[current rushes powerfully]
*
- Narrator: The age-old dream of capturing the raw power
of Niagara Falls
became a reality in 1896
when the Niagara Power Company
built a large hydroelectric plant
just upstream.
Niagara Power selected the Westinghouse Company
to manufacture
the electrical generating system,
recently invented
by visionary scientist Nikola Tesla.
The large plant drew nationwide attention
when it sent electricity 11 miles
to Buffalo, New York,
where it easily powered the city's streetcar system.
[streetcar bell dinging]
The success at Niagara Falls
triggered a kind of hydro-mania,
which swept into Wisconsin.
Catching the fever
was Madison entrepreneur Magnus Swenson,
who persuaded investors to fund his vision
of electrifying Wisconsin
by building large hydroelectric plants.
At Kilbourn-- now known as Wisconsin Dells--
Swenson purchased a site
and began building a dam and a hydroelectric plant.
And even before he finished that project,
Swenson began searching for a bigger site
with more drop that would produce more power.
Just north of Prairie du Sac,
he found what he was looking for:
a site so large
that it would be second only to Niagara Falls
in size.
But there was a problem.
- It's a location that
is not a typical location
to build a hydro because
it's a very sandy river bottom.
- In that part of the river,
the sands extend somewhat beyond 50 feet thick.
And so, if you think of building a dam,
you need to typically anchor it or key it
into some kind of solid foundation.
In this case, there's nothing there.
It's just sand.
- Narrator: Swenson worked with Daniel Mead,
a professor of engineering from
the University of Wisconsin,
to come up with a solution for the site.
- Amanda Blank: And they
designed a very unique one-of-a-kind facility
that had never been built before.
- Carson Mettel: Mead would be
given the credit for coming up with this idea
of building the dam
on, essentially, a forest of piles.
- Amanda Blank: Basically,
a wooden pile, it's a tree. [laughs]
So what they did is they had to do logging,
and they would find a variety of different types of species,
and they actually drove them into the ground
using steam-driven pile hammers.
[steam-pile hammer has a slow driving vibration]
- So, this idea of building a pile foundation required
nearly 12,000 trees,
and they had to be of the right material
and the right diameter,
and they had to be nice and straight.
- Amanda Blank: Maybe the top two feet of that pile is there,
and then they will pour a concrete cap on top
so that whatever weight they put on top of that--
whether it's a wall or part of the dam--
it's then being supported by all those pilings.
- Narrator: Starting at the Prairie du Sac stockyards,
crews also used pile drivers to build
a rail line north to the construction site.
Contractors then brought in boilers,
to build a steam-driven electrical plant.
At a time before earthmovers or dump trucks,
the plant's generator powered
a remote-controlled electric rail system.
[rail cars move quietly]
Tracks extended several miles to a stone quarry
and gravel pit.
And while rail cars hauled the raw materials back
to a concrete mixing site,
much of the excavating work was done with shovels.
- One of the quotes I've heard
is that the dam was built with
steam power, horsepower, and manpower.
And it took about 400 people to build the dam,
and they really seemed to be separated
into two different groups.
There were the local laborers,
and they had an area on the west side of the river.
And there they had sleeping quarters,
and they had a nice dining hall.
And then, immigrant workers
were recruited from the Chicago area.
They came from Poland and Serbia, Russia, Italy,
and, as it's described, they had
more of a tent camp over there.
I do believe they were able to come over for food,
but really the two,
as I understand it, didn't mix that well.
And I think there was probably some animosity there,
but they all did work together,
and it took all 400 of them
to get the job done.
[drivers pounding steel "bang"]
- Narrator: To prepare for building the powerhouse,
pile drivers began pounding down sections
of a steel wall,
or cofferdam , around the worksite,
that would then be pumped dry.
But in the fall of 1911,
the river rose quickly
and soon breached the walls and flooded the site.
- They had a record-breaking flood,
six inches higher than had ever been recorded before,
and it washed out a lot of the progress they had made.
They had another one in 1912,
which did the same thing
and wiped out a lot of the progress.
- Amanda Blank: One bad winter where there was--
they call them ice dams, so, large sheets of ice--
that damaged a lot of the construction,
and they had to rebuild portions of the dams.
And they continue to press on.
- Narrator: Contractors hired divers
to inspect the damaged areas
of the cofferdam walls. [bubbles emerge from deep water]
And after replacing damaged sections,
and pumping water from the site,
workers began
shoveling out an area
where the powerhouse would take shape.
[shoveling]
Train cars brought in
tons of concrete and steel.
Steel forms gave shape to the draft tubes,
where water would exit the powerhouse.
Workers poured great quantities of concrete
using hand carts.
- Amanda Blank: They had masons on-site to do the masonry.
The powerhouse itself
is very large by today's standards.
It's an over three-story high building,
and the brickwork is just-- it's beautiful.
- Narrator: And as the powerhouse rose up,
attention turned toward finishing
the floodgates that would regulate
the flow of the river.
[light piano music]
And once the water turbines were installed
and connected to the generators,
the plant was finally ready
to begin producing electricity.
- Amanda Blank: I like to tell people
it's like working in a living museum
because our equipment's original.
We've upgraded electronics
and controls and safety devices,
but mechanically, everything here is running the same.
- Carson Metter: So, since it was completed in 1915,
we've been doing additional analyses
and refurbishment and looking at it
in a lot of different ways.
And today we have a lot more sophisticated tools
and can do very sophisticated computer models.
But what we find is that
the design is very, very...
eloquent, is the way I put it.
It's very perfectly balanced.
Even today, when you look at the loads and the forces on it--
it's wonderfully balanced.
It's actually hollow, which is interesting.
You can walk right through the middle of the dam.
But it's stood the test of time.
It's lasted a hundred years.
- Amanda Blank: To be able to see it every day
and to see it's still thriving
and offering electricity to the community
and being a big part of the community,
it's-- it's impressive.
[current rushing, birds calling]
[lure splashes, thuds into water]
[light orchestral music]