High on Shasta Dam's vast concrete face last week a big steel gate opened. A mighty wall of water rushed down to the No. 4 penstock, exploded against the huge waiting turbine in the powerhouse below the dam. The tons of steel began to turn, accelerated, then hummed like a tremendous bee.
To Bureau of Reclamation men and their boss, Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes, that coming to life of the huge electric generator was the climax of the six-year job of building Shasta. But to strapping (205 lb., 6 ft. 3 in.), profane Francis Trenholm Crowe, general superintendent of construction for Pacific Constructors, Inc., the big moment had come four months before, when the Sacramento River began a regulated flow through outlet valves on the dam's broad, sloping downstream face. "That meant we had the river licked," said Crowe. "Pinned down, shoulders right on the mat. Hell, that's what we came up here for."
Builder Frank Crowe's 19th dam is the world's second biggest concrete structure (biggest: Grand Coulee Dam). Shasta is the highest overflow-type dam in the world (602 ft.). It is also California's tallest structure. When Shasta's reservoir fills (probably in 1946), water pouring over the center spillway will fall three times as far as Niagara. For California, Shasta Dam will:
¶Prevent the wild "flash" floods which, through rain and melting snows from lofty Mount Shasta, have annually devastated the Central Valley's homes and agriculture.
¶Regularly irrigate the vast, fertile, but often drought-parched San Joaquin Valley. ¶Supply 1,500,000,000 kilowatt hours annually to northern California's power-hungry industry through five turbines.
All this is Frank Crowe's work. His was not the vision, nor the planning, but he built the dam.
Engineer Crowe has changed the physical landscape perhaps more than any other individual in history. Born 61 years ago of American parents in Trenholmville, Quebec, he grew up playing tag across the log jams of Maine's great Ossippe River. By the time he graduated from the University of Maine in 1905 with a B.S. in civil engineering, a summer's work on dam construction on the Yellowstone River had sold him to a life of harnessing U.S. rivers. "While I was learning to build dams," Crowe reflects, "the nation got started on the biggest dam-building spree of all time. If I'd been born sooner or later, I'd have missed the boat."
By the time Boulder Dam came along (1931), Frank had a reputation: he was the man who could read blueprints at a glance (or ignore them when necessary), the man who could build dams faster than anyone else. When Henry J. Kaiser's Six Companies got the Boulder Dam bid, Frank was the natural choice to boss the job.
Crowe finished Boulder 26 months ahead of schedule. The Shasta deadline is Jan. 6, 1945. Were it still abuilding after that date, Pacific Constructors would have to pay $2,000 for each day. But despite hell, high water and manpower shortages, Crowe intends to top off Shasta in November.
Lean, tough and bull-voiced, Engineer
Crowe drives his men so hard that many quit. But most would rather work for "The Old Man" than for anyone else; some have been with him since 1905.