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| Street View, Apr 2022 |
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| CivilGEO Inc. Software posted More than 130 years later, ingenious design helps California dam stand strong The Crystal Springs Dam’s interlocking concrete block system enhances the structural stability of the mass concrete. Photograph courtesy of The Reading Room/Alamy "Crystal Springs Dam, which has a height of 145 ft [44m], is the oldest mass concrete structure built in the 19th century in the U.S. (Photograph courtesy of The Reading Room/Alamy)" |
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| LC-DIG-ppmsca-17716 |
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| filoli This source specifies 154' (47m) as the height of the dam. This was the first concrete dam that was taller than 95' (29m). The construction of this dam included the invention of steam-powered machines to mix the concrete. |
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| asce As with most dams in California, this one was built to provide a water supply. In this case, for San Francisco. Chief Engineer Hermann Schussler advised the board of the Spring Valley Water Co. to buy the land of the 23,000-acre San Andreas Valley watershed, which they did. |
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| asce Hermann was aware that concrete shrank and became hot as it cured, so he built the dam as a series of interlocking blocks. The first set of blocks in a layer would be built like a checkerboard. Then the empty spaces would be filled in. The center of a block of the next layer would be built over the intersection of four blocks in the previous layer. And this photo shows that the blocks where keyed into the adjacent blocks. This created a dam that was strong enough to survive the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes without any significant damage even though it is only 1,100' (335m) east of to the San Andreas Fault. |
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| asce The dam is 600' (183m) long and contains 157,000 cu. yd. of concrete. It has a total capacity of 19 billion gallons. A 44" (1.1m) wrought iron pipeline that is 89,500' (27.3km, 17miles) long delivered the water via gravity to a terminal reservoir in San Francisco. "The pipeline performed well for many years before being replaced." |
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