I was made for sunny days.

Yesterday I got to go on a free tour of the Shasta Lake Dam! Got all my dam jokes out by then end, and learned a bunch of stuff I can now store in my brain for random trivia. It was beautiful outside! A little cold but perfect for walking around the mountain and the huge Shasta lake.
Here are a few pictures from the day. If you don't feel like learning all the little things I learned about it skip the facts :) I found it all so interesting partly because I live here and partly because it was built during the time we just covered in my US History class! It was very exciting to see history up close like that :)

Here is your own little personal tour of the dam!

This is at the bottom of the dam after going down 428 feet in a big elevator. 

Fact #1: The amount of concrete used in Shasta Dam (6,270,000 cubic yards) will take 100 years to completely dry. There are 33 years left.

Fact #2: Concrete, even when dry, never fully stops water seepage and there is constantly water draining through the sides of the dam that has seeped through the cement.

Fact #3: Shasta Dam is the second largest dam in the country with twice the amount of concrete as Hoover Dam in Nevada, though it is not as tall. 

 This is one of the many tunnels inside the Dam connecting to really crazy electric monitoring systems and walkways. It was built in such a way that it carries perfect sound waves from one end to the other, and whistling inside can actually cause hearing damage. It was really cool and I felt like I was in some Dharma Initiative work area underground or something.

Fact #4: The dam took from 1937-1944 to build and start producing electricity. WW2 was slowing the process, taking man power and supplies away from the project until Roosevelt decided that the electricity the dam would produce was extremely important. He approved the rest of the supplies needed for the completion of the dam and told the men working that if they would stay and finish it as quickly as possible he would award them veteran status at the end of the war, which he did.

 

The is from what used to be a train tunnel that was closed off to build the dam.

Fact #5: The tunnel was used for river diversion during the building of the dam but is filled with concrete now. (This is the Sacramento River, by the way)

This was a little walk though admission thing (I honestly can't think of what to call it) from back when they first started touring the dam (I don't know what year). It looked cool to me :)

Fact # 6: To get the rocks and sand needed for the concrete mix up to the dam they built the world's largest conveyer belt (9.5 miles long)! It went from Redding up to the lake, and was more cost effective than using a train to haul supplies.

Well that's the end of the dam tour! 

yes, pun intended.
I know, I'm bad.

Hope you enjoyed learning about it as much as I did!