The great Ashokan reservoir is situated about fourteen miles west of
Kingston on the Hudson River. Its cost is $18,000,000, and it will hold
sufficient water to cover the whole of Manhattan Island to a depth of
twenty-eight feet. The water is impounded by the Olive Bridge dam,
which is built across Esopus Creek, and also by the Beaver Kill and
the Hurley dikes, which have been built across streams and gaps lying
between the hills which surround the reservoir.]
[Illustration: THE OLIVE BRIDGE DAM, 4650 FEET LONG, 200 FEET HIGH.
The dam is a masonry structure 190 feet in thickness at the base, and
23 feet thick at the top. The surface of the water when the reservoir
is full is 590 feet above tide level. The total length of the main dam
is 4560 feet, and the maximum depth of the water is 190 feet. The area
of the water surface is 12.8 square miles, and in preparing the bottom
it was necessary to remove seven villages, with a total population
of 2000. Forty miles of highway and ten bridges had to be built. In
the construction of the dam and dikes it was necessary to excavate
nearly 3,000,000 cubic yards of material, and 8,000,000 cubic yards of
embankment and nearly 1,000,000 cubic yards of masonry had to be put in
place. The maximum number of men employed on the job was 3000.]
~HOW THE PIPES RUN THROUGH THE STREET~
We are pretty tired of digging by this time, so we call in all the boys
and girls in town to help us dig so that we may see where these pipes
come from, and we have a regular digging carnival. We follow the big
pipe along our own street until we come to the corner. Here we find
that our larger street pipe is connected with a still larger pipe, so
we think we had better follow the larger pipe. We keep on digging,
getting more of the boys and girls to help, and we follow that big pipe
right out to the edge of town where we see it runs into another stone
wall which you knew all the time was the reservoir, but concerning what
it was for you were perhaps never quite clear.
Right near the place where the pipe goes in is a stairway which leads
up to the top of the wall, so the whole crowd of boys and girls climb
the steps and you are at the top of the reservoir; and there spread out
before you, you see a big lake surrounded with a stone wall and you see
where the water comes from--the reservoir--at least so you think. But
you are wrong. You really haven’t come anywhere near the source of the
supply. For soon as you walk around the broad top of the wall which
surrounds your reservoir, you meet a man who asks you what you want,
and you tell him that you have been finding out where the water in the
faucet came from, but having found out you thought you would go back
home.
The man smiles at you, but, as he is good-natured and sees you are
really trying to find out where the water comes from, he tells you that
since you have gone to all the trouble of digging up the streets to
follow the pipes, you might as well learn all about it.
He first tells you that the reservoir is not really the place where the
water comes from but only a tank, so to speak. He explains to you that
most of the faucets in the city are higher than the real source of the
water, which is out in the country miles away, and as water will not
run up hill, it is necessary to keep the city’s daily supply in some
place that is higher than the highest faucet in the city, so that it
will force its way into and fill to the very end all of the large pipes
in the streets and the small pipes which go into the houses, so that
the water will come out just as soon as you turn the faucet.
Then he takes you over to a large building near the reservoir which
you have always called the water works, but never knew exactly what
it was for. He takes you into a large room where there is a lot of
nice-looking machinery working away steadily but quietly, and tells
you that these are the great pumps which lift the water from the great
pipes which bring it from far away in the country, into the reservoir
we have just seen, from which the water runs into and fills all of the
pipes into the city.
He also tells you that in some cities it is impossible to find a place
to build a reservoir which is higher than the highest places in the
city. In such places, the pumps in the water works pump the water
direct into the city water pipes and force the water to the very end of
all the pipes and keep it there under pressure all the time.
From the pumping station he takes you down stairs in the water works
and shows you the huge pipe which brings the water to the water works
from the country. It is quite the largest pipe you ever saw. You see it
is not really an iron pipe, but built of concrete, which is quite as
good. You will be surprised to have our friend, the water-works man,
tell you that three average-sized men could stand up on each other’s
shoulders inside the great pipe.
[Illustration: HOW THE BIG PIPES ARE LAID THROUGH THE COUNTRY