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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (July 23, 1957)
World's Second Biggest Power Dam Rising as Part of St. Lawrence Project Editor'! not: Followinc the kc nd In a terlM of five irtlrln hv Lulled PrM (orrepondent E Jack son on St. Lawrence Seaway project. By SCISiST S. JACKSON OCtett Correspondent Mas-rt. .'. Y. V The see-on- l:fjce power dam in the world 0 n.'ng in the St. Law rence river etween the United States ar Canada. Y,t tig- ork seems routine conared to the transformation of nature taking place nearby. Construction of the St. Law rence Seaway and power project- is one of the greatest build ing programs of all time. The job, now at its peak, is half done and on schedule. Fifteen thousand workers us ing $70 million worth of equip ment are gathered around the upstate New York town of Mas aena and across the river in Can ada to build and destroy, destroy and build. Around the clock, six days a week, with a roar like a thou sand bombers, bulldozers, hy draulic jacks, tractors, shovels, draglines, gantry cranes, pile drivers and rock wagons scoop and dig, hammer and drill, dump and Curt, lift and drop. Float Sul Bridge A steel bridge is floated four miles upstream to provide a clos er crossing for workmen. It will be dynamited away. A road is laid to move equipment. Three hours later it is ripped up. A 3,000-foot dam is steel-piled into the river bed. It is only tempo rary. Islands are sliced in half. Three islands are made one as if to prove that Humpty-Dumpty can be put back together again. The long Sault pronounced Soo Rapids, once fearsome and impassable in their sharp 45-foot drop, are dried up. Rocks and old cannon balls lie sunning on the salt. Next July a great man-made flood will creep across 700 square miles where cattle once grazed peacefully beneath the elms. Seven Canadian towns will be buried forever but not wip ed off the map. The 6,500 persons who lived in them will have been moved with all their possessions to new towns with new houses, church es, schools and shops. The man who could not part with the old homestead will see his house placed on a U-shape trailer and rolled 10( miles away, plunked down without so much as a pilled glass of water, next to his lifelong neighbor. Moti Farm Families Two hundred and 25 Ameri can farm families will have been moved out, and bulldozers and governmenfpaid "arsonists" will have leveled and burned every thing more than two inches across or a foot high. The Seaway is not only con struction. It is destruction of Er nie's service station and the Car ibou tea room in Aultsville (pop ulation 450). Lloyd Davis will get a new filling station in New Iroquois; school teacher Edith Render, a modern bungalow to replace the old home in what already is a ghost town of tum bling houses with torn blinds and smashed windows. Even the dead must be moved to make way for the new 35 mlle lake. Behind green cano pies, the presence of clergymen. workmen dig up coffins and tombstones to place Lefevre next to McDonald again five miles in land. In a project unique in interna tional annals, Canadians meet Americans from Oregon and Ar k a n s a s at the international boundary at midstream. Each is building half of the 3,300-foot power dam. For the new high level Roosevelt International bridge, the United States will build the superstructure, Canadi ans the substructure. Pool Resources , For the St. Lawrence power dam, the New York State Power Authority is throwing in $335 million, and the Ontario Hydro Electric Power Commission the remainder to develop 1,800,000 kilowatts for upstate New York, Ontario, Quebec and Vermont, an output second only to Grand Coulee. On the Seaway itself the U. S. St. Lawrence Seaway Develop ment Corp., with money bor rowed from the U. S. treasury, is building two locks 800 feet long, 80 feet wide and 30 feet deep, named for President Eisenhower and the nearby Grass river. They can lift a 25,000-ton ship 45 feet in eight minutes. The United States also is constructing the Long Sault canal, 10 miles long and 442 feet wide. Upstream it is dredging the channel and removing shoals in a 68-mile stretch of the Thou sand Islands. Total U. S. cost: $140 million to be repaid in 50 years through tolls collected from ships using the Seaway. Opposite Massena, the Canadi ans, through their own seaway authority, were 90 per cent done in July with their Iroquois lock and canal. Downstream toward Montreal they are building two locks at Lachine and two at Soulanges and deepending the channel to the standard 27 feet at Lake St. Louis. Improve Old Canal To the west, Canada is deep ening and widening seven locks of the old Welland canal, which bypasses Niagara Falls in Cana dian territory to link Lakes On tario and Erie. Total cost to Can ada: $285 million. The American locks will be ready next July, but it will be April, 1959, before Canada fin ishes work downstream and the new Seaway opens with only seven locks where once there had been 21. Men are making this engineer ing miracle, but it is the ma chines which today make the project a 3D "spectacular." Three hundred thousand side walk superintendents a year visit the construction site; in lat er years tourists will drive through a tunnel beneath Eisen hower lock. The visitors of tomorrow will see ships instead of "the gentle man," a million-dollar, dragline with a scoop large enough to hold 12 men or a pick-up truck. Where today there is dirt enough to fill a trainload of box cars which would reach 25,000 miles around the equator to morrow there will be water. Tomorrow: The lakes have "seaway fever." Salt Lake Rock Moving Job Starts Little Valley, Utah iw Power shovels and trucks Mon day began the months-long job of dumping into Great Salt Lake the three million tons of rock cracked from a cliff here by the nation's largest non-atomic ex plosion. The rock will become the wave-proof facing of a 13-mile earth fill structure being con structed across the northwest arm of the lake by Southern Pacific Railway to replace an ob solete wooden portion of the Lucin Cut. When the $49 million job is completed in about four years, transcontinental trains can cross the lake faster and safer. The explosion Sunday was one of superlatives. There were 1,790,000 pounds of explosives packed into tunnels at the base of the 200 foot quartzite rock cliff. Previous non-atomic rec ord holder for blasts was 1,362, 000 pounds used on a Tennessee TV A dam in 1949. When the explosives a com bination of dynamite and nitra'e fertilizer with a punch l-37th that of a "nominal" atomic bomb Tuesday. July 23, 1957 MEDFORD (OREGON) MAIL TRIBUNE SEVEN Teenagers Dance Hall Permit Is Aproved A, dance hall permit for Earl Neeley, Ashland, was approved Monday morning by the Jackson county court. Neeley is operator of "The Playland," 1955 Highway 66. which he has planned for use of teenagers. An Italian restaur ant adjoining thei dance hall will open this week, he said. The hall is open from 6 to 11 p.m. and boys must wear slacks and dress shirts and girls dresses, Neeley told the court. GREAT PROFILE GREATEST Hollywood OPi Veteran ac tress Mary Astor, who stars Wednesday night on "Climax," on CBS-TV, says John Barry more was the screen's greatest as far as she's concerned the greatest lover and the greatest wit. "Before the cameras he dou bled me backward with his ar dor, and behind them he dou bled me forward with his jokes," she said. "I got a little lumbago and a lot of laughs." went ff, they loosened two million cubic yards of material. The VODKA of VODKAS There's a difference in vodkas and it's a difference worth knowing. Driest of the dry! 0mimoff THE GREATEST NAME IN VODKA P mm 80 PROOF DISTILLED FROM GRAIN STE PIERRE SMIRNOFF FLS. (DIVISION OF HEUBLEIN). HARTFORD. CONN, U. S. A FRANCE, ENGLAND. MEXICO Una Turner Granted Divorce From 'Tarzan' Hollywood lift Screen star Lana Turner Monday was grant ed an interlocutory divorce from her movie Tarzan husband. Lex Barker, after she testified he had an "uncontrollable temper" and hit her in the face during a breakfast table argument. - The screen siren, dressed in a black shantung silk suit and ob viously under great nervous strain, told Judge Edward R Brand in Santa Monica Superior court that Barker had been something less than a gentleman at times while in her company. Miss Turner, 37, said her hus band engaged in frequent argu ments with her "and had an un controllable temper which he showed too many times." On one occasion during an ar gument at the breakfast table Barker hit her in the face, she said. Rainier's Father Denies Kidnap Rumor Ostaad, Switzerland IP Prince Rainier's father said Mon day reports of a threat to kid nap six-month-old Princess Caro- line were "false rumors." it frince riainier had re ceived any anonymous letters threatening my granddaughter Princess Carolina. I. as a grand father, would be much less calm than I am this morning," the Prince of Polignac said. Reports f r.o m Switzerland published in the United States said Prince Rainier and Princess Grace had received unsigned let ters threatening the kidnaping of their daughter. Palace officials at Monte Car One look, one ride, and you'll discover more to be proud of in a Chevy. No other low-priced car quite comes up to it for finishing touches, right down to the last detail. And you'll take pride in the sweet, smooth and sassy performance. This one wants you to get choosey about your next car! The fussier you are, the more Chevrolet can show you . what it's got for you inside, outside and in performance. Take the solid way a Chevrolet is built. It's the only car in its field with Body by Fisher sturdily put togetner, with a look of substance other cars in its price class haven't quite captured. Everywhere you look, fine finishing touches confirm the craftsmanship thaf. goes into a Chevrolet. Chevrolet's response, and perform ance are pretty special, too. There's a well-what-are-we-waiting-for spirit in the engine, especially when you show a Chevrolet a mountain. And you'll do a lot of looking to find comparable smoothness, steadiness and nimbleness on 'the road at any price! Take a Chevrolet out for a ride and' let it talk to you in its own lively way. The key's at your Chevrolet dealer's! MORE PEOPLE DRIVE CHEVROLETS THAN ANY OTHER CAR It gives you more to of! DON'T BUY ANY CAR BEFORE YOU DRIVE A- CHEVY..". ITS BEST SHOWROOM IS THE ROAD. Only franchised Chevrolet dealers AIR CONDITIONING TEMPERATURES MADE TO ORDER-AT NEW tOW COST. GET A DEMONSTRATION! ' display this famous trademark See Your Local Authorized Chevtolet Dealer lo said they knew "nothing whatsoever" of such letters.
