PHILBROOK DAM Where Giants Made History - · PDF fileFeather River in Butte County made the list of the World’s Greatest Dams when ... third largest earthfill dam ... PHILBROOK DAM

4

In 1968 the mighty Oroville Dam on theFeather River in Butte County made the list

of the World’s Greatest Dams when it was com-pleted at a height of 770 feet. This giant struc-ture, a multipurpose dam envisioned in the1920s as part of the Central Valley Project, pro-vides flood control, water storage, hydroelectricpower generation and recreation. Oroville Damis the highest in the United States, some 35 feethigher than Hoover Dam on the Colorado Riverand 170 feet higher than Shasta Dam on theSacramento River. The volume of earth fill in thedam is 80,000,000 cubic yards, making this thethird largest earthfill dam in the United States.The reservoir has a capacity of 3,537,577 acre-feet and its hydroelectric power plant is capableof generating 819,000 kilowatts of electricity. Indesign and construction, the Oroville Dam wasa world-class engineering project.1

Forty two years earlier another earthfill damwas built on a small tributary of the WestBranch of the North Fork of the Feather Riverabout 33 miles North of Oroville Dam. This wasthe Philbrook Dam located in the High Lakescountry of Butte County. It also made construc-tion history because of the speed with which itwas built and because it was the first earthfilldam built entirely by mechanized equipmentand without the use of horses and mules. Ofequal significance is that it was a major steppingstone for two men, Henry J. Kaiser and RobertG. LeTourneau, both on their way to becomingicons of American Industry. Their lives areAmerican Horatio Alger stories. Contemporariesoften thought them crazy, and both did whatothers considered impossible. They thought bigand did things on a grand scale.

Henry J. Kaiser left school in 1895 at age 13to help support his family by working in a drygoods store. Interested in photography, he soldphotographic products and soon owned his ownphoto shop. Kaiser came west in 1906. He be-

came a hardware salesman in Spokane Wash-ington. By 1911 he was a salesman and man-ager of paving contracts for a construction com-pany. He started his own construction companyin 1914. During the next 12 years his companydid millions of dollars of highway constructionin British Columbia, Washington, Idaho andCalifornia. Kaiser built a reputation for complet-ing jobs with remarkable speed and at a lowercost than his competition.2

Robert G. LeTourneau always consideredhimself a mechanic first. After leaving publicschool in 1902, his technical education was re-

PHILBROOK DAMWhere Giants Made History

Robert Colby

Henry J, Kaiser, weary and unshaven at HooverDam, about 1932. The Bancroft Library, Universityof California, Berkeley.

5

ceived on-the-job and from correspondenceschools. At age 14, his first job was an ironmolder. He later become an automobile me-chanic, electrical machinist and a welder even-tually owning his own garage in Stockton, Cali-fornia. He got into the earth moving businessrather by accident when he repaired an earlyscraper. It was obvious to LeTourneau that thisdevice left a lot of room for improvement. Theseearly scrapers, were of heavy, riveted construc-tion, operated by belts, gears and levers andrequired two men to run them. LeTourneauthen designed, built and operated scrapers with“light,” welded construction. They were poweredby electric motors run by a generator on the tow-ing tractor. Only one man was required, the trac-tor driver who operated the scraper from elec-trical controls next to his seat. LeTourneau’sscrapers were more reliable and efficient; theycould move dirt faster that the machines thatpreceded them. They were the forerunners of thegiant earth movers that we see today.3

When Kaiser first saw LeTourneau’s scraperin action, he knew that here was a machine to“make big jobs small.” Kaiser was 44 years oldand LeTourneau was 38.

Cattlemen and MinersYears before anyone thought of the Philbrook

Valley as a reservoir site, it was a summer pas-ture for cattlemen from the Sacramento Valley.We do not know who first ran cattle in the valley,

but Alonzo K. Philbrook and his wife Eliza werecertainly among the first to do so, probably asearly as 1857. They had a small ranch along MudCreek, north of John Bidwell’s Rancho Chico. By1860 they were driving eighty head of cattle upNeal Road, that had been opened in 1852,through Dogtown and then up the Humbug Roadto Powell’s Ranch and the mining camp of Inskip.They followed the Humbug Summit Road forabout a mile past Chaparral House. Then theyturned to the east, crossed the West Branch ofthe Feather River and climbed the ridge into thevalley that would be named after them.

The Philbrooks left no direct evidence thatthey pastured their cattle in the valley, but it isthe best pasture for miles around. They appar-ently built no cabin in the valley, but operatedout of their camp wagon. The fact that the val-ley and the creek that runs through it into theWest Branch are named Philbrook is reasonableevidence that they did.

Smith and Ball built Chaparral House, alarge, two-story hotel, in 1857. In the summer of1860 John H. Smith asked the Philbrooks tomanage the inn.4 They accepted and this gavethem a headquarters convenient to their summerrange. In 1866, the Butte County Great Registerlists Alonzo K. Philbrook, age 36 from Louisianaas a hotelkeeper at Chaparral House. They man-aged Chaparral House and summered their cattlein the area through 1867. Sometime before thesummer of 1868 they sold their ranch on MudCreek and moved to Santa Clara County.5

Undoubtedly there were other cattlemen whoused the Philbrook Valley as their summerrange, but until 1877 no records have beenfound. In that year Christopher Lynch, arancher from Cherokee, drove his cattle up theOroville-Susanville Road (now Pentz Road) toNeal Road and Magalia (formerly Dogtown).From here he followed the same route that thePhilbrooks had taken to the valley. Lynch rancattle in the valley until the first dam was builtin 1909. George Peterson, Christopher Lynch’sgrandson was first taken there in 1906 when hewas three years old and eventually spent no lessthan 70 summers at Philbrook. He remembersthe valley as a beautiful place with the streamfrom which he caught many trout.6

The Terrill, Crowell, Jones and Frank fami-

Robert G. LeTourneau at theSantiago Creek Dam, OrangeCounty, California in 1931.He was general contractor onthis job and his telescopicscrapers meant the differencebetween finishing the job ontime or not at all. WesternConstruction News.

6

Philbrook reservoir and vicinity. Note that Skyway was Neal Road below the intersection with PowelltonRoad. Modified from Compass Maps Butte County Street and Road Atlas, 2000 edition.

7

lies also ran cattle in the valley. The Terrills alsohad a store with a hotel on the second floor. Itwas an unofficial post office for the ranchers andminers in the area. The building was on the siteof the present dam.

Undoubtedly miners had been prospectingon the ridges and mountains surrounding thevalley since the Gold Rush, but probably did notmake any finds worth the difficulties in miningin the High Lakes country. However, by the late1800s and early 1900s perhaps 80 to 100 min-ers were working at in such mines as the Lott,Carr, Westcott, Sky High, Butte King and ButteQueen as well as numerous one-man opera-tions.7 The Carr Mine was the last major opera-tion and it shutdown in the 1990s because ofenvironmental concerns.

Before the DamsThe 1926 dam that Kaiser and LeTourneau

constructed was not the first dam in the Phil-brook Valley. In 1908, Oro Water, Light andPower Company constructed an earthfill damacross the West end of the valley. The idea for adam in the Philbrook Valley had its genesis backin 1890. But, to really understand how it all

started, we have to go back to 1875 and the eraof hydraulic mining.

In February 1875 two partnerships, Davisand Wells and France and Glass, claimed 3,000miners inches of water from the West Branch ofthe Feather River. They built the Davis and Com-pany Ditch with a diversion dam on the WestBranch just below Magalia. The ditch carriedwater down the west wall of the canyon and outto mines at Dry Creek in the area southwest ofthe community of Pentz.

By 1880 the Miocene Mining Companyowned the ditch and water rights. The ditch wasextended around Table Mountain to the MioceneMine at Thompson Flat on the southeast side ofthe mountain. Renamed the Miocene Ditch, bothit and the water rights were deeded to the TableMountain Water and Irrigating Company, a sub-sidiary of the mining company. The MioceneMine was quite lucrative, but in 1887 the Stateof California obtained and injunction against thecompany stopping discharging or dumping thetailings from the mine into the Feather River.This virtually ended hydraulic mining in ButteCounty except for the Spring Valley Mining Com-pany at Cherokee, which purchased the land onwhich the tailings were dumped.

However, in the late 1880s horticultureboomed in the county and the miner’s ditchesprovided water for agriculture as well as to de-veloping municipalities. In 1886, the OrovilleCitrus Association was formed and commercialagriculture began in earnest. The Southern Pa-cific Railroad owned land north of the FeatherRiver near Oroville and proposed the ThermalitoCitrus Colony, the first irrigation colony inNorthern California. With the Miocene Mineclosed, the market for the 3,000 miners inchesof water from the Miocene Ditch dried up. TheThermalito project provided a timely and conve-nient solution to the problem and so water wassupplied from the Miocene Ditch.

Frank McLaughlin (famous for his miningenterprises including diversion of the North Forkof the Feather River to mine its bed), Orovillebanker E.W. Fogg and State Senator A.F. Jonesactually founded the Thermalito Colony in 1887.By 1890 they controlled nearly all of the WestBranch ditch systems. They hired a respectedCalifornia engineer, William Hammond Hall, to

Christopher Lynch built this cabin in the PhilbrookValley about 1877. It was along the creek about aquarter mile above the site of the current dam. Thisphoto was taken about 1906. Alan Knotts.

8

prepare a report on the potential of their irriga-tion enterprise. One of his recommendationswas to construct a large reservoir in the Phil-brook Valley. Nothing came of his recommenda-tions as the Thermalito Company was by thenin financial and legal difficulties.8

“Havoc on the West Branch”Hall’s recommendation lay dormant for 19

years until 1908 when the Oro Water, Light andPower Company constructed an earthfill dam atthe West end of the Philbrook Valley. It is notknown if this was a result of Hall’s recommen-dation, but by then a major purpose of the damwas to supply water for hydroelectric power gen-eration along with the water for agricultural anddomestic use. As was the custom of the times,the dam was constructed by men with handtools and horse and/or mule drawn FresnoScrapers.

At the West End of the Philbrook Valley is aknoll. According to George Peterson, this firstdam closed the valley to the south of this knoll.The saddle north of the knoll was not closed.Thus the 1908 dam was lower than the 1926dam. The earth abutments were visible for yearsand were about 50-feet high. He also says thatthe base of the dam was maybe three city blocksin area.9

In January 1909, the Oroville Mercury and

Oroville Daily Register ran stories of the excep-tionally heavy rains and snow. “The FeatherRiver reached a twenty-four feet and six inches,which was four feet below the high-water markof 1907.”10 The flood of 1907 washed out majorbridges on the Feather River and inundatedOroville.

On Saturday, January 16, 1909 the OrovilleDaily Register ran the headline, “Philbrook DamOut – Havoc on the West Branch.” The story thatfollowed states that at 1 A.M. that morning, thedam failed releasing 90,000,000 cubic feet (2,066acre-feet) of water into the West Branch. “Thewater came down in a solid mass, reaching tenfeet above the highest level and carrying every-thing in the way with it.” The Diamond MatchCompany and Valley Counties Power Companydams above Stirling City, along with the OroWater, Light and Power Company Miocene CanalDiversion Dam below Magalia were washed out.Loss of the Miocene Canal dam was especiallyserious for Oroville as the canal brought water tothe city and to the hydroelectric power plants thatsupplied electricity to the city. Every bridge on theWest Branch was swept away including the oneat Whiskey Flat below Magalia, the covered bridgeat Nelson Bar and the one near Vinton Gulch. Ap-parently one of the wooden bridges floated pastOroville. However, the dike built to protect Oro-ville after the 1907 flood did its job.

These photos taken on July 15, 1909 show the effects of the January failure along Philbrook Creek below wherethe dam stood. The man in the right photo may be Ed Ward. Paradise Historical Society (Gladys Semrau).

9

Archie Nesbit was quoted in the article. “Hestates that he was informed by those in chargeof the dam that the basin was filled to its full-est capacity at 4 o’clock on Thursday afternoonand that the dam was swept away between 12and 1 o’clock.” The article goes on to say thatOro Water Light and Power Company officials“…. were at a loss for an explanation for thecatastrophe. The dam lay close to the summit ofthe Sierras and the site was considered an ad-mirable one. The structure was completed dur-ing the latter part of the summer and engineersconsidered it amply strong enough to withstandthe pressure of the water that it impounded.”

As far as the author knows, the cause for thedam failure was never really determined. Inthose days, there was no California Division ofthe Safety of Dams to investigate. Speculation asto the cause of the failure started within days.Without giving the source, the Oroville Daily Reg-ister on January 19 reported. “Although the de-tails of the Philbrook Valley accident are stillmeager, it was stated yesterday that the spillwaywas the weak point in that dam. The carrying ca-pacity of the spillway was found to be too smalland the water slopping over weakened the damand finally caused its destruction.”11

In the 92 years since the failure, variousother reasons have been put forth. They include:the dam was completed very late in the year thus

some of the fill was partially frozen. There wasno concrete spillway so when the water reachedthe top it simply washed the dirt away. Therewas no drainage pipe in the bottom of the damto help control outflow of the water. There wasno compacting of the dirt nor did the dam havetime to settle before it was filled to the brim.

After the FailureBetween the failure of the first Philbrook

Dam in 1909 and the construction of the PacificGas & Electric Company (PG&E) dam in the lat-ter half of 1926, the Philbrook Valley returnedto its idyllic state. Again cattle were pasturedthere during the summer, this time by the VanGooden family.12

By 1917 PG&E had acquired all the rights tothe ditches, water and land owned by the vari-ous companies that had developed the WestBranch for mining and then generation of hydro-electric power. The company was certainly awareof Hall’s recommendations and the 1909 damfailure and sent their own engineers to investi-gate the site. PG&E eventually purchased prop-erty in the valley and in 1925 filed an applica-tion with the State of California to build a damon Philbrook Creek to supply water for theirhydroelectric powerhouses in the DeSabla-Cen-terville Project.13

During this same time period, the KaiserPaving Company was paving highways in Cali-fornia.14 On September 6, 1924 Kaiser wasawarded the contract to build the Gordon Val-ley Dam. This, his first dam, was in the VacaMountains of Napa County. It created Lake Cur-ry Reservoir to supply water to Vallejo, Califor-nia. The earthfill dam contained approximately300,000 cubic yards of material and cost $310,-000. It took 17 months to build, from Septem-ber 1924 to January 1926. Kaiser built it rightbecause in 1927 a “thirty year flood” did littledamage to the dam.15

In building the Gordon Valley Dam Kaiserused some animal-powered equipment. Thestate-of-the-art in construction equipment wassuch that horses and mules still pulled bottom-dump wagons and scrapers. When he startedthe Gordon Valley job, Kaiser apparently hadheard little or nothing about LeTourneau’s trac-tor-drawn, electrically-powered scraper. At the

The wooden, covered bridge across the West Branchof the Feather River at Nelson Bar. It was washedaway when the first Philbrook Dam failed inJanuary 1909. Paradise Historical Society (WilliamC. Lesson).

10

time, LeTourneau was a locally known mechanicand small earth moving contractor operating outof Stockton, California.

Fresnos and ScrapersGenerally speaking, these devices, some-

times called earthmovers, are not designed to digup hard ground, but to move dirt that alreadyhas been turned or ripped up. To really under-stand the significance of LeTourneau’s new elec-tric-powered, telescopic scraper and why it wasso important in building the Philbrook Dam, wemust look at what preceded it.

The simple dirt moving devise known as theFresno Scraper was invented about 1880. It issaid that the Fresno has moved more dirt thangossip ever did and it is considered to be secondonly to the wheelbarrow in earth moving history.Dragged by one to four horses or mules, theFresno is a flat bucket, three to five feet wide,with a cutting blade on its forward edge. It isdragged on its bottom and manually operated bya lever. The operator tilted the blade down intothe earth to fill the bucket. When full, he tiltedit upward to a horizontal position and the bucketwas dragged with its load of dirt to the dump-site. Then men with shovels had to smooth outthe dirt.

Scrapers that followed the Fresno were me-chanically operated and partially supported bywheels. They were patented about 1910. Veryheavy machines of riveted and bolted construc-tion, they were manually operated by cables,clutches, gears and levers. One man operatedthe scraper and another handled the teams ofhorses or mules or later, around 1911, drove atractor. The load of dirt still was dragged on theground and handwork was required to smooththe surface after it was dumped.

In 1920 Robert LeTourneau was using oneof these early tractor-drawn scrapers on earthmoving jobs. He saw how it could be improvedby using an electric motor as the power source.A generator powered by the tractor engine sup-plied electricity to the motor and the tractordriver operated the scraper through electricalswitches next to his seat. In 1922, he designedand hand-built his own scraper that was pulledby a tractor and powered by motors from elec-tric automobiles. Not only could it be operatedfrom the driver’s seat of the tractor, it partiallylifted the bucket off of the ground. Thus tractorand scraper could move somewhat faster.

A major problem of all scrapers of the timewas that of forcing several cubic yards of dirtinto the bucket. The friction caused by the dirtalready loaded into the bucket increased dra-matically as more dirt was pushed into it. Thisgreatly reduced the speed of the scraper and itscarrying capacity. LeTourneau saw the answerto this problem in a collapsible aluminum cup.In 1923 he designed and built a scraper with twotelescoping buckets that fit inside each other. Hecalled this machine the “Mountain Mover.” In1923 he also built the first self-propelled, tele-scopic scraper in which each wheel was poweredby an electric motor within the wheel. Thirty-fiveyears later, the electrically powered wheel wouldbecome standard on all LeTourneau scrapers.

By 1925 he had designed the first all-welded,tracked, telescopic scraper. Empty, there are fivebuckets stacked together that appear to be onelaminated bucket approximately 7-feet wide, 3-feet high and 3-feet long. Using reversingswitches next to the tractor seat, the driver low-ers the buckets into the ground. As the scrapermoves forward, the fifth bucket is loaded ismoved to the rear on gears. As it moves rear-

A two-horse drawn Fresno Scraper at work buildingthe Magalia Dam sometime after 1916. The man inthe foreground is driving the team while the mannext to him uses a loop-shaped lever to tilt thescraper blade into the ground. This was state-of –the-art in those days. Paradise Irrigation District.

11

ward, the front of the fifth bucket engages therear of the fourth as it is filled and moves to therear with the fifth. In sequence the other threebuckets filled in like manner until all are loaded.When fully loaded, the scraper appears to haveone bucket that is 15-feet long. To unload, thebuckets work in reverse with the fifth bucketmoving forward to push the dirt in the fourthbucket that pushes the dirt in the third and soon until the load is dumped. The raising andlowering of the scraper blade and the telescop-ing of the buckets were powered by electricmotors run off of a generator on the towing trac-tor. The unit was mounted on tracks making itpossible to traverse almost any kind of groundsurface. It was pulled by a 60-horsepower, Cat-erpillar™ tractor and 10-yards of dirt could beloaded in less than a minute. With the loadedbucket(s) lifted off the ground, the tractor couldtravel at its highest speed. The result was revo-lutionary, a high-capacity, relatively fast movingscraper, operated by one man, that left a smoothsurface behind it. It was the first modern earth-mover.16 Four of these “telescopic scrapers”made it possible to move some 169,000 cubicfeet of material and complete the Philbrook Damin less than five months.

“A Big Dam Job”In 1925 while Kaiser was still building the

Gordon Valley Dam, Robert LeTourneau won acontract to construct the Crow Canyon highwaybetween Castro Valley and San Ramon, Califor-nia. One reason he bid contracting jobs was totest and demonstrate his newest design. He mayhave won this bid because nobody else wantedit, due to the difficult terrain and exceptionallyhard ground. Experts figured that it would takethree years to complete the job. With his tele-scopic scraper and other equipment of his de-sign, LeTourneau completed it in a little over sixmonths.

He was on site one day when one of his fore-men came up and said: “Henry Kaiser is downthere watching your big scraper work.”LeTourneau went down to talk to Kaiser whowasted no time in saying: “That’s quite a ma-chine you’ve got there.” The next thing LeTour-neau knew, Kaiser offered to buy three of thetelescopic scrapers for cash. Kaiser was the firstman to see his machines not just as gimmicks,but as tools to make big jobs small.

Sometime later Kaiser told him: “There’s abig dam job up in the High Sierras near Phil-brook. I’ve been figuring on it, but I don’t seehow I could tackle it without tying myself up fora couple of years. With those scrapers of yours,we can put that thing in like a boy damming agutter. How about you coming along to see thatthey work.”17

Under Contracts Awarded, the July 10, 1926edition of Western Construction News carried thefollowing announcement: “Dam in PlumasCounty, Calif., for Pacific Gas & Electric Co., toKaiser Paving Co., Oakland, Calif., $250,000.”Based on the use of LeTourneau’s scrapers,Kaiser bid the job at a cost significantly less thanif he had needed two years to construct the damwithout them. The dam is actually in ButteCounty at an elevation of approximately 5400feet. It is in the Northeast quarter of Section 13,Township 25 North, Range 4 East.18

The Dam(s)The Philbrook Dam is not one, but two ad-

jacent dams. The main dam is about 87 feet highand 850 feet long. It lies across Philbrook Creekand is on the site of the failed 1909 dam. About

Another view of LeTourneau’s telescopic scraperbehind a Caterpillar™ Sixty tractor at Micki GrovePark. The five buckets are in the fully loadedposition. The electric motor and gear mechanismthat moves the buckets is visible behind the fifthbucket. Author.

12

170 feet to the north, across a small knoll andin a topographic saddle, is the smaller dam. Thisauxiliary dam is about 24 feet high and 470 feetlong. Both are rolled or compacted earthfilldams. The capacity of the reservoir is 5000 acrefeet and has a surface area of 173 acres.

At the base of the main dam is a 33-inch outflow pipe that empties into Philbrook Creek, asdoes the concrete spillway at the north end ofthe auxiliary dam. In 1940 a gated spillway wasadded to the auxiliary dam to increase capacityduring times of high water. The dam has a coreof red clay overlaid by alternating layers of dirtand glacial conglomerate most of which camefrom the meadow above the dam. The upper partof the reservoir-side of the dam is covered withrip-rap to lessen the effect of wave action. Theground surface upon which the dam is con-structed is a glacial moraine deposit that is aheterogeneous mixture of volcanic boulders,cobbles and gravel set in a dense matrix of clayand silt. Under this and in the dam abutmentsis volcanic rock.

Among geologists there is an old and some-what facetious saying. “If you want to find anearthquake fault, look for a dam.” This is all tootrue in much of California and even ButteCounty. Witness the Paradise fault under Para-dise Lake and the Magalia fault under that res-ervoir. But, this old saw is not true for thePhilbrook Dam. The nearest known fault is theParadise fault about 13-miles to the southwest.

Philbrook reservoir is a part-time storage res-ervoir. About April 1 of each year, the spillwaygate is closed and flashboards are installed. Thereservoir fills in the late spring from snowmeltrunoff. During the summer the water is held ata consistent level and the lake is used for fish-ing and water sports. Around Labor Day thespillway is opened and water flows down Phil-brook Creek into the West Branch of the FeatherRiver where it is used for hydroelectric powergeneration and to maintain a water level consis-tent with environmental concerns. During thewinter the reservoir usually is nearly empty.19

There is no powerhouse at the dam. About

Engineering drawing of the Philbrook Dam(s) showing both plan and longitudinal views. Western ConstructionNews.

13

8-miles down stream the Hendricks DiversionDam diverts water into the Hendricks Ditch (ca-nal). This miner’s ditch, dating back to 1868 andupgraded by PG&E, directs water down the ridgeto the Toadtown Ditch, through the ToadtownPowerhouse to join with the Butte Creek Ditchjust above DeSabla Reservoir. The reservoir isthe forebay for the DeSabla and Centerville Pow-erhouses in Butte Canyon.

Still further down the West Branch belowMagalia, water again is diverted, this time by theMiocene Canal Diversion Dam. Water from thiscanal operates the Lime Saddle Powerhouselower in the canyon and the Coal Canyon Pow-erhouse on the western slopes of Table Moun-tain. The water then flows around the mountainfor use by the city of Oroville.

On the JobKaiser was awarded the contract in June

1926 and his men started work on June 23 andcompleted it before November 1 of that year. Thiswas just over four months! Such speed was un-heard of and in large part it was due to Le-Tourneau’s “Earth Movers.” One hundred andfifty men and over $150,000 worth of mecha-nized equipment were used. The men workedtwo 10-hours shifts, at night under lights pow-ered by a portable lighting plant. J. J. Little wasKaiser’s resident superintendent.

Kaiser started with three, 10.5-yard tele-scopic scrapers and later added a fourth. Other

equipment included: ten 60-horsepower and one30-horsepower Caterpillar tractors, six Mack5.5-yard dump trucks, ten Fordson tractorswith sheepsfoot steel wheels (for compacting thefill), six 7-yard dump wagons, two Northwestgasoline-powered shovels, one large and onesmall roadgrader and a deep subsoiler (to rip upthe hard ground for the Letourneau’s scrapersto move). There also were service and freighttrucks, welders, pumps and a complete shopwith all the tools and equipment necessary tomaintain all of this machinery.

And then there were all the tents, stoves,bedrolls and myriad pieces of equipment, sup-plies and food to maintain 150 men in the field.However, there were no horses nor mules northe feed to maintain them nor the wranglers tohandle them; this was a first in dam construc-tion!20

Besides the scrapers, the deep subsoiler andthe heavy grader were LeTourneau’s. Of course,both units were powered by electric motors con-trolled by the tractor operator. He went alongwith his machines, taking with him his key menwho had been added to Kaiser’s payroll.21

This was a lot of equipment to be used for afixed-fee contract of just $250,000. But, Kaiserwanted to set a record and also knew that if thedam was not completed before winter the costof maintaining the partial fill through the win-ter and resuming the work in the spring wouldbe excessive. He also knew of the 1909 disaster.

A photo of the construction site showing some of the many pieces of equipment on the job. Western ConstructionNews.

14

All this equipment moved over the SouthernPacific’s Butte County Railroad from Chico toStirling City. It then was hauled and driven theremaining 15 miles up to the Philbrook Valley.The Oroville Daily Record states: “A road is nowbeing constructed by the Pacific Gas and Elec-tric Company to the scene of the dam site.”22 Ap-parently PG&E actually was improving the oldcattle and later wagon trail used by the cattle-men and miners. A wood bridge crossed the

West Branch near where the Forest Service WestBranch campground is today and zigzagged upto hill on a section known as “the ladder.” Theroad and concrete bridge used today to reachthe Philbrook area was constructed by DiamondMatch Company in the 1970s.23

Robert LeTourneau in his autobiography,Mover of Men and Mountains, gives a vivid de-scription of the work on the dam. “The PhilbrookDam was a milestone in the engineering busi-

ness and in my life. It wasthe first major project inwhich the new broke en-tirely away from the old.There was not a mule onthe site. We were still usingmen with shovels and pickaxes for clean-up work,but the heavy labor wasdone with power shovels,mechanized dump trucksand, in the starring role,my scrapers. From thestart it was clear thatnothing short of an earth-quake would stop us fromsetting an all-time recordin dam building.

“For my part, I was get-ting lessons from a masterorganizer. At onetime wemust have had 1,000 menon the job, with somecrews working on diggingand others on hauling,and some on concrete mix-ing, and others on 57 vari-eties of odd jobs. Kaiserhad that big job timed toperfection. More, he knewhow to get along with meneven when the men didn’tknow how to get alongwith each other.” (Notethat Western ConstructionNews states that therewere 150 men on the job.Ed.)

LeTourneau goes on tosay: “The speed with which

Two views of the telescopic scraper at Philbrook Dam. The one in the top photoappears to be dumping its load of dirt while the one in the bottom photo isscraping up a load as is evident from the smooth trench behind it. The BancroftLibrary, University of California, Berkeley.

15

we completed the Philbrook Dam astonished theconstruction world. Kaiser was swamped withoffers of even bigger jobs. He came to me as wewere getting the machines ready to move out. Wehad that big dam up there and the water wasalready backing up behind it, and I suppose Iwas feeling like a graduate student is supposedto feel when he looks back on his college for thelast time. ‘Your machines did the trick, Bob,’ hesaid. ‘I’ll be needing a lot more of them. Howabout selling me the patents?’” LeTourneau soldKaiser the patents along with the machinery tobuild scrapers. Kaiser then hired him to setupa factory to build scrapers in Oakland.

As long and hard as the work was, therewere some times when things got downright hu-morous. LeTourneau tells of one such instance.“That was rough country up there. I rememberthe first night we camped out near the edge ofthe timber and were invaded by a couple of bigbears. We had been assembling some of themachines that had been taken apart for ship-ment, leaving a lot of small parts and toolsaround when night caught us. When thosebears came, we went right through there, head-ing for the tall timber and some of those partswe never did find. Bill Wickman, one of my fore-men, saved our beds and grub for us with a bitof quick thinking. He jumped into a Ford truckand with lights blinking and horn blowing, wentto the rescue. By the time he had chased thosebears over the rocks and through the under-brush, I am sure they were never the sameagain. Neither was the Ford.”24

George Peterson recalls that he spent muchof the summer of 1926 watching all those menand machines at work on the dam. He desper-ately wanted to go down to the job site, but 10-year old boys were definitely not welcome. Fish-ing in the creek above the dam was gone, but inlater years it was good below the dam. And whilethe Philbrook residents had neither choice norsay in the building of the dam, they benefitedfrom the lake that formed behind it. George es-pecially remembers the aquaplanes and laterwater skis; he was an expert on both.25

A Not So Slight DistractionOn September 23, midway through the con-

struction job, the Coon Hollow Fire started near

Snag Lake, some five miles to the north. Possi-bly caused by hunters and driven by a strongeast wind it burned southwestward towardChaparral House. By September 25 it burnedover Bull Hill and turned toward Butte Mead-ows. Two hundred men were on the fire and itwas nowhere near under control. Magalia Dis-trict Ranger Frank B. Delaney was fire boss anddesperately needed men on the line as the firethreatened the small community. Butte Creekflows between Butte Meadows and Bull Hill anda backfire was started at the edge of the creek,that burned up the hill, preventing the fire fromjumping the creek.

By September 27, the danger to Butte Mead-ows was past, but the fire turned back to theNortheast and threatened Jonesville. Accordingto the Oroville Mercury, the area of resort cab-ins “…. was for two days in danger of beingwiped out. “At one time the flames were withinten feet of a cabin owned by Don Bird of Chico,

A cartoon illustrating the “bear incident” at PhilbrookDam. It appeared in NOW, the LeTourneau Companymagazine in 1944. LeTourneau, Inc.

16

but a crew of forty men was successful in sav-ing the property.”

On September 29 rain began to fall and thefire was under control. It had burned about18,000 acres of which 11,800 were NationalForest. It was the largest fire in Butte County tothat time and cost $10,000 to suppress.

Four hundred men had been on the fire lineincluding a crew from Plumas County and menfrom the Diamond Match Company. Typically,there were not enough men for the job at hand.In those days to get enough firefighters, menoften were conscripted. The Oroville Daily Recordsaid: “To meet the emergency the Chico policeare holding all idle men and vagrants. They haveto choose between fire fighting and spending thetime in jail.” They also noted that “Joe Plmentalrefused to fight fire yesterday when requested todo so by a police officer and that being the sec-ond refusal in two days, he was locked up in acell at the police station to think it over.”

The shortage of men to fight the Coon Hol-low Fire affected dam construction. As the fireburned toward Chaparral and over Bull Hill itwas less than three miles to the west of the jobsite. The nearness must have been of concernto Kaiser and his men. Then rangers asked formen on the job to volunteer. The Oroville Regis-ter states; “(Ranger) Delaney said that it wasnecessary to conscript several men employed bythe Kaiser Construction Company who areworking on the Pacific Gas and Electric Com-pany dam, when they refused to work voluntar-ily.” Whatever the reason, Kaiser was on a verytight schedule and was probably not pleased tolose men to fight the fire.26

IconsPhilbrook Dam was a major milestone in the

careers of Henry J. Kaiser and Richard G. Le-Tourneau. Between 1927 and 1930 Kaiser’scompanies constructed $20,000,000 of high-ways in Cuba and built miles of levees on theMississippi River. From 1931 to 1936 Kaiser wasChairman of the Executive Committee for TheSix Companies and directed the construction ofHoover (Boulder) Dam on the Colorado River. Ajob of this magnitude had never been attemptedbefore. Over 4.5 million cubic yards of concrete

were used, morethan the U.S. Bu-reau of Reclamationhad used in all pre-vious federal jobs.

Kaiser set upsubsidiary corpora-tions and affiliatesas he needed themand by 1960 he hadover eighty. In 1934-38 one of these af-filiates built Bon—neville Dam on theColumbia River andin 1939-42 anotherbuilt Grand Coulee

Dam 350 miles further up the river. Losing hisbid to build Shasta Dam in California, he wonhis bid to supply concrete. He built a plant tomake concrete and supplied 24 million bags tothe job while astounding skeptics by building a10-mile conveyor to carry aggregate to the jobsite. His concrete plant then supplied most ofthe concrete used by the military in the PacificTheater during WW II.

During the war, Kaiser Shipbuilding builtfifty small aircraft carriers and 1,490 cargoships, one third of the entire wartime merchantfleet. An interesting sidelight is the fact thatHoward Hughes’ infamous Spruce Goose wasthe result of Kaiser’s imagination. Axis subma-rines were sinking merchant ships almost asfast as they could be built and Kaiser suggestedthat a fleet of 5,000 huge aircraft could carry thecargoes without the risk. He also built steel, alu-minum and magnesium plants, becaming thelargest steel producer on the West Coast.

After the war he built aircraft and missilecomponents, kitchen and bathroom fixtures andC-119 cargo aircraft. In 1946 he entered theauto business making the Kaiser-Frazer car andlater Jeeps. From 1950 through 1960 his com-panies built houses, hotels and office buildings.The Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program,an idea that started as a way to provide healthcare to his workers as far back as 1939, cameof age to become the first HMO.

Kaiser passed away in 1967. By the year2001, without his forceful leadership and ex-

Henry J Kaiser in lateryears. Current BiographyYearbook.

17

traordinary vision, Kaiser’s industrial empirehas mostly disappeared. Perhaps his most last-ing monuments are the dams he built that willprovide electricity, irrigation and recreation forcenturies.27

Robert G. LeTourneau’s genius was in designand manufacturing. Before the Philbrook job hehad sold Kaiser his patents on the telescopicscraper. After the job, Kaiser hired him to builda facility in Oakland to manufacture thesescrapers. About a year later, he returned to hisStockton facility to design and manufactureeven better earth moving equipment. He also re-turned to the dirt moving business partly to testand demonstrate his machines. In 1931 he wonthe bid to construct the Hoover Dam Highway.He “lost his shirt” on this job as the rock was sohard that he could not use his rippers and hadto be dynamited before it could be moved. Laterthat year, he built a dam on his own, the San-tiago Creek Dam in Orange County, California.In 1932 his scrapers were the first to use rub-ber tires, an innovation that soon was to becomean industry standard.

In 1932 he was the first to use rubber tireson any earth moving equipment, an innovationthat soon was to become an industry standard.By 1935 he had outgrown the Stockton facility.He opened a plant in Peoria, Illinois to producescrapers, heavy grading equipment, tractors andbulldozers. By WW II he was one of the largermanufacturers of such equipment in the coun-try, supplying nearly 75 percent of all earthmoving equipment used by US armed forcesduring the war.

In LeTourneau’s obituary the Longview DailyNews, called him “….. an internationally knowninventive genius who built an industrial empirewith a slide rule in one hand and the Bible in theother….” Coming from a religious family, fromthe beginning he ran his business on Christianprinciples, considering God his partner. While inPeoria, he was asked to speak about his busi-ness to the Peoria Chamber of Commerce. Sev-eral ministers were in the audience who laterasked him to speak to their congregations.Throughout the rest of his life, he traveled hun-dreds of thousands of miles to speak to peopleabout religion and this while inventing newearth moving equipment and running his com-

panies. He eventu-ally donated 90percent of hisstock and incometo the LeTourneauFoundation thathe founded to sup-port religious ac-tivities around theglobe.

He establishedplants in Georgia,Mississippi, Texasand Australia.Along with his

wife, Evelyn, he also started the LeTourneauTechnical Institute that became LeTourneauUniversity. In 1953, he sold his manufacturingbusiness to Westinghouse Air Brake Companywith an agreement that he not build earth mov-ing equipment for five years. But, this did notstop LeTourneau from inventing and manufac-turing other heavy equipment including offshoredrilling platforms, an Arctic snow train, a jungletree crusher, a landing craft retriever and mis-sile handling equipment. When the agreementexpired, he was back designing and buildingearth moving equipment.

Robert LeTourneau passed away in 1969.Today LeTourneau, Inc. still operates in Vicks-burg, Mississippi, where they build the world’slargest offshore, jack-up oil drilling platforms.And in Longview, Texas, they build a number ofmachines including the world’s largest loaderthat is equipped with a bucket that holds 53cubic yards of rock.28

Thus Philbrook Dam in remote Butte Countyis not just another earthfill dam. In a majorsense, it was the jumping-off place for two self-made, dynamic leaders of American industry.With them passed the age of the individual in-dustrial entrepreneur.

Robert G. LeTourneau inlater years. LeTourneauUniversity.

Endnotes1 Oroville-Thermolito Complex: California Department ofWater Resources, Sacramento, CA.2 Henry J, Kaiser, Builder in the Modern American Westand Henry J. Kaiser, American Colossus.3 Mover of Men and Mountains.4 Maggie Greeno: pg. 71-79, 167 and 172.5 Butte County Great Register 1866.

18

BibliographyARBA Pictorial History of Road Building: Charles W. Wixom,

American Road Builders Association, Washington, DC1975.

Butte County Great Register, 1866: Copy at Paradise Genea-logical Society, Paradise, CA.

Chico Weekly Chronicle Record: January 14, 1893, Chico,CA.

Construction Methods: “The Defense Against Old ManRiver,” Robert K. Tomlin, 1929-1930.

Current Biography Yearbook, 1958 and 1961: CharlesMoritz (editor), H. W. Wilson Co., New York, NY.

Dams within Jurisdiction of the State of California: Depart-ment of Public Works, Division of Water Resources, Sac-ramento, CA February 1, 1950.

Dams Within Jurisdiction of the State of California: Bulle-tin No. 17-67, The Resources Agency, Department ofWater Resources, Sacramento, CA July 1967.

Engineering News Record: “Electric Operated ‘Fresnos’ andGraders of New Design,” Dec. 2, 1926.

Henry J. Kaiser, Builder in the Modern American West: MarkS. Foster, American Studies Series, University of TexasPress, Austin, TX 1989.

Henry J. Kaiser, Western Colossus: Albert P. Heiner, HaloBooks, San Francisco, CA 1991.

History of Butte County, California: George C. Mansfield,Historic Record company, Los Angeles, CA 1918.

History of Butte County – Vol. 1, 1840 - 1919: Joseph F.McGie, Butte County Board of Education, 1956.

History of the Hendricks, Miocene, Dewey and Miners DitchSystems: Patterns of Water Development in Pacific Gas& Electric Company’s De Sabla Division, Butte County,California: Prepared for Pacific Gas & Electric Companyby Jackson Research Products, Davis, CA 1985.

Inspection of Dam (Philbrook Dam No. 97-8): Reports foryears of 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1938 and 1939,State of California, Department of Public Works, Divi-sion of Water Resources, Sacramento, CA.

Inspection of Dam and Reservoir In Certified Status(Philbrook Dam No. 97-8): State of California, The Re-sources Agency, Department of Water Resources, Divi-sion of Safety of Dams, Sacramento, CA July 26, 2000.

Maggie Greeno: George McDow, Jr., distributed byLahontan Images, Susanville, CA 1995.

Mover of Men and Mountains: Robert G. LeTourneau, au-tobiography, Moody Press, Chicago, IL 1972.

New York Times: “R.G. LeTourneau Dead at 80; MadeEarth-Moving Equipment,” date unknown.

NOW: LeTourneau, Inc., company publication, Vol. VIII, No.41, February 25, 1944.

Oroville Daily Record: Oroville, CA, June 24, 1926.Oroville Daily Register: Oroville, CA, January 8, 15, 16, 19,

and 20, 1909.Oroville Mercury: Oroville, CA, January 9, 14, 15, 16, 17,

and 18, 1909.

6 Personal communication: George Peterson.7 Philbrook: pg. 17-30.8 History of the Hendricks, Miocene, Dewey and MinersDitch Systems: Patterns of Water Development in PacificGas & Electric Company’s De Sabla Division, ButteCounty, California: pg. 12-15.9 Personal communication: George Peterson.10 History of Butte County: Mansfield, pg. 378.11 Oroville Daily Register and Oroville Mercury: issuesfrom January 9 through January 20, 1909.12 Personal communication: George Peterson.13 Application for Approval of Plans and Specifications forthe Construction or Enlargement of a Dam andReservoir: This undated copy of the document is part ofan incomplete and undated PG&E report on thePhilbrook Dam14 Sacramento Bee: May 7, 1924, Henry J. Kaiser, Builderin the Modern American West and Henry J. Kaiser,Western Colossus.15 Western Construction News: “The Gordon ValleyProject,” January 25, 1926, pg. 15-19 and “The GordonValley Dam,” May 25, 1927, pg. 49-51.16 The preceding paragraphs are based on: Mover of Menand Mountains, Tools of the Earth Mover, ARBA PictorialHistory of Roadbuilding, The LeTourneau Legend,Engineering News Record, Western Construction News(Dec. 10, 1926) and Peterson Tractor Company, The FirstSixty Years.17 Mover of Men and Mountains: quotes used withpermission from pg. 141-145.18 United States Geological Survey, JonesvilleQuadrangle Topographic Map.19 Untitled and dated PG&E report on Philbrook Dam.20 Western Construction News issues of Oct. 10, 1926,Dec. 10, 1926 and Jan. 10, 1927 were sources for theforgoing paragraphs.21 Mover of Men and Mountains: quote used withpermission from pg. 145.22 Oroville Daily Record: “Philbrook Dam Constructionstarted by PG&E Company,” June 24, 1926, pg. 1.23 Personal communication: Joyce Jones.24 Mover of Men and Mountains: quotes used withpermission from pg. 145-147 and NOW magazine.25 Personal communication: George Peterson.26 The Coon Hollow Fire information is from articles inthe Chico Record, Oroville Daily Record and OrovilleMercury from September 25 through October 1, 1926.27 The information on Kaiser is based on: ConstructionMethods (1929-1930), Current Biography Yearbook-1961,Henry J. Kaiser – Western Colossus, Henry J. Kaiser –Builder in the Modern American West and WesternConstruction News (Nov. 10, 1927).28 The information on LeTourneau is based on: CurrentBiography Yearbook-1958, Mover of Men and Mountains,Western Construction News, The Longview Daily News,New York Times and Vicksburg Evening Post.

19

Oroville-Thermolito Complex: (brochure) California Depart-ment of Water Resources, Sacramento, CA.

Peterson Tractor Company, The First Sixty Years: EileenGrafton, Peterson Tractor Co., San Leandro, CA 1998.

PG&E of California: Charles M. Coleman, McGraw – Hill,New York, 1952.

PG&E report on the Philbrook Dam. The actual title anddate of this report are unknown as the title page alongwith pages 1 and 2 are missing.

Philbrook: Joyce Jones, author published, Chico, CA 1984.Sacramento Bee: “Pouring Concrete Begins on Highway

North of Redding” May 7, 1924.The LeTourneau Legend: Philip G. Gowenlock, Paddington

Publications, Brisbane, Australia 1996.The Longview Daily News: “Industrialist R.G. LeTourneau

Dies,” pg. 1, June 2, 1969.The Sierras, History of California: J.M. Guinn, Chapman

Publishing Co., Chicago, IL 1906.Tools of the Earth Mover, Yesterday and Today: J.L.

Allhands, Sam Houston College Press, Huntsville, TX1951.

United States Department of the Interior Geological Sur-vey, Jonesville, California, 71/2-minute QuadrangleMap: USGS, Denver, CO 1991.

Vicksburg Evening Post: “R.G. LeTourneau,” obituary, dateunknown.

Western Construction News: San Francisco, CA, Issues ofJanuary 25, 1926, July 10, 1926, October 10, 1926,December 10, 1926, January 10, 1927, April 10, 1927,May 25, 1927 and November 10, 1931.

AcknowledgementsThe author is indebted to the following for help on this

article. Special thanks to Bob Stone, a former residentof Butte County, who started research on the PhilbrookDam story in 1993. In 2000 he decided that he had “toomany things cooking” and turned over his material tothe author to complete the research and writing. Sadly,Bob passed away in February 2001, never to see theresults of what he started. Dr. John Niemela also getsspecial mention. His encyclopedic knowledge on RobertG. LeTourneau and especially his machines was asource beyond value.

Others that helped were: Bill Anderson (Dogtown Territo-rial Quarterly), Ray Auerbach (Paradise Irrigation Dis-trict), The Bancroft Library, Tom Brekeall (Komatsu),Jim Bundy (PG&E), Frank Butler, Elieen Grafton(Peterson Tractor Co.), Paula Greer (LeTourneau Univer-sity), Ted Gobin, Dale Hardy (LeTourneau Inc.), JoyceJones, Alan Knotts, Deborah Mastel (San JoaquinCounty Historical Society), Lois McDonald, GeorgeMcDow, Jr., Bob Olsen (USFS retired), Bill Pennington(Calif. Div. of Safety of Dams), George Peterson, DennisPhilbrook, Pamela Pugh (Moody Press), Chuck Smay(Butte County Historical Society), and Elizabeth Stewartand her staff (Paradise Branch, Butte County Library).

Fast driving?The Chico Record, Dec. 20, 1926. “Oscar Moore,

Paradise butcher, narrowly escaped death Fridayafternoon coming down from Magalia after havingcompleted his route. One of the wheels to his truckcame off and sent the truck sliding down thegutter. The accident occurred near Kegs Sawmillwhere a long straight stretch of the road encour-ages fast driving. Moore was going thirty miles anhour when the wheel came off and the axle of theFord truck made a trench in the road nearly fiftyfeet long before the car wound up its mad careen-ing in the gutter. Mr. Moore was not injured,though he said that he was badly scared and byfetching a plank from the mill and using it forleverage he was able to jack the car up and get thewheel back on again. The nut and the key werelost, but Moore drove a spike into the keyhole andcontinued home as if nothing had happened.”

Consider the hassle you would face if a wheelcame off your modern Ford truck today. Not toolikely that you could fix it on the spot and get onhome without an encounter with the law, a towtruck driver and later a repair bill for several hun-dred dollars. Who says, change is progress?

Back then ……

Oops!Another E.L. “Red” Sills story. You may remem-

ber that Red Sills was a “siderod” for DiamondMatch Company. He supervised loading logs ontorail cars for transport to the mill at Stirling City(Tales Vol. 39, No. 2, Dec. 1988). This time it seemsthat Red had given 9-year old Fred Reger a ride ona handcar. They were rolling down the family spurto the Bull Hill Camp mess hall. Red was used tostopping the car by dragging a wood 2x4 over theties. But, when he reached for it, the board wasgone. Fred Reger had accidentally knocked itoverboard. In his usual diplomatic fashion, Redshouted: “Dammit, kid; you lost our brake!” Luckyfor Fred and Red that the track turned up hill andthey rolled to a stop before they ran into anything.(Harry Reger telling a tale on his brother.)

History“There is this about history, you never knowwhich particular ember of it is going to glow intolife.”

—Ivan Doig in his novel English Creek.