The Big Creek Hydroelectric Project is an extensive hydroelectric power scheme on the upper San Joaquin River system, in the Sierra Nevada of central California. The project is owned and operated by Southern California Edison (SCE). The use and reuse of the waters of the San Joaquin River, its South Fork, and the namesake of the project, Big Creek – over a vertical drop of – have over the years inspired a nickname, "The Hardest Working Water in the World".
The primary purpose of the project was to provide electric power for the fast-growing city of Los Angeles. California engineer John S. Eastwood was the principal designer of the system, which was initially funded and built by Henry E. Huntington's Pacific Light and Power Company (PL&P). Construction of the system's facilities started in 1911, and the first power was transmitted to Los Angeles in 1913. After SCE acquired PL&P in 1917, the system was gradually expanded to its present size, with the last powerhouse coming on line in 1987. Today, these facilities include 27 dams, miles of tunnels, and 24 generating units in nine powerhouses with a total installed capacity of more than 1,000 megawatts (MW). Its six major reservoirs have a combined storage capacity of more than . The project's facilities were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.
Today, the Big Creek project generates nearly 4 billion kilowatt hours (KWh) per year – about 90 percent of SCE's total hydroelectric power, or about 20 percent of SCE's total generating capacity. Big Creek accounts for 12 percent of all the hydroelectric power produced in California. The Big Creek reservoirs also provide irrigation and flood control benefits for the Central Valley, and are popular recreation areas. However, the project has had various environmental and social impacts, including the disruption of fish and animal migration, and the flooding of historical sites and traditional Native American lands.
Background The Big Creek Project was the vision of California engineer John S. Eastwood, who first surveyed the upper San Joaquin River system in the late 1880s and mapped potential sites for reservoirs and hydroelectric plants. In 1895, Eastwood became chief engineer at the San Joaquin Electric Company which made an effort to develop a hydroelectric project on the North Fork of the San Joaquin River. However, they lacked the capital to build a storage dam and when a drought hit, the North Fork dried up, leading to the financial failure of that project.
Eastwood was undaunted by the failure and founded his own Mammoth Power Company which intended to generate power by creating a rockfill dam on the main stem of the San Joaquin. However, investors balked at the massive potential costs of this project (the tunnel required to carry water to the power station would be long) and by 1901 Eastwood ceased to promote this plan. Following this, Eastwood began to draw up much grander plans for a hydroelectric system encompassing the entire upper San Joaquin River basin. Instead of a single large power plant – which would require an extensive tunnel and a big dam – he decided to split the system into a series of smaller reservoirs, where power would be generated in a stairstep fashion. This time, he finally found an investor willing to fund the audacious project.
In 1902 Eastwood took his plans to William G. Kerckhoff, a Southern California businessman who was affiliated with Henry Huntington, a wealthy developer and power magnate from Los Angeles. Huntington was the founder of the Pacific Light and Power Company (PL&P), which was struggling to boost its generating capacity due to fast growth in Los Angeles and its suburbs, especially due to the new interurban electric light rail system that consumed some 80% of the region's power by the early 1900s. Hydroelectricity was seen as an attractively cheap alternative to thermal power stations, and the San Joaquin River was the only river close and large enough to Los Angeles to generate the kind of power Huntington envisioned. Although Huntington was initially skeptical of the feasibility of the project, he was impressed by Eastwood's studies and hired him to PL&P granting him 5,400 shares in return for making a thorough survey and a final plan for the hydroelectric system. Eastwood conducted these surveys between 1902 and 1905.
PL&P immediately began filing claims for San Joaquin water rights. However, construction was postponed for many years because the company's directors thought that the project would generate far more power than was needed at the time and emphasized development of more thermal plants. By 1905, Eastwood had developed his initial proposal for the system, consisting of a large reservoir and two powerhouses along Big Creek, a major tributary of the San Joaquin. During this time Eastwood pioneered the design of the multiple-arch dam; he would later become renowned for the building of this type of dam across the West.
By 1907, PL&P was almost ready to begin construction, but was further set back by the Panic of 1907. Then in 1910, Huntington, for reasons still not clearly known, fired Eastwood as chief engineer. This may have been because of conflicts over their respective shares of control or profit from the project. Also, the company's investors were doubtful of the safety of Eastwood's multiple-arch dam proposal and wanted to change to primarily gravity dams. However, "they may simply have viewed him as a mere technician who had performed his function at Big Creek and was no longer needed." Then in 1912 Eastwood was removed from PL&P altogether when Huntington assessed all shares valued at $5 in order to finance the project. Eastwood was unable to pay his resulting $27,000 assessment and was forced to give up his stake. Nevertheless, PL&P retained his original plans for the project.
Construction
Financing and groundwork PL&P began construction on the Big Creek Project in February 1910. Huntington placed George Ward in charge of the project and hired the Boston engineering firm Stone & Webster to oversee construction. PL&P issued an initial $10 million bond measure to finance the project. However, by October 1911 only $2.5 million of bonds had been sold. The company was forced to compromise and sold the remaining bonds at 85 percent value to a syndicate formed by investment bankers William Salomon & Co.
Huntington had to convince farmers in the San Joaquin Valley – including Miller & Lux, run by land barons Henry Miller and Charles Lux, who owned nearly a in the valley – that the dams would increase rather than decrease the amount of water available for their use. In August 1906, PL&P brokered an agreement with Miller & Lux, which allowed them to build storage reservoirs in the San Joaquin River system "in return for a guaranteed, regular streamflow through Miller & Lux's lands".
Transportation of workers and materials to the construction site posed the first major challenge. The only available method of transport was by mule team, but this would prove slow and expensive, so the decision was made to build a railway instead. The rail line, known as the San Joaquin and Eastern Railroad, would split off from the Southern Pacific main line at El Prado (about northeast of Fresno) and carve its way deep into the Sierra Nevada, to the company town of Big Creek.
Construction of the railroad began on February 5, 1912. Winding its way up the San Joaquin River Canyon, the railroad – featuring 1,078 curves, 43 bridges and 255 grades of up to 5.2 percent – was nicknamed the "Slow, Jerky and Expensive". The final mile (1.6 km) was known as the "Miracle Mile" because it reportedly cost over $1 million to construct. The railroad was completed by July 1912, in a record 157 days. Due to its steep grades and sharp curves (up to 60 degrees) it was serviced by geared Shay locomotives, built by the Ohio Lima Locomotive Works.
First phase, 1913–1914 Work on the dams and powerhouses themselves started in the summer of 1912, with the construction of three concrete dams – Big Creek Nos. 1, 2 and 3 – which would hold back a large reservoir, Huntington Lake. Situated at nearly above sea level, Huntington would store water from Big Creek to power two hydroelectric plants in the canyon thousands of feet below. These plants, Big Creek Powerhouse No. 1 and No. 2, would be located on two small forebay dams known as Dam 4 and Dam 5. By late summer, the workforce had grown to about 3,500 men spread across twelve camps in the High Sierra. Work proceeded at a rapid pace because of the tight budget: the project had to start producing electricity so as to pay for itself before the company's funds ran out. The budget was further strained because the gravity dams required much more concrete to build than the originally proposed multiple-arch design.
On January 7, 1913, a strike began as workers protested the harsh working conditions and an insufficient food supply. PL&P responded by firing nearly 2,000 strikers and hiring an entire new workforce; however, this caused significant delays in construction. Powerhouse No. 1 did not come online until October 14, 1913. Powerhouse No. 2, located further downstream, would have been completed three days later but for a fire that heavily damaged the building, delaying completion until December 8. Although the details are uncertain, this is believed to have been a case of arson.
In November 1913, PL&P's Redondo generating plant in Los Angeles suffered a failure, and on November 8 the company made the decision to switch to Big Creek power for the first time. The transmission of was one of the longest in the world at the time. The difficulty of the engineering work on Big Creek was compared to that of the Panama Canal, which was also under construction at the time.
As World War I began, construction temporarily ceased on the project, with little activity between 1914 and 1919. However, work did begin on a tunnel to the future Big Creek Powerhouse No. 3, though only a fraction of the tunnel was excavated. PL&P merged into Southern California Edison (SCE) in 1917 as Huntington worked to consolidate energy interests in Southern California.
Second phase, 1921–1929 Interest in expanding the project resumed with the economic boom after the war. In 1919, the dams at Huntington Lake were raised and a fourth constructed to increase the lake's capacity. Further proposals for project expansion were ready by October 1920 and approved on January 20, 1921. The proposed expansions would involve increasing the capacity of the powerhouses by diverting water from other streams in the upper San Joaquin River system. The first new component to be constructed was Big Creek Powerhouse No. 8, which took advantage of the final elevation drop between Powerhouse No. 2 and Big Creek's confluence with the San Joaquin River.
In 1923, Dam 6 was completed, located on the San Joaquin River just below its confluence with Big Creek. The dam forms a small reservoir that serves as the afterbay for Powerhouse 8. Construction of this concrete arch dam was exceedingly difficult due to the narrowness of the canyon and the large flow of the San Joaquin River. During foundation pouring, the entire flow of the river had to be carried in a flume suspended along the precipitous side of the canyon.