Men & the River

While neighbors looked on approvingly, bulldozers dragged the fertile topsoil from John Haussermann's farm near Alma, Neb. and dug deep into the subsoil. The draglines and scrapers were collecting fill for a dam across one of Big Muddy's most fractious tributaries, the Republican. After more than a century of periodic suspense and terror, men were harnessing their old enemy, the Missouri River.

Four times between 1941 and 1944, fed by the Republican and its sisters--the Plattes, the Yellowstone, the Niobrara, the Cheyenne, the Belle Fourche--the Missouri had jumped its unstable banks. Men watched in misery while people, barns, houses, hogs, cattle and precious topsoil went tumbling down its chocolate torrent. Estimated damage: $149 million.

When it was not flood, it was drought. In the '30s, under scorching, cloudless skies, the fickle river had dwindled while crops withered and some 774,000 people fled the Valley's Dust Bowl.

Plans & Frills. President Roosevelt talked about a Missouri Valley project like TVA. Power companies fought that idea. So did many a farmer who thought of socialism and decided he preferred the uncertainties of the river. Then along came Brigadier General (then Colonel) Lewis Pick of the Corps of Engineers; he had a plan without sociological frills. But before it could be worked out, Engineer Pick was sent to Burma to build "Pick's Pike"--the Ledo Road.

Meanwhile-the Interior Department Reclamation Bureau's engineer, W. G. Sloan, laid out a plan. While Big Muddy rampaged, Pick and Sloan proponents argued.

In the middle of the argument the advocates of the TVA idea introduced a bill for an MVA complete with recreational facilities and government-operated power plants. That brought the Pick and Sloan advocates together. They merged their plans, and got an initial authorization ($400 million) from Congress. MVA's backers were still fighting for their idea when Pick came home from the wars. He wasted no time. With an appropriation of $32 million he went to work.

Water & Power. The $31,000,000 Republican Dam, which Pick expects to have finished in 1950, will open up 90,000 acres to irrigation, boost farmers' income an estimated $2.5 million a year. That is only a small piece of the whole vast undertaking which covers an area bigger than France, Spain and Italy combined.

Last week, Army engineers started on Cherry Creek Dam, near Denver. Flood walls are being pushed up to make a levee system from Sioux City to Big Muddy's mouth above St. Louis. Soon the bulldozer battalions will move in on one of the biggest jobs of all--the huge dam and 200-mile-long lake at Garrison, N.D. Kanopolis Dam on the Smoky Hill, Kortes

Dam at Casper, the Big Thompson project on the South Platte are already under construction by Army and Reclamation Bureau engineers. Work will begin next month on the Boysen and Angostura projects. (Other dams and reservoirs are already in operation on the Milk, the Sun, the Yellowstone, the North Platte Rivers.; When the whole system is finished, 107 headwater dams and reservoirs will regulate the rivers; farmers in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas will have water for irrigation; new waters will be open to navigation, new lands to reclamation; almost 1 1/2 million kw. of hydroelectric power will be added to the valley. By 1966, if all goes well, Big Muddy should be under control.

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