N 36° 47.ABC
W 118° 54.DEF
CHECK ANSWER
A) What's the name of the Lumber Company that financed the building of the dam?
1 = Kings River Company
2 = Evans & Sontag Brothers
3 = Hume-Bennett Company
4 = Kings-Eastwood Inc
5 = Smith & Moore Company
B) The Hume Lake dam was the worlds first Reinforced Rock Arched Dam.
4 = TRUE
5 = FALSE
C) The Hume Lake dam was constructed in:
1 = 1888
2 = 1905
3 = 1908
4 = 1917
5 = 1922
D) The Hume Lake log flume was the _____________ ever created
1 = Fastest - logs traveled at speeds of 15 mph
2 = Longest - Caring Logs 73 miles
3 = Highest - Starting point of flume was 61 feet high
4 = Widest - 25 feet wide to accommodate Sequoia and Redwood Trees
E) The Hume Lake log flume also served as a thrill ride for tourists:
4 = TRUE
5 = FALSE
F) All logging operations ceased at Hume Lake in ______
3 = 1914 due to the outbreak of World War I
2 = 1919 legal issues during Prohibition
1 = 1920 congress passing Suffrage
0 = 1924 low profits and Mill Fire
Wikipedia Research
Hiram Smith and Austin Moore formed the Kings River Lumber Company on April 24th, 1888, to take advantage of the commercial opportunities presented by the stands of timber in the Kings River Watershed. The Kings River Lumber Company acquired almost 30,000 acres in the area just north of General Grant Grove, including stands of timber near the present location of Hume Lake. These 30,000 acres also contained the infamous Converse Basin, where Smith and Moore oversaw the feverish and almost complete destruction of arguably the largest giant sequoia grove, and its thousands of thousand-year-old giant sequoias. Despite the amount of pristine uncut old growth available when logging began, the Kings River Lumber Company was unable to ever recover much, if any, profit due to the cost of logging such large and isolated timber. Out of this failure arose an opportunity for Thomas Hume and fellow timber entrepreneur Ira Bennett. These Michigan lumbermen sought to expand to the West Coast by purchasing Smith and Moore's 30,000 acre tract. In 1905, the Hume-Bennett Lumber Company purchased the tract and its milling facilities, but found little uncut lumber in the vicinity to justify the mill's location in Converse Basin. Due to the exhausted forests surrounding the mill in Converse Basin, the Hume-Bennett Lumber Company sought a new location for its facilities closer to uncut stands of timber. This meant that the company would have to move deeper into the mountains. Tenmile Creek was the next tributary of the Kings River, four miles east of Converse Basin. The creek flowed through an area known as Long Meadow. This location was promising for the company because it could be converted into a reservoir that would serve two functions for the company. First, it would provide storage for logs cut from surrounding virgin groves. From this body of water, floating logs could be drawn into an adjacent mill to be cut. Second, the rough cut lumber could then be transported out of the mountains in a flume filled with water from the reservoir. To create this reservoir, John S. Eastwood was hired in 1908 to construct a dam at Long Meadow. Eastwood proposed constructing the world's first reinforced concrete multiple arch dam. Although unprecedented, at a cost of approximately $46,000, the dam's design was a less expensive alternative to a conventional rock fill dam that would have cost about twice as much to construct. The dam was completed in only 114 days, by the end of 1909, along with a mill immediately adjacent to the dam. Logs were dumped into the reservoir by rail and floated to the dam where they were drawn up into the mill, cut and then dried in kilns next to the mill on the west bank of Tenmile Creek. From this location, lumber was floated to Sanger, California, in a flume filled with water from the reservoir. The flume was the longest ever created, eventually stretching 73 miles from Hume Lake to Sanger. Designed and built by James Carroll Goss, the flume was used by both the lumber company and tourists. Thrill seeking tourists would occasionally ride in the flume down from the Sierras in special boats designed with an open prow so that water would help keep the boats from flying off into the air. The flume was also reputedly utilized by the murderous bandits Chris Evans and the Sontag brothers, who hid along the flume to evade capture. The dam and reservoir survive today little changed from their original appearance in 1908. The dam stands 61 feet (19 m) in height and extends 667 feet (203 m) in length, composed of twelve 50-foot-wide (15 m) arches that rest on buttresses supported by granite bedrock. The height was set at 61 feet because of a tract of land not owned by Hume-Bennet along the reservoir's edge that would have been inundated by water if the dam had been built any higher. The water level was maintained at a level slightly lower than it typically is today, through the use of 5-by-8-foot (1.5 × 2.4 m) spillway openings in the dam structure, which have since been filled. Hume-Bennett thoroughly harvested the forests surrounding Hume Lake following completion of the dam, but paltry profits and a devastating fire in 1917 led to the end of logging operations. The fire completely destroyed the mill and surrounding facilities, with all logging ceasing by 1924. On April 8, 1935, the United States Forest Service purchased the entire operation and its holdings, including the dam and forest surrounding Hume Lake, incorporating it into the Sequoia National Forest.