by Mary Buchholz
These articles come from newspaper microfilm from the Belle Fourche Public library, using a new microfilm reader and printer. The photographs are from the Tri-State Museum.
122 years ago — History of the Building of Belle Fourche Irrigation Dam and Project
After a few years’ work on the projects, Widdle and Finley Company went broke. Bulter and Hayes took over and finished the dam in 1912. The diversion dam on the river, the inlet canal, and Johnson lateral were finished and had water in them in 1911. The Belle Fourche Diversion Dam is on the Belle Fourche River about 1.5 miles northeast of the city of Belle Fourche, S.D. It has a concrete ogee weir 400 feet long, a structural height of 36 feet, and a 2,100-foot-long earth embankment on the right abutment. A St. Louis, Missouri, contactor, S. R. H. Robinson won the bid for the Diversion Dam in August 1905. It was built on imperviosu shale and an eathen dike lined with cut stone. It would direct from the Belle Fourche river to the larger storage reservoir on Owl Creek. Wet weather in the winter and spring of 1905-06 cause several constuction delays. Spring floods washed out a temporary foofer dam in 1906 and 1907, delaying completion of the diversion dam by a year and half. The completed dam was 186 feet long and the stone-lined dike was 2523 feet long. The lake formed was called Belle.
54 years ago August 3, 1971 Dinner Set Feting Orman Dam Pioneers
Members of the Orman Dam committee met with Belle Fourche Chamber of Commerce president Gene Cheever to coordinate plan for the coming recognition dinner for Orman Dam pioneers. The recognition dinner will be held in conjunction with the Chamber of Commerce annual banquet. R. D. Long, chairman of the Orman Dam Committee, is in charge of the program, and all pioneers of the Orman Dam will be guests of the chamber that evening.
51 years ago September, 1974 Rapid City Journal History society tours irrigation project by Rozella Bracewell. Journal Correspondent
BELLE FOURCHE – The history of the Belle Fourche Irrigation Project was related to members of the Butte County History Society during its recent annual caravan tour. “No man ever accomplished anything entirely alone but it takes a dream or vision to start with,” said Mrs. Ralph Watson, Nisland, at the Diversion Dam along the Belle Fourche river east of Belle Fourche, the first stop. “Peter P. Vallery, homesteading 10 miles east of Belle Fourche in 1880,” she said, “is credited with being the chief messiah for the project. Using carpenter’s level and homemade tripod, Vallery and Alonson Giles, a Belle Fourche hardware dealer and rancher, located the diversion canal and hatched the original idea for a storage reservoir to irrigate 8,000 acres under what is now the South Canal.” Vallery’s dream, she continued, was realized when, in April, 1904, reclamation engineers recommended that 60,000 acres be investigated for possible irrigation and when, in 1908, the first water was delivered. The sites of the Diversion Dam and Inlet Canal vary little from the irrigation system mapped by Vallery and Giles. The second stop was, vis alfalfa, corn and other crops, at the former Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Camp at the south edge of Orman Dam, where Fred Winkler, Spearfish, former project manager, had 250 men under his command in 1934. “We got eastern South Dakota boys at first.” Winkler said. “I had to find jobs for them because people were afraid of them at first. They replaced with concrete more than 1,000 wooden structures on the project, built flumes and a concrete building in Newell.
Later on, we got boys from Arkansas. We never had any trouble with them except when they went to dances in Nisland and Fruitdale where hazing of a new bunch sometimes got rough. And they had their own lingo. One of the Arkansas boys who drove a truck come to me one day saying, “The puffin’ rod is broke.” He meant the exhaust pipe.” The camp buildings, Winkler recalled, included an office, mess hall, officers’ quarters, hospital, 25-men barracks, a big shop and a school where bookkeeping, photography, auto mechanics, truck driving and concrete construction were among subjects taught. John Daum, who taught welding and mechanics at the camp in 1940, was among those on the tour. Winkler also mentioned that the camp also published a newspaper, the Orman Duster, and that it became a German way prisoner camp in 1943. “We put a high wire fence around the camp and we had three guard houses,” he said, “but the prisoners never caused any trouble. They went swimming in Belle Fourche Reservoir and always came back.”
Keith Washburn, Belle Fourche, society president and emcee, read an interview from Mrs. Bess Kent Hawk, Vale, who had been the only woman guard car driver, She told of taking an armed guard in her car each day behind a truck driven by her husband, Ernest Kent, manager of a pickling station at Vale. It hauled 18-20 prisoners from the camp to work in Vale area cucumber and sugar beet fields. “When the war ended, we not longer needed a guard car; I was relieved,” she said. Philip Vallery, Nisland, a tour coordinator, told of five prisoners working for him during corn-cutting, “We couldn’t understand them, but they surely could cuss in English. They craved fresh vegetables, even ate raw corn.”
Tour chairman, R. D. Long, interviewed Peter Strand, Nisland, who told of early days in the Orman construction for which his father was the first blacksmith in 1905. “He did horseshoeing, machinery iron work and repaired the donkeys used in construction of the dam.” Those on the tour were granted to drive over the top of Orman Dam, over a mile long, to the site of former employee houses where Daryld Williamson, Vale, an irrigation district director, said, “The men who envisioned irrigation made a great impact on this region. Annual gross crop production on the project is now over $5,1 million.” He told how the dam was built by using horses, dirt cars, four-horse fresnos, steam engines, elevating graders, tipples and various other equipment, with the decision to place thousands of cement blocks on the dam’s face being made by engineers.
Past Arpan farm and rangeland, the tour next stopped along a deep drainage ditch on the Andrew Straub farm where Washburn said, “If you don’t get water off that land soon, you won’t stay in the farming business long.” Long told of how W. W. Walker, drainage engineer, investigated serious seepage problems in the project and in January, 1924 recommended that the federal government build 143 miles of open drain ditches costing $1 million. By Thanksgiving 1931, he said, 207 miles of open ditches had been completed on the project. Thirteen miles were dug by government employees, the balance by three firms operating dredges weighing up to 55 tons (smaller ones scooped 1.5 years of dirt at a throw) 24 hours a day in eight-hour shifts. Costs ranged from $3,700 per miles on those 7-10 feet deep to $1.15 per lineal foot for closed drains. Part of the 5th annual Historical Society’s Tour, September 8, 1974 included Orman Dam, CCC camp, POW (Prison of War) camp during WWII, Diversion dam.
Read the full issue of the Belle Fourche Beacon by clicking here.
