An Update on Life

Well where to begin, it has been sometime since I have done a post on here. The last blog post about my travels was down to Texas and the Mother road in October. Since then I purchased a 1941 Plymouth which was the last post I made on here. Lots has happened since then one of the biggest was me getting a new job.

Lets start there…

On November 5th of 2018 I became the director of the Owyhee County Museum in Murphy, Idaho. After my summer job ending at the end of September I came back home and had about a month off before starting the new job. I applied for the position back September and had my interview early October. Since starting at the museum which I have been a member of for the past ten years there is lots going on. I have been able to fire up not only the 1915 Model T at the museum but also the 1941 John Deere B tractor. The museum is located in a very small town in Owyhee County. I commute each day about 30 mile along country roads with no traffic which is great because if I had a job in downtown Boise I would be fighting the rush hour traffic mess, it gets worse each year.

Being the director, the boss of a museum was something I didnt think I would be doing at this point in my life. I just graduated Boise State University with my Bachelors in History in 2017 and without a Masters I have began my career in history running a museum. This small but well funded museum by volunteer, donations, members and county support is quite large and has alot going for itself. The museum highlights the history of the county from ranching to mining.

Front of the Owyhee County Museum

Besides being busy running the museum Thanksgiving came and went along with the Christmas holiday.   Both were enjoyable spent with family and Christina. Christina and I have grown closer and continue to work well together. This year in May will mark our 5 years of being together and as we continue on we are getting closer to wanting to move in together and eventually an engagement to follow. Only time will tell to see what

Christina and I under a canopy of Christmas Lights

happens. There is lots to talk about before anything happen and we are taking it slow. I am also still working part time at the Boise Depot as their tour guide. Five years ago I created a historic tour for Parks & Rec. who run the old 1925 Boise Depot as an event center. Each first Sunday I lead a tour of the history and during Christmas there is a special evening open house where I read the Polar Express to all the kids. I even dress as the conductor.

Conductor at the Boise Depot

As for restoration of the Plymouth is concerned it is moving along at a great pace. So far the new white wall tires are on and the inside is being cleaned and improved. By March the car will be ready to roll.

I believe that covers it for now, im sure I left things out but will add photos below of the museum and other highlights in the past months. Not much traveling will happen this year due to my full time job but for sure will be down in Ogden Utah for the 150th anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad  on May 10th. There will be a huge event and the largest steam engine in the world there as well.

Until next time..

 

First start of the 1915 Model T in seven years.

1940 JD model B out front of museum. currently being fully restored.

New White wall tires for plymouth

Cleaning our inside of car and prepping it for rust preventive. The car over all is in great shape.

Forged in Ice & Snow the Buffalo Bill Dam

On the last adventure Christina and I explored the Buffalo Bill Dam, formally known as the Shoshone Dam. This was the tallest concrete arch dam in the U.S. when it was completed in 1910. It took six years to complete working every winter and multiple different contractors to finish the job. Here is the story of the Dam and how it has tamed a river and greened the Wyoming desert.

William F. Cody

The Dam is named after the famous Wild West figure William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, who founded the nearby town of Cody and owned much of the land now covered by the reservoir that was formed by the dam. The dam is part of the Shoshone Project, successor to several visionary schemes promoted by Cody to irrigate the Bighorn Basin and turn it from arid sagebrush covered plain to productive agricultural land. When construction began it was known as the Shoshone Dam, it would be renamed in 1946 to honor Mr. Cody.

 

 

 

The Dam comes in at 325 feet in height and was designed by engineer Daniel Webster Cole who at the time only had a 12th grade education and this was his first time building such a structure. Construction started in 1905 and would be a slow going as workers could only work during the low water seasons.  The Buffalo Bill Dam became one of the earliest projects of the new Bureau of Reclamation.

Drilling down to bed rock in the river

Work began immediately, with drilling into the bed rock below the river in  July 1904, and continuing for ten months. The chosen contractor, Prendergast & Clarkson of Chicago, started work in September 1905, building a camp for workers and starting on a diversion dam, which was to divert the river into a wooden flume, through a tunnel and out through another flume to rejoin the river bed.

In June of 1906 flood waters roared down the Shoshone River and destroyed the flume. This delay caused the Bureau of Reclamation to suspend the contractor’s contract and to call upon the contractor’s bonding company, the U.S. Fidelity and Guaranty Company, to ensure the completion of the work. Little work was done until March 1907. Another flood in July damaged the diversion dam again. Working conditions were harsh, leading to the first strike in Wyoming’s history in November, in which workers demanded and received three dollars a day from USF&G.

Work was falling behind so the USF&G delegated responsibility for the work to two new contractors, Locher and Grant Smith and Company, in March 1908. Work progressed more quickly, with the first concrete pours in April. Spring floods set the project back once again, causing concrete work to be suspended. The Concrete work started again in March 1909, and despite more spring flooding that suspended work from July to September, work moved quickly.

 

 

 

 

 

Winter working conditions were harsh and made pouring of concrete difficult. The construction company had to invest in costly measures to insure accurate pouring of the concrete during frigid days, so a steam plant was built on site and the top of the dam was tented and warm steam piped in so that the air temp was warmer providing a better pour. The dam is unique that it has no steel ribbing to hold it all together but the use of rock instead.

No steel ribbing but use of large Granite stones worked into the concrete during pouring.

The dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam, 70 feet wide at the base and 200 feet wide at the crest, with an original height of 325 feet. (the dam was added onto to the top in the 1970s.) The concrete structure measures 108 feet deep at the base, tapering to 10 feet at the crest, with a volume of 82,900 cubic yards of concrete. The dam is anchored into granitic rock on either side.

On a frigid January day with temperatures far below zero the final concrete bucket was poured. With a final cost of $1.4 million. Seven construction workers were killed on the project.

When completed the dam was taller then the United States Capital Building. The photo below shows a comparison of the two structures.

The reservoir behind the dam provides the Cody area with 90,000 acres of irrigated farm land. When visiting today there is a nice visitor center that you can learn about the construction of the dam and walk across the top. There is also a power plant that has been added and enlarged through the years and provides about 6 MW each on a head of 266 feet.

Back side of the Dam.

Standing at the center of the arch looking east down river towards Cody. It was a cold grey day when we visited.

Looking strait down at the face of the dam, hard to get it all in.

To learn more visit their website: https://bbdvc.com/