after the cancellation of Exercise Cold Response.