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D.C. Jackson, professor of history, likes to put an emphasis on the value of hydroelectricity and bountiful, clean drinking water when he teaches classes.
“Good, clean water and reliable electric power is the norm in this country,” Jackson says. “I want to make people aware of just how important such basic technology is. An essential part of what makes America modern flows from the water tap, and we largely take it for granted. Interest in having a high-speed Internet connection will quickly dissipate if the faucet runs dry or flicking the light switch does nothing.”
While Jackson wants his classes to start small, he has gone big with his new book, Big Dams of the New Deal Era: A Confluence of Engineering and Politics, which he coauthored with David P. Billington, Gordon Y.S. Wu Professor of Engineering at Princeton University. It will be released Oct. 31 by University of Oklahoma Press.
The book tells how major water-storage structures were erected in four western river basins: the Colorado, Columbia, Missouri, and Sacramento-San Joaquin.
Government-sponsored construction of large-scale dams predated the 1930s, but the New Deal prompted wider public acceptance of federal involvement in restructuring American rivers.
Jackson and Billington describe how two federal agencies, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation, became key players – and rivals – in creating many of the nation’s most important dams, including the Hoover, Grand Coulee, Shasta, and Bonneville dams. A desire to wrest control of hydroelectricity from private utility monopolies further justified the erection of huge multi-purpose dams by both agencies.
The book also illuminates the mathematical analysis that supported large-scale dam construction. In particular, Jackson and Billington explain early-20th-century design methodologies encompassing both the massive and structural traditions of dam design.
It was important to Jackson to reveal how and why engineers in the 1930s most often opted for massive gravity dams, whose design required enormous quantities of concrete or earth-rock fill for stability.
“The massive dams were readily adapted to being symbols of accomplishment, serving as symbols of ‘mankind’ succeeding in the face of adversity,” Jackson says. “There was also the economic side to it as well. [Franklin] Roosevelt felt that the construction of the Fort Peck Dam was worth it just to give people jobs in the economically devastated Great Plains, an important political decision during the Depression.”
Jackson wants to help others understand that there are two sides to the issue of dams.
“David and I were looking to find a balance between the good and the bad aspects of dam building,” he says. “Since the 1970s, there has been a growing awareness that dams can harm the environment. And while we acknowledge this perspective, we wanted to show that these dams were built for a reason and, despite the costs incurred, have provided beneficial service through the years.
“These dams still have enormous use, as water supply and hydroelectric power is more important now than ever. I can’t imagine a Los Angeles without the Hoover Dam.”
Jackson and Billings had a specific audience in mind for the book.
“This book was written as scholarly history and was carefully researched. But it’s not speaking to just an academic history audience. With the help of 130 photos and illustrations, we wanted to make it widely accessible for any and all historians and normal citizens, as well as for engineers, water resource managers, and politicians. They can all read about the context through which we came to create America’s modern water supply system,” Jackson says.
A member of the Lafayette faculty since 1989, Jackson was the recipient of the Thomas and Lura Forrest Jones Lecture Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Teaching in 1996, and Student Government Superior Teaching Award in 1991. He holds master’s and doctoral degrees in American studies from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Swarthmore College.
In 2000, he appeared in an episode of the acclaimed five-part PBS series Building Big, a miniseries on megastructures that explored the history behind some of the world’s greatest feats of engineering – bridges, domes, skyscrapers, dams, and tunnels – and the ingenuity of the engineers, architects, and builders who designed and built them.