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Edmund Orson Wattis, Jr
Edmund Orson Wattis Jr. (March 6, 1855 – February 3, 1934), was oldest of the brothers who founded Wattis Brothers and the Utah Construction Company. Early life Wattis was born on March 6, 1855, at a farm in Uintah, Utah Territory, the second of seven children born to Edmund Orson Wattis and Mary Jane Corey. Edmund was 21 when he left his home in Uinta to start a career in heavy construction, working on bed grading for the Canadian Pacific and Colorado Midlands. Railway contractors With his brother William, he formed a firm to lay track for the expanding railroads. Wattis Brothers prospered until the Panic of 1893. While William continued to try to find construction projects, Edmund focused his energies on running a sheep ranch the brothers had established in the Weber Valley. This ranch would later provide the financial strength for the large construction projects to come. In 1900, the Wattis Brothers again tried their hand as partners in contracting. They founded the Uta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uintah, Utah
Uintah ( ) is a city in Weber County, Utah, United States. The population was 1,322 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Ogden– Clearfield, Utah Metropolitan Statistical Area. Although Uintah was a town in 2000, it has since been classified as a fifth-class city by state law. Geography Uintah is located at the mouth of Weber Canyon, south of Ogden and north of Salt Lake City. It is bordered by the Weber River on the south and west, by the Uintah Bench on the north, and the Wasatch Mountains on the east. The town occupies approximately three square miles in an area noted for frequent east winds out of Weber Canyon. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 1.0 square mile (2.6 km2), all land. Climate This climatic region is typified by large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers and cold (sometimes severely cold) winters. According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Uintah ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
O'Shaughnessy Dam (California)
O'Shaughnessy Dam is a high concrete arch-gravity dam in Tuolumne County, California, United States. It impounds the Tuolumne River, forming the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir at the lower end of Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park, about east of San Francisco. The dam and reservoir are the source for the Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct, which provides water for over two million people in San Francisco and other municipalities of the west Bay Area. The dam is named for engineer Michael O'Shaughnessy, who oversaw its construction. Although San Francisco had sought Tuolumne River water as early as the 1890s, this project did not move forward until the disastrous earthquake and fire of 1906, which underscored the insufficiency of the existing water supply. The Hetch Hetchy Valley – then compared to Yosemite Valley for its scenic beauty – was chosen for its water quality and hydroelectric potential, but the location within the national park generated controversy. An act of Congres ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1934 Deaths
Events January–February * January 1 – The International Telecommunication Union, a specialist agency of the League of Nations, is established. * January 15 – The 8.0 1934 Nepal–Bihar earthquake, Nepal–Bihar earthquake strikes Nepal and Bihar with a maximum Mercalli intensity scale, Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''), killing an estimated 6,000–10,700 people. * January 26 – A 10-year German–Polish declaration of non-aggression is signed by Nazi Germany and the Second Polish Republic. * January 30 ** In Nazi Germany, the political power of federal states such as Prussia is substantially abolished, by the "Law on the Reconstruction of the Reich" (''Gesetz über den Neuaufbau des Reiches''). ** Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States, signs the Gold Reserve Act: all gold held in the Federal Reserve is to be surrendered to the United States Department of the Treasury; immediately following, the President raises the statutory gold price from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1855 Births
Events January–March * January 1 – Ottawa, Ontario, is incorporated as a city. * January 5 – Ramón Castilla begins his third term as President of Peru. * January 23 ** The first bridge over the Mississippi River opens in modern-day Minneapolis, a predecessor of the Father Louis Hennepin Bridge. ** The 8.2–8.3 Wairarapa earthquake claims between five and nine lives near the Cook Strait area of New Zealand. * January 26 – The Point No Point Treaty is signed in the Washington Territory. * January 27 – The Panama Railway becomes the first railroad to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. * January 29 – Lord Aberdeen resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, over the management of the Crimean War. * February 5 – Lord Palmerston becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. * February 11 – Kassa Hailu is crowned Tewodros II, Emperor of Ethiopia. * February 12 – Michigan State University (the "pioneer" l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Newspapers
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports and art, and often include materials such as opinion columns, weather forecasts, reviews of local services, obituaries, birth notices, crosswords, editorial cartoons, comic strips, and advice columns. Most newspapers are businesses, and they pay their expenses with a mixture of subscription revenue, newsstand sales, and advertising revenue. The journalism organizations that publish newspapers are themselves often metonymically called newspapers. Newspapers have traditionally been published in print (usually on cheap, low-grade paper called newsprint). However, today most newspapers are also published on websites as online newspapers, and some have even abandoned their print versions entirely. Newspapers developed in the 17th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hoover Dam
Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its construction was the result of a massive effort involving thousands of workers, and cost over one hundred lives. It was referred to as Hoover Dam after President Herbert Hoover in bills passed by Congress during its construction; it was named Boulder Dam by the Roosevelt administration. The Hoover Dam name was restored by Congress in 1947. Since about 1900, the Black Canyon and nearby Boulder Canyon had been investigated for their potential to support a dam that would control floods, provide irrigation water and produce hydroelectric power. In 1928, Congress authorized the project. The winning bid to build the dam was submitted by a consortium named Six Companies, Inc., which began ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Six Companies
Six Companies, Inc. was a joint venture of construction companies that was formed to build the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River in Nevada and Arizona. They later built Parker Dam, a portion of the Grand Coulee Dam, the Colorado River Aqueduct across the Mojave and Colorado Deserts to urban Southern California, and many other large projects. Hoover Dam On January 10, 1932, the Bureau of Reclamation made bid documents for the Hoover Dam construction project available to interested parties at $5 a copy (equivalent to $ in ). The government would provide the materials, and the contractor was to prepare the site and build the dam. The dam was described in minute detail, covering 100 pages of text and 76 drawings. A $2 million (equivalent to $ in ) bid bond was to accompany each bid. The winner would have to post a $5 million (equivalent to $ in ) performance bond. The contractor would have seven years to build the dam, or penalties would ensue. Becau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frank Crowe
Francis Trenholm Crowe ( – ) was a Canadian civil engineer and employee of Morrison-Knudsen, who later became in 1931, the General Construction Superintendent of the Hoover Dam construction contract. Born in Trenholmville, Quebec, Crowe attended the Governor Dummer Academy, matriculating to the University of Maine where he graduated in 1905 with a degree in civil engineering. The University's Francis Crowe Society is named in his honor. Crowe became interested in the American west during a lecture given by Frank Elwin Weymouth (1874-1941), a civil engineer with the United States Bureau of Reclamation. He signed up for a summer job before the end of the lecture. That summer job began a 20-year career with the reclamation service that would change the face of the American west. In 1924, Frank Crowe left the United States Bureau of Reclamation to join the construction firm of Morrison-Knudsen in Boise, Idaho. Morrison-Knudsen had recently signed a partnership with the larger ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sierra Nevada (U
The Sierra Nevada () is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primarily in Nevada. The Sierra Nevada is part of the American Cordillera, an almost continuous chain of mountain ranges that forms the western "backbone" of the Americas. The Sierra runs north-south and its width ranges from to across east–west. Notable features include General Sherman, the largest tree in the world by volume; Lake Tahoe, the largest alpine lake in North America; Mount Whitney at , the highest point in the contiguous United States; and Yosemite Valley sculpted by glaciers from one-hundred-million-year-old granite, containing high waterfalls. The Sierra is home to three national parks, twenty wilderness areas, and two national monuments. These areas include Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon National Parks; and Devils ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hetch Hetchy Valley
Hetch Hetchy is a valley, a reservoir, and a water system in California in the United States. The glacial Hetch Hetchy Valley lies in the northwestern part of Yosemite National Park and is drained by the Tuolumne River. For thousands of years before the arrival of settlers from the United States in the 1850s, the valley was inhabited by Native Americans who practiced subsistence hunting-gathering. During the late 19th century, the valley was renowned for its natural beauty – often compared to that of Yosemite Valley – but also targeted for the development of water supply for irrigation and municipal interests. The controversy over damming Hetch Hetchy became mired in the political issues of the day. The law authorizing the dam passed Congress on December 7, 1913. In 1923, the O'Shaughnessy Dam was completed on the Tuolumne River, flooding the entire valley under the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. The dam and reservoir are the centerpiece of the Hetch Hetchy Project, which in 1934 be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tuolumne River
The Tuolumne River ( Yokutsan: ''Tawalimnu'') flows for through Central California, from the high Sierra Nevada to join the San Joaquin River in the Central Valley. Originating at over above sea level in Yosemite National Park, the Tuolumne drains a rugged watershed of , carving a series of canyons through the western slope of the Sierra. While the upper Tuolumne is a fast-flowing mountain stream, the lower river crosses a broad, fertile and extensively cultivated alluvial plain. Like most other central California rivers, the Tuolumne is dammed multiple times for irrigation and the generation of hydroelectricity. Humans have inhabited the Tuolumne River area for up to 10,000 years. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the river canyon provided an important summer hunting ground and a trade route between Native Americans in the Central Valley to the west and the Great Basin to the east. First named in 1806 by a Spanish explorer after a nearby indigenous village, the Tuolumne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
