Rollins Dam
California
The groundbreaking ceremony for Rollins Dam was the demolition of a railroad trestle that had carried three hundred million dollars in gold and silver.
To break ground on Rollins Dam, they blew up a bridge. The Bear River Bridge was a wooden trestle, eight hundred and ten feet long and one hundred and ninety six feet high, built for the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad. Over its life it carried about three hundred million dollars in precious metals out of the mountains. In 1963 it came down as the ceremonial start of construction. Twenty nine months later the dam stood in its place, an earthen wall two hundred and twenty eight feet high and more than a third of a mile across the top. Behind it the Bear River backed up into a reservoir of about a square mile. The Nevada Irrigation District built it for power, flood control, irrigation and drinking water. Voters had approved a sixty five million dollar bond for the wider project the year before the trestle fell.
This is the first of 3 parts. The rest runs about 3 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.
An 810 foot long, 196 foot high trestle, named the Bear River Bridge, used by the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Rail Road to carry out $300 million of precious metals was demolished as part of the ground breaking ceremony for the dam.
Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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