1970. >> at the height of the california gold rush, this town had seven hotels, saloons, bars and you can see the shell of the ones that were often time abandoned between the eight team 70's and eight teen 80's when the county seat moved from the courthouse in this building to downtown redding. >> with help from our charter cable partners, american history tv explores the history of reading, just two hours from the capital of sacramento, the city's it that the edge of the central valley. we began with a stop at shasta dam. >> is 602 feet tall, it is two thirds of a mile from one end to another.

80 feet thick, so it is actually thicker than it is tall. when we look at the dam, we get an idea of just how massive shasta dam is. it weighs 15 million tons. are at shasta dam, the second largest concrete dam in the united states built back in 1938 to 1945 and forever changed the state of california. the central valley runs from here, redding california, all the way down to bakersfield. it is about 50 miles wide and it's a flat valley. the reason is because century after century, we have had some very wet years and we have had some dry years. statesabout 75% of the precipitation so all of that

snow melt would wash down into the valley and cause massive flooding. the native americans who lived here prior to us would live by the river and go to higher ground during the flood season. as the flood water would receive, it deposited good, rich soil throughout the valley and decade after decade, you got a very sick layer of good soil and fairly flat because as the water received, it tends to level out. we have a great climate in california and a long growing year. that is where shasta dam came into play. we collect the water, it goes into these canals and we are supplemented by these other dams at the central slope and further down the rivers. that water turned california into an agriculture mega place. california is one of the largest agriculture producers in the world is certainly in the united

states. this comes from the general treasury. we are funded by the federal government, it's a federal facility. we produce power. we sell water contracts to agriculture and we have obligations to them and we have obligations to power we try to meet as well and as those things to solved, that goes back the treasury and we as a specific entity go back to the treasury and say we need this much money to operate shasta dam in the year and generate far more money than we need to operate shasta. in studying the top auger fee of the area, they are looking for a big basin, something that will be able to hold a lot of water. to look where the water is. we are situated here at shasta

where we get about 75% of the states precipitation right to the north of us. here, they the dam are providing flood control to the city of reading which is the largest city in shasta county all the way to the bay area. you want to look for an area where the water is and look for that natural basin. thatfound three sites would be potentially good sites for a dam and this was selected as the best because of the size of the basin and it proximity north of reading. this room, we call the lobby. this is the lobby to the power plant. in the early days of construction, this was open to the public and you would be able to drive down and use this as a central place to start visiting's shasta dam. nine/11, it was close down we were not allowed to bring the public to this area. 2008, we weren

able to open to the public for the full tour of shasta dam. we maintained the vermont marble that was maintained in here and the furniture is early 1950's lobby furniture and we cap did because it's cool to see the stuff that brings you back to the day when the dam was first operational to the public. it takes you back to that early 19 fifties place. like to explain and talk about the construction of shasta dam. 1938 to 1945, so it was a depression era project as part of roosevelt's new deal. it was an opportunity to put people back to work after the depression. there were going to be 4700 jobs to build this massive dam, so a lot of folks coming out here desperate, needing a job in hopes of getting one of those

4700 jobs. halfway through construction, we got involved in what became world war ii and we went from being a depression era economy to a wartime economy and everything took a flip. it was all about building a water storage facility to prevent floods and it became about power because shipyards popped up. as a result of the war, they needed electricity to operate. anything that would produce a significant amount of power was needed. this was part of the war effort and was given top priority. the guys who work here were deferred from the draft and you weren't going to go overseas to fight the war. they were going to help the country by making sure the power plant got operational. one of the big things they had to deal with was the railroad. it ran right through the power plant and continued on. job number one was to move the

train. they built a tunnel that was 1800 feet long. it started at both end and work toward the middle. were no, in 1939, there jps or things like that. they are building a tunnel like this and they met in the spot about the size of your plate. the engineering on that was amazing. more importantly, that allowed train, instead of running through the middle of the jobsite, to be d toward around the jobsite. temporarily, because they recognized all of this would become shasta lake and they needed to temporarily detour the train. as they started lasting for the excavation, the train was running right through it. imagine being a passenger on

that train, driving through one of the biggest construction sites in the world at the time. right before they were ready to start building the dam, they have the 1940 flood. the flood of 1940, downtown redding was completely underwater. taken in downtown redding. act then, it was a wild river that turned into a giant lake. all of that flooding did cause problems but amazingly enough, february of 90 teen 40 two july, five short months, they got all cleaned up and they were ready to start holding the dam itself. ony brought gravel and sand a 9.6 mile long conveyor built -- conveyor belt that had to be built. all of that material was brought to the dam site and mixed together at the base of what would become the dam and that

concrete was delivered in eight yard buckets. buckets were on seven cable ways radiating out, delivering concrete. as the concrete was delivered, gentlemen like this man here would pick up a big compactor in his job was to pack the concrete down and make sure there were no air bubbles or pockets there. it's actually a stiff, dry mix. big airnd up with a pocket, it will end up collapsing in on itself. his job was incredibly important, but imagine doing that all day long. they were paid big bucks -- $.90 an hour or $7.20 a day to do that in the summer sun and the rain. once it started, it didn't stop for four and a half years. 24/7.

as it built up the sides of the dam, they were getting ready to start the spillway section. they built a new permanent home and use the same tunnel. so they could try out the area for the spillway. they got into here, they place a valve on the spillway each we saw earlier that allowed to take its natural course and they could plug the tunnel. what they wanted to do was get the lake full. the superintendent, the same guy who told hoover dam, the like the most prudent thing to do was to start filling the lake.

as they are building up the spillway, the water was like this and they were able to store enough water to generate power for the first time, which was a year before the dam was completed. as this generator is spinning, is producing 142 megawatts. it's capable of taking care of 135,000 homes. they will run as needed to the water, so as the allotment comes in, they will average it out over 24 hours and deliver water in conjunction with the power demands and it will release the water during the afternoon. they will save it for the middle of the day when they know they are going to need electricity. the power comes as a byproduct but they do try to afford it.

over here is the machine shop, all original 1940's equipment used to pick -- used to fix the parts of the generator that might need repair. they can actually manufacture or tool different pieces here. in front of us, this is a giant lave so they can tool a giant shaft if they need to. we have presses and drills and things like that, so as things are repaired, they can take care of that in the machine shop. when the dam was built, there were 9 million people living in california. pushing 40re million. a lot more people, same amount of water. global warming to

the possibility of heavy storms, we have to deal with less water in other places. now we have all these people who need water to live and so we will make facilities like this more important than how we manage them and supply of water even more important. long, american history tv is joining our charter communications partners to showcase the history of redding, california. to learn more about the cities on our current tour, visit c-span.org/cities tour. we continue now with our look at the history of redding. >> we are driving across shasta jet -- shasta dam right n iown the middle of shasta county's copperbelt. on the lake side of the