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| The ruins of the Teton Dam, a monument to arrogance |
The Teton Dam(it)
When I was a schoolboy, the passage of time was defined by B.C., meaning Before Christ and A.D. meaning Anno Domini which translates to "In the year of our Lord." The Gregorian calendar used those terms. We are still using the Gregorian calendar, but the terms have been changed in order to reflect a less religious bias since not everyone is Christian. Now the terms are B.C.E meaning Before the Common Era and C.E. meaning Common Era. The names are changed but it still means the same thing. Kind of like if we change the name, maybe no one will know what it was. Whatever. I'm not a fan of political correctness. I think it makes people hide in plain sight. I'd much rather know who someone is than discover it after I've invested months into a friendship. But I digress.
In southeast Idaho, in farming towns of Teton, Sugar City, Rexburg, Salem, Hibbard, Burton and Menan, time is measured by the distinction of B.F. and A.F. Before the flood and after the flood. On June 5th, 1976 the Teton Dam burst and sent two million cubic feet per second spilling down the Teton Canyon. If you do the math, that is more than 23 times the average flow of Niagara Falls. Here in Idaho, we don't do anything partway.
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| Below the dam. This used to be a beautiful valley, home to Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout. Where you see the road is more of the original channel of the Teton River. Most of the flat plain throughout this photograph is the flood debris that was deposited when the dam broke. |
In 1961 there was a severe drought in southeast Idaho and in 1962 there was a season of severe flooding. There was a proposal to build a dam on the Teton River to control flooding and to store water for irrigation. In addition, they would build a hydroelectric plant to supplement the area's power grid. It all seemed perfect.
Construction was begun in 1972. During the construction of the dam, it became clear that the surrounding rock of the canyon was unsuitable for a dam. It was composed of basalt and rhyolite, both of which are very permeable. The area surrounding the dam site is also seismically active. In the five years prior to construction of the dam, five earthquakes had been recorded, two of them large enough to be concerning. The Bureau of Reclamation decided to go ahead with their plans regardless. Several conservation groups protested the construction of the dam and filed a suit in federal court. They failed. The dam failed. Everybody failed.
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| This deer failed |
The Bureau of Reclamation decided to fill the cavities in the rock with grout and continue construction. Some of the cavities were large enough to walk into. One of them was a hundred feet long. They pumped tens of thousands of tons of grout into the cracks and didn't fill them. They decided it was enough and stopped. My best friend's uncle was one of the chief engineers on the project and gave warning after warning about the integrity of the surrounding rock. They were ignored. He kept explicit notes of every aspect of the project in a stack of notebooks my friend described as two feet high. When the dam failed, guess who they went after? Yup. My friend's uncle. He presented his evidence and was cleared of wrongdoing. They had to go higher up the command chain. If this isn't a parable for backing up your personal files, I don't know what is.
The Teton Dam site is not a pretty sight. It's downright ugly. When you compare the before and after photos, even 41 years after photos, it is stunning. The Teton River Valley had been one of America's scenic rivers. Still, further upstream it is still beautiful. The area in the vicinity of the dam, a few miles downstream and a few miles upstream looks like a warzone. Mostly in this blog, I focus on the beautiful things in the area. Every now and then I focus on the historical stuff. This is a place that is worth seeing if only to understand the arrogance of people who think they know better.
The canyon upstream of the dam is accessible if you know where the old boat launch was supposed to be. I do and we took our extended family down into the canyon.
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| You can still see one of the grout lines the Bureau of Reclamation poured to try to seal the surrounding rock |
When I was a boy scout, we used to take tours out to the dam site to see the progress of construction. There was a visitors center with an observation deck to view the work. The visitors center was beautifully landscaped with different plants. One day, the project manager was giving a tour of the dam site for members of several environmental lobbies. They, of course were opposed to the dam. As he was describing all of the plants around the center, one of the environmentalists asked him about the one spot that had no landscaping in it. He retorted, "That's where we're going to bury an environmentalist head first!" That wasn't very diplomatic. My mother is the one who told me that story, so I am certain she edited out the part about the part of the anatomy they were going leave above ground to kiss. What can I say, it was the seventies. People talked like that back then. The environmentalist was not amused, and he shouldn't have been, and in fact had the last laugh. It was a hollow laugh because the dam breaking and the havoc it caused wasn't very funny.
We hung out in the canyon for awhile to let the dogs get wet, and skipped a bunch of rocks in the river.
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| Skipping rocks just upstream of the dam |
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| The puppies had to get in on the action |
They ended construction of the dam and began filling it in November of 1975. They began filling it at the rate of one foot a day. Because of heavy snowfall, the chief engineer requested they double the fill rate. It's important to fill an earthen dam slowly to allow the silt and the clay to skin up and provide a barrier to water leakage. If you fill it too fast, the water permeates the fill and you never develop a skin or barrier. They asked to double the fill rate one more time and were approved. They were filling it at the rate of four feet per day. Everything they did on this project was conceived in arrogance. It was a perfect storm of events.
Right after the first of June 1976, the canyon below the dam began shooting out streams of high pressure water. This is not uncommon in an earth filled dam. On June 5th, two wet spots formed on the face of the dam. Sometime after that, the wet spots turned into actual leaks. The leaks grew with each passing minute and the project manager sent two D-9 Caterpillars down the face of the dam to try to patch the leaks. They were pushing tons of rock and fill into the holes but the holes kept getting bigger. A photographer and his family were passing by and decided to observe the dam. He started photographing everything and so we have a play by play, step by step photographic essay of the failure of the Teton Dam. When the collapse became imminent, the two Cat operators abandoned the machinery and ran for their lives. Then the dam broke and the flood occurred.
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| The break occurred on the left side of this photo. The right side of the photo is an exploratory trench dug by the Army Corps of Engineers to ascertain the cause of the dam's failure. |
The D-9 Cats were found, mangled beyond repair several miles downstream. One of them was described as being rolled into a ball. That's the power of water. The water rushed down the canyon and destroyed the town of Wilford, Idaho. All that was left of Wilford was a closet from a house. Why the closet was left but the house was gone we may never know. There were still dresses in it. The flood may have hit the town of Newdale, but I am not sure of that. It hit the corner of the town of Teton and completely flooded the town of Sugar City. By the time it hit Sugar City, the flood had spread out to about a mile wide and was about fifteen feet tall nearest the river. When it exited the canyon and spread out, the estimated speed was 40 feet per second. That is faster than you can run.
Rexburg was next. About half of Rexburg was built on the hill and the other half was down in the valley. The homes on the hill were untouched but the homes on the plain were flooded. Many people, when they returned to their properties discovered that their homes were no longer there. They were gone. My uncle thought his home was alright until he inspected the foundation and discovered socks and other clothing stuck between the foundation and the outer walls. His home had raised up with the water and settled back down on the foundation, but at an angle. Clothing had floated in-between the foundation and the walls and had become trapped there when it resettled. The pipes were the only thing that stopped it from floating away. Total loss. A few other farming communities were destroyed as well. The estimates were that one billion dollars of damage was done as a result of this flood. I indexed that for inflation from 1976 to 2017 when we took this trip. In 2017 dollars it would be 4.3 billion dollars. That's alot of potatoes. Eleven people lost their lives as a result of the flood. One of the fatalities suffered a heart attack as he was trying to save his stuff. He died a few days later.
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| As you can see, this was once a beautiful canyon |
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| This is the channel that the water passed through to get to the other side of the dam. The dam is just out of sight on the left of this picture. |
FEMA came in the next day to set up their operation. The man on point from Idaho was my sister's father-in-law. He was the president of one of the local church congregations and everyone went through him. The FEMA guys told him they needed a list that accounted for every person in the flood zone and it would take him at least a week to compile it. He reached into his satchel and handed it to them, typed and collated. They were stunned. Then they asked him for another set of information which they said would take at least two weeks to compile. He reached into his satchel and produced that paperwork, once again neatly typed and organized. Then they asked for another bit of information that they knew would take at least a month to get. This time he told them they had already acquired the information, it was being typed up and would be to them in the morning. Then the FEMA guys said, "President, we are just going to sit back and observe. If you need anything from us we will be glad to assist." The handling of the Teton Dam Flood by the residents is still used as a teaching example all over the nation for how to handle a disaster the right way. Never underestimate Idahoans. President Gerald Ford praised the residents of Idaho for not only the way they handled the disaster but also for the fact that the Idaho farmers were exceptionally honest when filing their claims.
In all the years and times I have visited the Teton Dam ruins, I had only been in the canyon and in the cut made by the Army Corps of Engineers. This time, though, some of our group decided they wanted to climb to the top of the dam. I had never done this before. New adventure.
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| Climbing to the top of the dam |
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| It's pretty steep |
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| as you can see |
Thousands of people were displaced. Proud Idahoans had become refugees in a matter of moments. The town of Rexburg was a divided town B.F. (Before Flood) Most of the people living on the hill were employed by the local college and the people who lived in the valley were mostly farmers. The two groups didn't mix much. When all the valley people were displaced, the hill people opened their homes to them and sheltered and fed them. Then they helped them muck out their homes and businesses. People from all over the western United States arrived within days by the busload and helped clean up the town and help the people who were displaced. It was an amazing show of solidarity and what can happen when we are our brothers keepers. We had several people living in our house and so did everyone I knew who lived on the hill. Eventually, the government built several trailer parks in the area to temporarily house the displaced while they rebuilt. The people called the mobile home parks Hudville, Mudville, Spudville and Floodville.
After the flood, or A.F., Rexburg became one town with friendships borne of catastrophe that have lasted through generations. It took a great deal of compassion for the people up on the hill to open their homes and a great deal of humility for the people in the valley to accept the help. One people from two.
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| This used to be a pretty valley. You can see the remnants of the roads the Bureau of Reclamation built to ease the construction of the dam. to the right is the road to the bottom of the canyon. The top of that road is concrete and was supposed to be the boat launch for recreation in the reservoir. That is the road to the bottom of the canyon today. |
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| My son and my niece climbing up the dam |
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| Looking into the cut made by the Army Corps of Engineers from the top of the dam. That is erosion on the silt layer. |
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| This was the under the dam spillway, intended to control how much water was allowed in the reservoir. It was also intended to divert water to turbines for the generation of electricity. |
When the immediate needs of the people had been satisfied, the government enlisted the Army Corps of Engineers to cut into the undamaged side of the dam in order to determine who to blame. When you look up into the cut, the center of the dam is silt and clay. Then both sides of the dam were encased in a boulder layer. Boulders up to the size of casaba melons. The fill for this dam came from the Bitch Creek drainage. If you read my last post, you know a little about Idaho and it's place names. Bitch Creek is pronounced Bitch Crick here. If you come here and say "creek" everyone will know you are a tourist.
The cool thing about Bitch Creek is a particular stone. We call it Teton Jade. A friend of mine put it on a machine that had flashing lights and noises that went "katalachang" and got the exact mineral composition of the stone. Turns out it is a distant cousin of jade but not the real stuff. That being said, it looks like jade, it feels like jade and it works like jade. Everything about it screams jade except chemistry. That is what a lot of the rock in the boulder layer is. Teton Jade. I have collected it on the dam many times. I have found some beautiful pieces too. When you cut it on a rocksaw (which I have) if you cut it thin enough you can see light glow green through it. It's pretty spectacular.
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| Slowpokes |
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| Hanging out near the top |
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| You can see the water scour at the bottom of the picture, center right. The rocks were torn from this side of the canyon as the water rushed through. Just evidence of the raw destructive power of water. |
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| In the cut from the Army Corps of Engineers, and also where I hunt Teton Jade |
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| You can see the silt core of the dam with the boulder layers on either side. |
I took everyone into the cut after we went up to the top of the dam and of course the kids decided they needed to go rock climbing. I had never climbed up the rocks on the canyon wall before so I went up. Lots of cool experiences on this day. You think you know everything about a place and then you take someone new and they see it from a different point of view. If you are smart you will try to see it as they do and you will learn cool new things. If you aren't smart, well, you probably didn't read all the way to here anyway so no harm done.
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| One of my nephews |
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| Climbing up the canyon face with one of my sons |
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| I got in on the act with one of my nieces |
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| The view from above looking into the cut from the canyon side |
When I first started writing this blog post, I thought it would be a shorty. I've been to the Teton Dam site many times, so it's part of my normal. But when I took family members who had never been, it stirred up many memories. I felt I needed to tell the story of the Teton Dam from my point of view. There is a lot of history around my home, if you know where to find it. I live in a great part of a great country. I'm glad I do.
Here is a link to a YouTube video about that day in June
Epic "Roadtrip" Part I: Yellowstone/Grand Teton
Epic "Roadtrip" Part II: Lewis & Clark Caverns
Epic "Roadtrip" Part IV: Total Eclipse of the Sun
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