The entire flow of the greater of the Two Forks streams lay harnessed at last, after years of labor and an expenditure of millions. For twenty miles there lay a lake where once a clear, gravel-bottomed stream had flowed above the gorge of the mountain canyon. The gray face of a man-made wall rose sheer a hundred feet above the original bed of the stream, leaving it in part revealed; and this barrier checked and stayed the once resistless flood against which an entire mountain range had proved inefficient. Presently for hundreds of miles each way the transmission lines would carry out power to those seeking light, to those employing labor; and the used water would irrigate lands far below.
Allied with this unit of the great dam was a lesser dam operating a mill plant on the other Fork. Down this stream ship timbers once had come. The camp of the reclamation engineers and construction men lay upon a bench or plateau which once formed the bank of the stream upon that side, now about half way up to the top of the great dam. The road running up and down the valley ascended from this plateau to a sufficient elevation to surmount the permanent water level above the upper dam. On the opposite side rose a sheer and bare rock running two-thirds up to the top of the mountain peak which here had shouldered its way down as though in curiosity to look at the bottom of the gorge itself. The great dam was anchored to the rock face on that side, and it was there that the chutes and wells for the turbines were located, as well as the spill gates which now were in temporary service. A wide roadway of cement, with vast buttresses on each side, ran along the top of the dam and looked down upon the abrupt surface of its lower face. Here, and there, at either side of the dam, and at the original stream level, stood low buildings of stone, to house the vast dynamos or care for other phases of the tremendous industrial installation of the National Government.
Here and there were stationed the armed guards, in the uniform of the Army. They did sentry-go along the dam-top, and patrolled or watched the lower levels of the works below the dam. They patrolled also the street and the road above and below the camp.