Posts Tagged ‘Dams’

9th January
2016
written by Richard

Jubilation greeted the opening of the Sweetwater Dam in the spring of 1888. On the heels of the great land “boom of the eighties,” National City and the south bay reveled in the completion of an engineering marvel, the tallest masonry arch dam in the United States, which created San Diego County’s first large reservoir of water–an essential key to the region’s growth and prosperity.

The story of Building the Sweetwater Dam.SweetwaterPromo

27th July
2015
written by Richard

To look at it now, solidly in place, you would never know its disturbed history. The broken course of the Sutherland project is one of those fantastic things that could only happen here.  –Shelley Higgins, former City Attorney, in This Fantastic City.

The story of the ill-starred Sutherland Dam, known in its day as a  A Dam Fiasco.

Abandoned Sutherland Dam, 1930s.

Abandoned Sutherland Dam, 1930s.

23rd November
2012
written by Richard

Mission Gorge in the 1920s.

One of the biggest hassles we had was trying to keep some of these idiots from building a dam in Mission Gorge . . . A lot of land would have been flooded . . . Santee, Lakeside, and about a third of El Cajon Valley would have been a shallow lake.
–Fred A. Heilbron, San Diego city councilman

When San Diego seem intent on Damming Mission Gorge.

21st October
2010
written by Richard

Sutherland abandoned, 1928.

To look at it now, solidly in place, you would never know its disturbed history. The broken course of the Sutherland project is one of those fantastic things that could only happen here . . .

The story of a dam that took 25 years to build: the Dam Fiasco.