History

The Man Who Named The Town

Oroville was a small town that was discovered on October 1850, by James Monroe Burt.  He named the city after a legendary biblical city of gold ‘Ophir’.  However, after they discover that there was already another city called Ophir in Placer County, they switched the name to Oroville. It is a combination of oro and ville. Oro in Spanish means gold and ville means town in French. 

In 1850, he was elected Butte County’s first county attorney.  In 1856 he built one of the first brick buildings on Bird Street.  Burt died on November 4, 1884.  His remains are underneath a spire in the old Oroville cemetery, which is located near the grave of judge C.F. Lott.

Floods

1907

March 18th 1907 was the day known for the great flood. This flood washed out the Thermalito Bridge.  The floodwater covered Meyer to Bird St. and all of Montgomery St. The 1907 flood completely destroyed Dredgerville, a small town south of Thermalito. Due to the 1907 flood, a concrete levee was build to protect downtown.

1909 “Completion of the new levee did not come too soon” (Lenhoff).  In January of 1909 there were another flood.  The levee held the water, but other places like Enterprise Bridge was damaged .  It was torn down and the dam at lake Philbrook gave way and washed out Indiana Dredging Company.

Photograph Taken From: CSU Chico Meriam Library

1937

In December 1937, the Sacramento valley was hit with another flood. The municipal building was built up on stilts to protect it form the raging water. Over fifty families were forced to evacuate.

Photograph Taken From: CSU Chico Meriam Library

1962/1964 When the Oroville dam was being built everyone thought that it would save Oroville from floods, but in October 1962 water torn the Cofferdam. In 1964 the dam site was threatened when waters behind the partially constructed dam built up with nowhere to go but an intake tunnel underneath it. 1986 In February 1986 the releases from the dam covered the operations along highway 70. The river didn't go over the highway, but it seeped through and flooded the east side.

Oroville Dam

In 1951, the California State Legislature authorized the Feather River Project.  The project included the Oroville Dam, Reservoir, the power plant, and smaller dams up and down the main dam.  The main purpose of the project was to control the floods, irrigation, municipal water supply, and power generation.  The watershed that flowed into Oroville Dam had an area of 3,610 square miles.  The seasonal run-off of the river at the dam varied from about 4,500,00 acre/feet to 1,200,000 and a maximum of 9,000,000 acre/feet (Soldano).

The dam was located about five miles northeast of Oroville.  The first thing that was done after the dam was authorized, was deciding on what kind of dam to build.  A mass concrete dam was thought to be the best choice, but after the Oroville Dam Consulting Board was formed in 1956, an embankment type of dam was the decision.  Because the dam was an earth-filled dam, the deposit of coarse gravel along the Feather River could be used (Soldano).

On November 1958, it was decided that an embankment dam would be the best decision.  This decision was based primarily on financial conditions.  The cost of the embankment dam was about 100 million dollars, which was less than the massive concrete dam (Soldano). The dam had a height of 770 ft and a crest length of 6,800 ft.  The dam had approximately 81,000,000 cubic yard to fill.  The elevation of the crest was 915 ft above sea level.  The surface area of the reservoir was 15,500 acre and it stored about 3,500,000 acre/feet of water (Soldano). The embankment dam involved many difficult tasks, such as adapting the materials that were available to the structure.  Also, adequate allowance was made for earthquakes, since 90% of all earthquakes in the United States occurred in California.  The Oroville Dam is literally considered to be earthquake-proof (Soldano).

Photograph Taken By: Maisoue Y

The two structures that made the dam work was a flood control outlet and an emergency spillway.  The spillway was a massive concrete chute that extended 3,600 ft down of the right abutment of the dam to the Feather River that was below.  The control gate in the spillway crest would permit the regulation of 750,000 acre/feet allocated to flood control (Soldano).

Construction on the dam began on August 1962.  Conveyor belt railroad cars were needed to move the dredger that was needed to build the dam.  In a day, about fifty-train load of about 4,400 tons of dredgers were hauled to the dam, so that delivery of over 100,000 cubic yards per day was achieved.  The total expenditure for construction work was about $460,000,000 (Soldano).

Photograph Taken By: Maisoue Y

Two diversion tunnels were built.  They were 4,400 feet in length and 35 feet in diameter.  One tunnel was used to divert the river, and the other was used for the spring flood of 1956 and 1966.  Tunnel two was closed after the spring flood of 1966 (Soldano). The left abutment above the underground power plant was an inclined structure.  This is fitted with a series of gates that could open at any elevation in the upper 300 ft of the dam.  It allowed the release of water at various temperatures.  This was an important part in a multi-purpose dam because the water was used for several purposes including fisheries, crops, and recreation (Soldano).

The underground power plant is one of the largest of its type in the United States.  It’s about 120 ft high and 550 ft long, and 69 ft wide.  It had six generators, each approximately 107,000 kilowatts.  Three of the generators were reversible and became pumps for pumping waters back into the reservoir.  When the generators were combined with the Thermalito off-stream, they supply Northern California’s power system with 710,000 kilowatts (Soldano).

One of the most important purposes of the Oroville Dam was flood control.  It reserves 750,000 acre/feet of water, which is twice the amount of the flood recorded in the lower part of Feather River.  Even as a partially completed dam, it held back more than 110,000 acre/feet of water in December 1964.  It prevented a recurrence of the 1955 flood and saved an estimated of 30,000,000 million dollars in damage down stream (Soldano).

Oroville and Shasta Dam are both important for both North and South California because South California needs the waters from the dam for irrigation and municipal uses.  Northern California needs the dam to prevent floods.  These two dams can greatly reduce the severe floods.  Before the dams were built, only parts of the valley were not under water (Soldano).

Sources:

 “The Man Who Named The Town.”  Oroville Mercury Register Advertising Supplement Mar. 2006: 4-5.

Lenhoff, Jim. “Flood Waters Pour Into Oroville.”  Oroville Mercury Register Advertising Supplement Mar. 2006: 36-38.

Soldano, Robert.  The History and Uses of Shasta and Oroville Dams.  Essay