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 . . .

Minutes before midnight on the evening of March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam collapsed. The dam's 200-foot concrete wall crumpled, sending billions of gallons of raging flood waters down San Francisquito Canyon, sweeping 54 miles down the Santa Clara River to the sea, and claiming over 450 lives in the disaster. Captured here in over 200 images is a photographic record of the devastation caused by the flood, and the heroic efforts of residents and rescue workers. Built by the City of Los Angeles' Bureau of Water Works and Supply, the failure of the St. Francis Dam on its first filling was the greatest American civil engineering failure of the 20th century. Beginning at dawn on the morning after the disaster, stunned local residents picked up their cameras to record the path of destruction, and professional photographers moved in to take images of the washed-out bridges, destroyed homes and buildings, Red Cross workers giving aid, and the massive clean-up that followed. The event was one of the worst disasters in California's history, second only to the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire.

In the 1950s, a series of dams was proposed along the Brazos River in north-central Texas. For John Graves, this project meant that if the stream’s regimen was thus changed, the beautiful and sometimes brutal surrounding countryside would also change, as would the lives of the people whose rugged ancestors had eked out an existence there. Graves therefore decided to visit that stretch of the river, which he had known intimately as a youth. Goodbye to a River is his account of that farewell canoe voyage. As he braves rapids and fatigue and the fickle autumn weather, he muses upon old blood feuds of the region and violent skirmishes with native tribes, and retells wild stories of courage and cowardice and deceit that shaped both the river’s people and the land during frontier times and later. Nearly half a century after its initial publication, Goodbye to a River is a true American classic, a vivid narrative about an exciting journey and a powerful tribute to a vanishing way of life and its ever-changing natural environment.

Social/Historical study of the Austin Dam Disaster of 1911 through the extensive use of news accounts and photographs. In addition, the social dynamics, ethical issues, and variant explainations surrounding the disaster are explored.

Norbert Delatte presents the circumstances of important failures that have had far-reaching impacts on civil engineering practice, organized around topics in the engineering curriculum.