By a Damsite

High on Shasta Dam's vast concrete face last week a big steel gate opened. A mighty wall of water rushed down to the No. 4 penstock, exploded against the huge waiting turbine in the powerhouse below the dam. The tons of steel began to turn, accelerated, then hummed like a tremendous bee.

To Bureau of Reclamation men and their boss, Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes, that coming to life of the huge electric generator was the climax of the six-year job of building Shasta. But to strapping (205 lb., 6 ft. 3 in.), profane Francis Trenholm Crowe, general superintendent of construction for Pacific Constructors, Inc., the big moment had come four months before, when the Sacramento River began a regulated flow through outlet valves on the dam's broad, sloping downstream face. "That meant we had the river licked," said Crowe. "Pinned down, shoulders right on the mat. Hell, that's what we came up here for."

Builder Frank Crowe's 19th dam is the world's second biggest concrete structure (biggest: Grand Coulee Dam). Shasta is the highest overflow-type dam in the world (602 ft.). It is also California's tallest structure. When Shasta's reservoir fills (probably in 1946), water pouring over the center spillway will fall three times as far as Niagara. For California, Shasta Dam will:

P:Prevent the wild "flash" floods which, through rain and melting snows from lofty Mount Shasta, have annually devastated the Central Valley's homes and agriculture.

P:Regularly irrigate the vast, fertile, but often drought-parched San Joaquin Valley. P:Supply 1,500,000,000 kilowatt hours annually to northern California's power-hungry industry through five turbines.

All this is Frank Crowe's work. His was not the vision, nor the planning, but he built the dam.

Engineer Crowe has changed the physical landscape perhaps more than any other individual in history. Born 61 years ago of American parents in Trenholmville, Quebec, he grew up playing tag across the log jams of Maine's great Ossippe River. By the time he graduated from the University of Maine in 1905 with a B.S. in civil engineering, a summer's work on dam construction on the Yellowstone River had sold him to a life of harnessing U.S. rivers. "While I was learning to build dams," Crowe reflects, "the nation got started on the biggest dam-building spree of all time. If I'd been born sooner or later, I'd have missed the boat."

By the time Boulder Dam came along (1931), Frank had a reputation: he was the man who could read blueprints at a glance (or ignore them when necessary), the man who could build dams faster than anyone else. When Henry J. Kaiser's Six Companies got the Boulder Dam bid, Frank was the natural choice to boss the job.

Crowe finished Boulder 26 months ahead of schedule. The Shasta deadline is Jan. 6, 1945. Were it still abuilding after that date, Pacific Constructors would have to pay $2,000 for each day. But despite hell, high water and manpower shortages, Crowe intends to top off Shasta in November.

Lean, tough and bull-voiced, Engineer

Crowe drives his men so hard that many quit. But most would rather work for "The Old Man" than for anyone else; some have been with him since 1905.

Frank Crowe hates carelessness. As a result Shasta has killed only twelve men. Once he bellowed at a worker: "Watch what the hell you're doing or you'll fall and break your neck." Retorted the worker: "Well, it's my neck." "Yes, it's your neck now," Crowe shot back, "but as soon as you break it, it's mine."

Despite the fact that he has built more dams than any other man in history, Frank Crowe is scarcely known outside his field. But in place of publicity, Crowe has made big money, which is rare for an engineer. The Boulder job paid him a salary of $18,000 a year plus 2 1/2% of the profits (Crowe's take: $300,000).

What makes Frank Crowe a master builder is his audacity of invention. He pioneered in using horizontal cables strung across river canyons to carry concrete from mixer to chutes into the dam. Without them, Boulder would have been almost impossible to build.

The Sacramento's banks were too low to use Crowe's cross-canyon cable device. So he built the world's tallest headtower (465 ft.), and poured every 16-ton bucket of concrete from cables in a semicircle above.

The tower cost $600,000, but, said Crowe, "it was a half-million dollars cheaper than any scheme anybody else thought of." Shasta also used the world's longest conveyor belt (ten and a half miles) to carry gravel and sand to the damsite. The two bold innovations have drawn international engineering attention.

Frank Crowe is rabidly against the Administration which gave him so many dams to build, is scornful of the "socialistic" cheap power they will produce. His satisfaction comes in believing that his works will stand as monuments to human progress. "Look at that Shasta Dam. That will stand there forever, holding back the river. And the powerhouse will keep right on turning out juice until somebody discovers how to make power out of sunlight."

When Shasta is dedicated, Frank Crowe's speech will probably be the same two sentences he spoke at Boulder and Parker: "If you gentlemen want to see the fellow who really built this dam, go over to the mess hall. He wears a tin hat, his average age is thirty-one and he can do things."

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