Fort Peck Dam Celebrates 80th Birthday
The Fort Peck Dam recently had its 80th anniversary recognized. The huge seven- year project was completed in October 1940.
The dam is the largest hydraulically filled earth dame in the world. It measures 21,026 feet long with a height of 250.5 feet. The dam’s five turbines can generate 185,250 kilowatts of power.
Building of the dam started in 1933 in the midst of the Great Depression. President Franklin D. Roosevelt spearheaded the plan to build, which at the time, was the world’s largest dam. The Fort Peck Dam was five times larger than any other dam at the time.
At its peak, the construction created 10,456 jobs during 1936. The workers faced dangerous conditions in three shifts. A total of 60 men were killed during construction including six that are entombed deep in the dam after a massive landslide occurred in 1938.
The Army Corps of Engineers tamed the Missouri River with a mostly untrained work force. Electric line was built to bring power to the pumps from Great Falls. Railroad was built to bring millions of tons of rock and supplies to the location.
Fort Peck Lake is considered a treasure because of its size and outdoor opportunities. Six recreation areas offer access for water sports, fishing and hunting. Currently, the power station operates with 30 employees.
The project was featured on the cover of the first ever “Life” magazine.
The “Life” article’s lead under “Franklin Roosevelt Has A Wild West,” read, “And you are looking at it in the photographs on these nine pages, it is about as wild and about as far west as the Wild West which Franklin’s cousin Theodore saw in the Eighties. Its shack towns are as wide open and as rickety as gitup- and-fit or Hell’s Delight. The only real difference is that Theodore’s frontier was the natural result of the Great Trek to the Pacific, whereas Franklin’s is the natural result of $110,000,000.
“The $110,000,000 is being spent on a work-relief project in Northeastern Montana. The project is an earthrn dam — the world’s largest – 2,000 miles up the Missouri from St. Louis. The dam is intended to give work to Montana’s unemployed and incidentally to promote the carriage of commerce on the Missouri. Whether or not it will promote the carriage of commerce is a question, but as a work maker is is a spectacular success. It has paid wages to as many as 10,000 veterans, parched farmers and plain unemployed parents at a time.”
