Cody, WY - Buffalo Bill Dam

Today was a 3-fer: the Buffalo Bill Dam, breakfast out at Our Place and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, in that order. The dam is on our way into town and we decided to stop there first and have breakfast later. Knowing how long we’d stay at the Dam, we also had a bowl of fruit and yogurt to tide us over.

Buffalo Bill Dam & the Shoshone Project

Buffalo Bill is well known for his Wild West Shows, but that’s not all he got involved in. He was also interested in getting a reliable source of water in the the valley here so that it could grow. (The main river in the valley is the Shoshone, which was originally called by John Colter the Stinking Water because of the sulphur odors that permeated the area. Someone thought ahead to future tourisms and suggested that maybe ‘Stinking Water’ might not be the most attractive name. The Wyoming legislature passed a law in 1901 renaming the river.) Cody and a few friends planned a canal to divert water from the Shoshone River but ran out of capital before they could begin their project. They then joined with the County Commissioners to ask the federal government to help with irrigation and this project was one of the first projects undertaken by the newly formed Federal Bureau of Reclamation.
It was designed to be the tallest dam in the world at 325’ and the workers kept track of the height, measuring it against another dam. In this picture, the height of the current highest dam, the Croton Dam, is the black line in the middle of the picture, the projected height of the Shoshone Dam is the white print at the top of the picture. They had another picture with the National Capital superimposed onto the dam.

Obstacles? Of course. First it was a deep granite canyon, hard rock and lots of it. Below is the ladder and the boat used to drill dynamite holes in that granite.

Second, there were no natural deposits of sand and gravel at the site so they had to grind down the granite: pieces weighing from 25 lbs to 250 lbs were hand placed in the concrete. Third, the terrain itself was a huge obstacle: the canyon was deep and steep. My favorite picture is the one below showing the catwalk over the dam construction. Want to walk along this?

Fourth, this area was pretty remote and they found it hard to keep workers. Finally, that darn ol’ river didn’t know the schedules and sometimes flowed too heavily and overran the dam. 2 companies which didn't work over the winter went broke trying to finish the dam but the third company decided to work through the winter to get the dam finished high enough so that the spring run-off wouldn’t interrupt their progress. It was finished in 1910 and the valley began to produce. As we drove through the valley, we could see tons of green crop circles and the irrigation made this valley productive.

Because of the remote location and the harsh conditions of work (7 workers were killed on the project), the workers went on strike to increase their pay to $3.00 per day and an 8-hour day. This was actually the first strike in Wyoming history. A second strike was threatened but the construction company replaced the Italian workers with Bulgarian workers.

Neat pictures throughout the VC and we looked at them all. In the end, there have been bigger dams built across larger rivers but the engineering theories and lessons learned at this dam made a more exact science out of dam building. They also built a new road through the canyon from Cody to Yellowstone and it wasn’t long for the first tourists to try the road out.

Next was breakfast at Our Place, a local hangout. We’re in a new town and want to eat breakfast out. Well, check out the parking lots - which lot has the most locals in it. And, hands down, it was Our Place. Not fancy from the outside - in fact, all you could see were the cars parked outside. Family owned, good food and we talked with the owner for a while.