The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon (76 page)

Anyone who writes about the politics of rivers and dams of the American West owes a specific note of thanks to Marc Reisner for
Cadillac Desert
and Donald Worster for
Rivers of Empire
, as well as, more generally, to Steven Solomon for his more comprehensive historical overview,
Water.
For the story of the dams that were built on the Colorado itself, I drew heavily on Philip Fradkin’s
A River No More
, Michael Hiltzik’s
Colossus
, John McPhee’s
Encounters with the Archdruid
, and Byron Pearson’s well-researched and cogently argued
Still the Wild River Runs. The History of Large Federal Dams
, edited by David Billington and his colleagues, is also extremely useful.

On the lost world of Glen Canyon, Edward Abbey’s various writings—most specifically
Desert Solitaire
—offer perhaps the most beautiful and evocative sense of what Glen once was, although Abbey’s words are admirably supplemented by Eleanor Inskip’s
The Colorado River Through Glen Canyon: Before Lake Powell
and Jared Farmer’s
Glen Canyon Dammed.

As for the Glen Canyon Dam itself, probably the single best work is Russell Martin’s
Story That Stands Like a Dam
, although anyone who wants to truly
understand the inner workings of the dam must, sooner or later, obtain a copy of
Glen Canyon Dam and Powerplant: Technical Record of Design and Construction
, which includes many of Glen’s schematics. For the history of dams, I drew on a number of sources, the two most important being Norman Smith’s
History of Dams
and Nicholas Schnitter’s
History of Dams: The Useful Pyramids
, plus Resse Palley’s
Concrete: A Seven-Thousand-Year History.
On turbulence and hydraulic jumps, I have leaned heavily on Luna Leopold’s
Fluvial Processes in Geomorphology
, and R. J. Garde’s
History of Fluvial Hydraulics.

Finally, there is
Cavitation in Chutes and Spillways: Engineering Monograph No. 42
. The theme is an esoteric one, to be sure. But no one can deny that Henry Falvey has supplied the first and last word on the complex subject of cavitation.

Epigraphs

“If there is magic”
: Eiseley,
The Immense Journey
, 15.

Launch: June 25, 1983

they scratched their heads in confusion
: Author interviews with Bruce Helin and Michael Ghiglieri, both of whom were present at the ferry that night, assisted in putting the
Emerald Mile
into the water, and witnessed the launch.

She hit with a sharp slap
: Author interview with Ghiglieri.

and waited calmly for his two companions
: Author interviews with Rudi Petschek and Steve Reynolds.

the driver cried,
“Go!”
: Ibid.

a family that had driven all the way
: Author interview with Dr. Charles Zemach.

an incident that they planned on reporting
: Ibid.

What in the world were those clowns up to
: Ibid.

Leviathan

a distance of some fifteen miles
: Stevens,
Colorado River in Grand Canyon
, 61.

who had started assembling its frame in 1960
: Martin,
Story That Stands Like a Dam.

more than twice the height of the Statue of Liberty
: The Statue of Liberty is 305 feet high. See
http://www.nps.gov/stli/faqs.htm
(accessed 12/15/2012).

its length exceeded that of the
Seawise Giant
: The
Seawise Giant
was 1,504 feet long. See “Maritime Connector,”
http://maritime-connector.com/worlds=largest=ships
(accessed 12/15/2012).

Staffed by a team of ten technicians
: Author interview with Richard White, manager of the Glen Canyon Dam Control Room in 1983. Also see
Operating Log
, Glen Canyon Dam.

who worked on three eight-hour shifts
: Author interview with White.

At night, however, there were usually no more than two
: Ibid.

a large steel desk equipped with three telephones and a two-way radio
: Ibid.

has long been particular about disclosing the names
: The Bureau of Reclamation was uncooperative about releasing Control Room records from 1983 at the Glen Canyon Dam, initially denying a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Partially redacted records were released only after a lengthy appeal was filed with assistance from Mark Caramanica at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

a bank of panels studded with so many lights
: Author interview with White. Also see
Glen Canyon Dam and Powerplant
, 305–16.

a body of water that extended 186 miles
: National Park Service, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area; see
http://www.nps.gov/glca/faqs.htm
(accessed on 12/15/2012). Also see Martin,
Story That Stands Like a Dam.

there was something almost as gratifying
: Author interview with White.

when a call arrived from the Western Area Power Administration dispatcher
: Ibid.

the moment when most of the twenty million people
: Carothers and Brown,
Colorado River Through Grand Canyon
, 178–81.

this would register as a low whine
: Author interview with White.

a generator that housed a six-hundred-ton rotor
: Author interview with Tom Gamble. Also see
Glen Canyon Dam and Powerplant.

a massive El Niño event
: Although the El Niño of 1982–83 was the largest on record up to that point, it was surpassed by subsequent El Niños. For additional information on sourcing for the weather events of 1983, please turn to the notes for chapter 13, “Deluge.”

the runoff from 108,000 square miles
: Colorado River Water Users Association. See
http://www.crwua.org/ColoradoRiver/RiverUses/Reclamation.aspx
(accessed on 12/15/2012).

the size of Poland
: While the drainage basin for the entire Colorado River is about 243,000 square miles, which is roughly the size of Somalia, the river’s upper basin—which includes most, but not all, of the water that drains into Lake Powell—is significantly smaller, only about 108,000 square miles. Also note that, for comparison purposes, Poland is somewhat larger, at 117,000 square miles.

had been bored through 675 feet of Navajo sandstone
:
Glen Canyon Dam and Powerplant.

were capable of inhaling a combined flow of more than 200,000 cfs
: Ibid.

shock waves had scoured away
: Extensive sourcing and documentation on the cavitation-induced damage to the dam’s spillway tunnels can be found in the notes for chapters 13, 14, and 15. For a quick reference to the details laid out here, see Burgi, “Operations of Glen Canyon Dam Spillways—Summer 1983,” 260–64.

chunks of concrete, pieces of rebar, and boulders
: Author interviews with Richard White, Tom Gamble, and Philip Burgi, head of the Hydraulics Lab at the Bureau of Reclamation’s Engineering and Research Center in Denver in 1983. Also see Burgi, “Operations of Glen Canyon Dam Spillways—Summer 1983,” 260–64.

the goal of every person who worked at the dam
: Author interviews with White, Gamble, and Burgi.

at 120 miles per hour
: Author interviews with White and Burgi. Also see
Glen Canyon Dam and Powerplant.

You could hear the thunder of the discharge
: Author interview with White.

the water would overwhelm the steel gates that guarded
: Moyes and Burgi,
Glen Canyon Dam Chronology of Events.
Also see Burgi, “Operations of Glen Canyon Dam Spillways—Summer 1983,” 260–64.

If luck was running
: Sourcing and documentation for worst-case scenarios can be found in the notes for chapters 15, 16, and 17. For a quick reference to the details laid out here, see Moyes and Burgi,
Glen Canyon Dam Chronology of Events.
Also see Wolf, “How Lake Powell Almost Broke Free of Glen Canyon Dam.”

and over the lip of Hoover Dam
: Most experts are confident that Hoover would have withstood the impact of an uncontrolled release coming downstream from Lake Powell. See Latham,
Dam Failure Inundation Study.

much of that water would probably wind up taking out
: Author interview with J. David Rogers, Karl F. Hasselmann Chair in Geological Engineering, Department of Geological Sciences & Engineering, Missouri University of Science & Technology.

had dismissed the terminal scenario as absurd
: Moyes and Burgi,
Glen Canyon Dam Chronology of Events.

more than two hundred boats and nearly thirteen hundred people
: Grand Canyon National Park river permits records, obtained via author’s FOIA request.

downstream in fifty-degree water
:
William R. Wert Fatality, Case #83-1592,
June 25, 1983. “Water temperature was estimated at 45–50 degrees . . .” Patricia Baker, Summary, Supplementary Case/Incident Record, Case/Incident Number 831592, 8/1/1983.

a borderline that seemed
: John McPhee expresses this same idea on page 191 of
Encounters with the Archdruid.

a living and breathing thing
: Author interview with Dr. Henry Falvey, who was the Bureau of Reclamation’s cavitation expert at the Hydraulics Lab, part of the Engineering and Research Center in Denver.

the dam was an offense against nature
: This idea is echoed by many people within the Grand Canyon river-guiding community. Most specifically for this book, see Martin Litton, oral-history interviews.

Part I The World Beneath the Rims

By far the most sublime of all earthly spectacles
: Dutton,
Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon
, 142–43.

1: First Contact

“It is a lovely and terrible wilderness”
: Stegner, “Wilderness Letter,” December 3, 1960, in Stegner,
Sound of Mountain Water
, 153.

“the most brilliant company ever collected”
: DeVoto,
Course of Empire
, 34.

were encrusted with emeralds
: Flint and Flint, eds.,
Coronado Expedition
, 34. Cited by Hiltzik,
Colossus
, 5.

the doors were studded with sapphires
: Waters,
Colorado
, 138.

tiny bells of hammered silver . . . and fine cotton shawls to a depth of nine feet
: DeVoto,
Course of Empire
, 38.

nineteen crossbows, seventeen harquebuses
: Ibid., 35.

a stronghold of religious orthodoxy
: I am indebted to Stephen Pyne, who developed many of these ideas about Spain in connection with the Grand Canyon. See Pyne,
How the Canyon Became Grand
, 7–9.

Spain was the seedbed of the technologies
: See Smith,
History of Dams
, 129. Also see Schnitter,
History of Dams
, 107.

no one now knows precisely where
: Pyne,
How the Canyon Became Grand
, 6.

the Kaibab actually predated not only the continent
: When the Kaibab was first laid down more than 240 million years ago, it was part of the primordial landmass known as Pangea, whose breakup created the continents and the oceans as we know them today. See Bjornerud,
Reading the Rocks
, 139–40.

before
the step above and
after
the step below
: Geologists now recognize that molten rock may force itself between older layers of rock, creating an exception to Steno’s law. Tilting, folding, and faulting may also complicate the stratigraphic sequence. Nevertheless, the basic principle remains valid: sedimentary rocks are
originally
deposited in a time sequence, with the oldest on the bottom and the youngest at the top. See Winchester,
Map That Changed the World
, 37–39.

This is not a revolutionary idea to us
: Ibid., 38.

the first meetings with the tribes of the Great Plains, and the first buffalo
: DeVoto,
Course of Empire
, 44–45.

2: The Grand Old Man

“I do not know much”
: Eliot, “The Dry Salvages,” 36.

Just before two o’clock
: Union Pacific Railroad Passenger Schedule, May 1869. Available online at “Railroad and American Politics,”
http://voteview.com/rtopic1_ucsd_3.htm
(accessed 12/15/2012).

walnut-paneled Pullman Palace
: For details of the interior of a Pullman Palace saloon carriage, see White,
American Railroad Passenger Car.

attempting to drain the entire liquor supply
: Stegner,
Beyond the Hundredth Meridian
, 47.