The three units in the powerhouse generate 24mw. [hydroreform]
Note the smokestack in the background. It was for the copper and silver smelter that we see along the bank of the river. The smokestack was 500' (153m) tall. [clui]
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| Erik Nordberg updated This week's cover photo shows the Black Eagle Dam in Great Falls, Montana. The photo was taken sometime before 1908 and shows the original 1890 timber-and-rock crib dam built and opened in 1890. It was the first hydroelectric dam building in Montana, and the first built anywhere on the Missouri River. The dam helped Great Falls develop its name as "The Electric City." SIA visited several of the subsequent dams constructed in the area as part of the 2015 Fall Tour in Great Falls. Photo reproduced from the WikiMedia Commons: |
On Apr 14, 1908, the Hauser Lake Dam burst sending a torrent of water down the river. This dam was blown up to save the Boston and Montana Smelter. The Hauser Lake Dam broke just a year after it was constructed. "The break in the structure, according to Manager Berry, was caused by the 'buckling of steel plates near the lower expansion joint.' After the first break was noticed nearly fifteen minutes elapsed before the centre of the structure gave way with a terrific crash, and in a few minutes 250 feet of it had been destroyed, leaving about 125 feet at either end intact." [New York Times via GreatFallsGirl]
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| By Unknown author - book, Public Domain, wikimedia "Black Eagle Dam is dynamited on April 14, 1908, to allow floodwaters from collapsed Hauser Dam to pass." |
This photo does not make sense to me. The above photo indicates the 1908 explosion was in the middle of the dam, not on the south side. And multiple sources indicate the old dam was simply submerged in the reservoir of the new dam rather than removed.
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| TheRiver979 and 1:25 video @ 0:28 |
Note the concrete embankment used to extend the headrace downstream to maximize the head for the powerhouse.
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| clui, License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) "In the 19th century, this was the upper limit for steamships on the Missouri River, and a famous historic portage point, dating back to the 1806 visit by Lewis and Clark. In the late 1880s investors were drawn to the location, due to the potential for electrical generation and industry, leading to the construction of the Black Eagle Dam in 1890, followed by the others. In the early 1900s the Anaconda Copper Company built a massive smelter here to process copper from the mine in Butte, 150 miles away. The plant, next to the river, and its 500 foot-tall smokestack, was a major landmark, until it was torn down in the 1980s." [sia specifies Fort Benton as the head of steamboat navigation. That makes sense since there were five falls around Great Falls.] |
Every photo I saw of the dam showed a flow over the dam. Here is another example
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| Jo, Nov 2022 |
At first, I thought it was because people are more motivated to take photos of the river when it is high. So I checked out Google Earth, which takes a rather random sampling of the dam. It turns out most of the Google Earth photos show water going over the dam. So this power plant can run almost continuously. Here are a couple of exceptions to the steady flow.
A low river:
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| Google Earth, Jul 2011 |
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| TheRiver979 |
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| HAER |
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| EarthExplorer: Jul 1, 1946 @ 27,700, AR1CL0000070173 |
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