The Building of the Oroville Dam

Download or read book The Building of the Oroville Dam written by Larry R. Matthews and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2014-01-20 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early 1960s, thousands of construction workers and their families came to Oroville, in Northern California, to help build the largest earth-fill dam in the world. Located nine miles northeast of town, the Oroville Dam would be the cornerstone of the California State Water Project, which would provide flood control, electric power, recreation, and water to California residents. The project was so massive that it would reinvent the look of much of the area; require the building of roads, bridges, and railroads; inundate much of the area's history under hundreds of feet of water; and greatly effect the lives of the residents of Oroville. The successful completion of the project came at a price--34 construction workers died.