Carroll County Chronicles Fall 2020

In addition, the footers were not sunk deep enough into the earth and no provision was made to handle excess water from storm runoff. The dam was designed to be a “concrete buttress dam” which was to be supported by a trio of buttresses on the downstream side. One end of the dam was attached to an outcropping of rock on the north creek bank and the other end was attached to footers dug into the hillside. On the south end of the dam, a race (or ditch) was dug which led to a concrete sluice. Once water rose behind the dam to the level of the race, the water would flow into it and then into the sluice. It then would flow out of the sluice into a 16- inch pipe which led to a turbine in the power house which was below the end of the sluice. The falling water, which fell about 10 feet, turned the turbine which turned the generator. The water was then returned to the creek. Perhaps it was not taken into account that Little Reed Creek can be a tempestuous body of water during rain storms. The streams that flow into the creek come from hills which drain quickly during rains . It doesn’t take a great deal of rain for these “feeder” streams to double their size, resulting in a likewise effect on Little Reed. There were a few flaws in the construction of the dam which points out the lack of engineering knowledge possessed by the Skaggs brothers and why the venture was eventually unsuccessful. The dam was built straight across the creek rather than having been curved like the outer side of a bowl (a convex shape.) Had they curved it, and the outside of the arc faced upstream, the pressure of the water would have been converted to compression forces on the dam structure rather than tension forces. (Concrete has tremendous compression strength but rather poor tensile strength unless it is reinforced.) However, in defense of the brothers, a lot of dams were built this way back in the day, but a lot of them failed, too. Problems with the Dam

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