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The Enterprise, White Salmon, WA., September 13, 1912, page 1

FILL AT DAM HAS STARTED
Pipe Line Largest In The United States

The business center of operations at the dam site is now the west bank. Here the powerful rock crushers, sand makers and concrete mixers are at work, for the fill of the river bed began on Sunday. From the bed of the river to the top of the bank is a distance of about 500 feet. At the top is the quarry from which 30,000 tons of rock will be dropped to the crushers thence to the mixer farther down, from which it is being poured into the gorge. High up towards the top of the bank is a donkey engine, a little speck, but which required some engineering to place up there so high. There are many interesting things about this dam making, and every Sunday visitors are attracted, so much so that they have been forbidden descending down the stairway to the bottom of where they would interfere with the work.
Though it appeared too gigantic an undertaking to accomplish in a few months it will not be long after the first of the year before the fill is completed, the big pipe line down, and the power house in, for work on these three divisions goes on simultaneously.
Preceded by blasts, the steam shovel is now plowing up close to the dam, in its one mile course from the power house site. The pipe which is to carry the flow of the river is 13½ feet in diameter and is the largest pipe line of its kind in the United States. In one hour 35,000,000 gallons of water will flow through this big pipe on its way to the two turbines which will generate the 20,000 h.p. which the plant is to furnish. Just before the flow takes its sheer drop of 160 feet to the turbines it divides into two nine-foot pipes, one for each turbine.