ITEMS OF INTEREST May 29, 1909 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

The Reclamation Service announces that the Pathfinder dam in Wyoming, which has cost $1,200,000 and has been three and one half years in the building, has been completed. It rests on a bed of solid granite, and locks a very narrow gorge with vertical walls, through which the North Platte river flows. It is a concrete rubble masonry arch two hundred and fifteen feet in height and five hundred feet long on top. It intersects a drainage area of twelve thousand square miles, including the run-off of a large mountainous territory in Colorado and Wyoming. Back of the dam is a natural reservoir which has now become one of the largest artificial lakes in the world, its capacity being 1,205,000 acre feet, or, three hundred and fifty-eight billion gallons. The reservoir will accommodate the largest flood ever known in the river at this point, and prevent the great destruction of property in the valley occasioned by the enormous floods. The great irrigation system being constructed in connection with it is now well on its way to completion.

President Taft has signed an order creating a central agency in Washington for the purchase of supplies for the several departments of the Government. The belief is that by centralizing the agencies for the purchase of ice, coal, and other supplies used in the Government departments, it will be possible to effect a saving of several thousand dollars a year. It is among the possibilities that the Government will establish its own ice-plant in Washington, as it is alleged that the American Ice Company at present sets its own price on the ice which it sells to the Government.

The fifteenth annual peace conference, in session at Lake Mohonk, N. Y., last week, was the most representative gathering which ever assembled in this mountain retreat. England, Germany, Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, Austria-Hungary, Bolivia, and other countries sent able men. Delegates came from many states in the Union, and bench and bar, law and diplomacy, pulpit and college, army and navy, finance, commerce, and industry had their advocates of peace.

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