Building the Ultimate Dam: John S. Eastwood and the Control of Water in the West by Donald C. Jackson

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 313 define “independent”? To imply that an independent is simply a small business operation focused on exploration, drilling, and pro­ duction is not quite enough. Independents can be, and sometimes are, very large companies. I agree that at his height, Slick was at least one of the largest of the small-to-midsize independents, but Miles might have provided some additional information, perhaps in a ta­ ble or chart, that showed Slick’s acreage and annual oil production, compared over time, with other independents operating in the mid­ continent region and the United States. For the reader, this would help place Slick in his industry. One section of the book provides an interesting account of early oil field leasing practices, of which Slick was a master. While Slick is described as using “simple and honest leasing techniques” (p. 20), he also protected his interests to the hilt. When the Wheeler well came in, Slick tried to hide the discovery to prevent competitors from sinking their own wells nearby. In an action best described by his name, the young wildcatter literally hired all the livery rigs, livery teams, and notary publics in the area to prevent competitors from leasing adjacent land or moving portable rigs to nearby locales until Slick could lease all the acreage himself. Ray Miles has done a commendable job of weaving together lim­ ited research materials to present an impressionistic portrait of a significant though intensely private wildcatter-turned-independent oil man. Ultimately, Slick represents the hard-driving, narrowly fo­ cused work ethic that created the twentieth-century American oil industry. Christopher J. Castaneda Dr. Castaneda is associate professor ofhistory at California State University, Sacra­ mento, and coauthor of Builders: An Economic Biography ofHerman and George Brown (forthcoming). Building the Ultimate Dam:John S. Eastwood and the Control of Water in the West. By Donald C. Jackson. Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1996. Pp. xii+336; illustrations, notes, index. $45.00 (cloth). This fine book is at once a history and typology of dam building types, the biography of an engineer in the Progressive period, and an essay in the social construction of technology. Donald C. Jackson brings to this subject a B.S. in civil engineering and a Ph.D. in Ameri­ can history, and he grounds the book in both disciplines. A glossary and copious well-selected illustrations assist the nonengineer reader to open up the black box of dam building and understand the choices involved. An early chapter deftly traces dam construction from ancient times until around 1900, showing how mathematical 314 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE formulae only slowly made inroads into traditional building prac­ tices. The oldest and most widespread design even today is the grav­ ity dam, whose sheer mass, assisted by a pyramid-like cross section, holds back the water. More rare are dams relying on either buttresses or arches, though there are scattered examples, including a remark­ able 190-foot-high fourteenth-century arch dam built by the Mon­ gols in Persia, long the highest dam in the world, and a remarkable multiple-arch dam from early nineteenth-century India. John S. Eastwood (b. 1857) attended the University of Minnesota in the 1870s, but he did not complete a degree there before working as a surveyor and engineer for western railroads. In the 1880s he settled in Fresno, California, where he was a surveyor, an irrigation adviser, a bridge builder, a speculator in timber, an electrical engi­ neer, and, finally, a dam builder. In these formative years Eastwood got extensive practical experience with projects in rugged terrain. There is insufficient evidence on how he invented the idea of a mul­ tiple-arch dam around 1905. It was part ofa grand scheme to harness the Big Bear Creek and San Joaquin River to make electricity through a series of power plants with a cumulative head of 6,000 feet. Henry Huntington adopted the hydroelectric scheme while outmaneuvering Eastwood, who received little for his work. Hun­ tington and his partners would not take a chance on the untried multiple-arch dam, but a cash-strapped lumber company did, and the result in 1908 was the...