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come with us as we visit the dam and learned more about its -- my more about its history. >> it is 602 feet tall, two thirds of a mile in length. it is actually thicker than it is tall. from here when we look up at it, we get an idea of how massive shasta dam is. it is like a 60 story building in front of us. it weighs 16 million tons. today we are standing at shasta dam, the second largest dam and the entire united states. andas built back in 1938 forever change the state of california and beyond. the central valley of california runs right here all the way down 450 miles to bakersfield. it is a day, flat belly.

the reason is century after century, we've had very wet years and very dry ears. state about 75% of the precipitation so all of that would wash down into the valley and caused massive flooding. the native americans here would live by the river and would go to higher ground during the flood seasons. it would deposit some rich soil throughout the valley and decade after decade of this happening, you have a very thick layer of .eally good soil therefore, you have the wonderful soil and a great climate. so the missing part of that was a reliable water source. we collect the water, send it down, and it gets stored.

turned california and -- california into an agricultural mega place. >> this is what comes from the general treasury. we are funded by the federal government. the way this works is we produce power. we sell water contracts and have obligations to them. we also have obligations for power that we try to meet as well. as those things are sold, that money goes back to the treasury, and then we go back to the treasury and say we need this much money to operate shasta dam. we generate more money than we need to operate shasta.

in studying the topography for a dam they are looking for a big , basin, something that would be able to hold a lot of water, so a natural valley is important. you also want to look where the water is flowing. we are situated here at shasta where we get about 75% of the state's precipitation right to the north of us. by building the dam here we are also providing flood control to the city of redding. you want to look for an area where the water is, the natural basin. here are ways three sites that would be good sites for a dam. this was chosen for its proximity north of reading -- north of redding. this is the lobby north of the power plant. this was open to the public. you may drive down, come in here and use this as a central place to start visiting shasta dam.

after 9/11 it was closed down. we were not able to bring the public into this area. back in 2008 we were able to open back up again to the public. when we redid this room we maintain the vermont marble. the furniture you see is early 1950's lobby furniture, and we kept it just because it is kind of cool to bring you back to the day when the dam was first operational to the public. one of the things we like to do in this room is explained and talk about the construction of shasta dam. it was built in 1938 to 1945. it was a depression-era project, part of roosevelt's new deal. as we brought people out here to build the dam, there were going to be 4300 jobs.

-- 4700 jobs to build this massive dam. a lot of people came out here desperately needing a job. halfway through construction, we got involved in what became world war ii. we went from the a depression of economy to a wartime economy, and everything took a flip. it was about building a water storage facility. during the war, it became about power. anything that was going to produce a significant amount of power was needed. this was actually part of the war effort. it was given top priority. a1 rating. that means the guys who work here were not deferred for draft. they were going to stay here. when i came here to start

building, one of the big things they had to deal with was the railroad. the southern pacific railroad ran right through the power plant and continued on. so, job one was to move the train. they built a tunnel that was 1800 feet long. they started at both ends and worked toward the middle. there was no gps, you have two different elevations, and they are building a tunnel like this, and they met at a place about the size of a dinner plate. the engineering on that was amazing, but more importantly, that allowed the train to be de-toward around the jobsite --

to be detoured around the site. thehey started lasting for excavation, the train was running right through. imagine being a passenger on that train, you would be driving through one of the biggest construction sites at the time. right before they were ready to start building the dam, they had a 1940 flood. the blood of 1940, downtown redding was completely underwater. back then, it was a wild river that turned into a giant lake. you can imagine all that flooding did cause problems here at the jobsite. amazingly enough, february of 1940, two july, they got that all cleaned up and were ready to start building the dam it self. they brought gravel in on a conveyor belt that had to be

built of course. all of that material was brought here to the dam site along with cement and water mix together at the base of what would become the dam and that concrete was delivered in eight yard buckets. they delivered concrete to a series of a blocks at any given time. as the concrete was delivered, gentleman like the joe chestnut here would pick up a big compactor and pack that concrete down, make sure there were no air bubbles. you can see it is not very fluid, so if you end up with a big air pocket and there, that will collapse in on it self. his job was incredibly important. imagine what it would be like doing that all day long. they were paid big bucks, $.90

per hour, to do that in the summer sun or rain, did not matter. it didn't stop for 4.5 years. built up the sides of the dam, they were getting ready to go ahead and start this section. by this point, they had built a new permanent home for the train, and they used the title they had built to move the water through. now, once they got to about right in here, they placed the four lower valves that we saw. those valves let the river take its natural course. you might think why would they do that? what they wanted to do is get the lake full.

the guy in charge of the construction felt like the most prudent thing to do was to start telling the lake as they were building. as they were building up that spillway, the water was chasing them, as they did that, they were able to store enough water to generate power for the first time, which was a year before the dam was actually completed. as of this generator is spinning, it is producing 142 megawatts. they will run as needed to deliver the water, as the water delivery comes in and we are told we need to release water,

they will average that out through a 24 hour period, deliver that water, so they will release of the bulk of the water through the hot afternoon, for example. so, power comes as a byproduct, but they do try to coordinate it. over here we have a fully , functioning machine shop. this is all original equipment used to fix the pieces and parts of the generators. if you think about it, you are not going to go to a local store or home depot if the generator needs a repair or replace. they can manufacture or cool the different pieces here for repair if they need to. this is a giant lathe, so they can turn a giant shaft if they need to. as things need to be repaired, they can take care of most of that right here in the -- machine shop.

when the dam was built there were 9 million people living in california. today we are pushing 40 million. so, a lot more people, same amount of water. when you add global warming to that, possibly heavier storms comes back to flood control, we also have to deal with less water in some places, and we still have all of these people that need water to live. i think all of that is going to make facilities like this even more important. >> our staff recently traveled to redding, california to learn about to its -- learn about its history. learn more about redding and other stops at c-span.org/cities tour. >> he once called the removal of pluto for a planet in today, neil degrasse tyson will be our

guest. >> allow me to tell you that our moon, as small as it was compared to earth, is -- has five times the mass of pluto. welcome to the company of inform people regarding pseudo-. >> during our live three-hour conversation, we will take your for mr. tyson, who is also the director of the hayden planetarium and several books including death by blackhole. live from new to 3:00 p.m. eastern today on book tv on c-span2. >> next on "the civil war," historians on the controversy

over and future of civil war monuments. this was part of a symposium presented by the american civil war museum in richmond, virginia. they will talk about how these monuments influence memory of the war, and how public perception, particularly of confederate monuments, has changed. this is about 50 minutes. >> we will reconvene the panel. it has been a good day so far. what we will do is recognize you, you raise your hand, wait for the microphone. if you've got a question, it should be referred to one of the panelists, please designate that, and please try to stick to questions rather than statements. and let me start with a question that we got in virtual space. my name is mike powell. we are the largest roundtable in