The Austin Dam

The Austin Dam Disaster of 1900 recreates the era of Gay Nineties Austin, then--as now--a city on the rise and on the make. In 1891, at the behest of ambitious city fathers, the little city of just 15,000 people gambled its future on a project of breathtaking size--a massive hydroelectric dam across the Colorado River. This book follows the epic construction project and the brief golden era of the pleasure resort at Lake McDonald. Though troubled and controversial from the get-go, the dam embodied all of Austin's dreams. Then, on Friday, April 6, 1900, it began to rain . . .

Investigates theoretically the structural integrity of the original Austin Dam in Austin, Pennsylvania and determine the likely cause of its failure in 1911. Using standard engineering practices of the early 1900's, the dam's stability against sliding, overturning, and crushing was calculated. After creating a solid computer model of the dam, a stress analysis was performed using modern finite element analysis methods which were not available at the time of the failure. Construction and analysis of a model incorporating suggested reinforcements to the structure determined if these reinforcements would have been sufficient to prevent the failure.