(This article first appeared in the December print edition of the Hendersonian.)
People came by steamboat, cars and skiffs for the dedication of Dam 48, which supported its own temporary community called Damtown.
The Evansville Courier of Nov. 16, 1921, reported the steamboat Mammoth Cave left Evansville with 165 people, “most of whom were visitors in the city….
“When the bend was rounded, a crowd (estimated at 5,000) lined both sides of the locks…. More than 100 automobiles were parked in the space between the river and Damtown.”
The two men most responsible for the huge public works project spent the night before the Nov. 15 dedication “swapping stories of the 11-year fight.” They were Jacob Eichel, head of the Ohio River Contract Co.–which went bankrupt trying to build the dam–and George H. Penglase, who guided the project to completion.
Eichel’s company built the locks on the Kentucky side 5.8 miles downstream from Henderson. But it went bankrupt in 1915, and the contract was sold to the McArthur-Hanger Contract Co.
“It was a tough job,” Eichel said in the Nov. 15, 1921, edition of the Evansville Press.
“You built it,” Eichel said to Penglase. “You deserve the credit.” Penglase chewed off the end of his cigar and patted Eichel on the back: “I couldn’t have finished it if you hadn’t done the difficult job of starting it and laying the foundations.”
C.B. Enlow, the bankruptcy administrator, gave a brief history of the project at the dedication. At least $4 million had been spent, he said, combining money paid out by the federal government and money lost by private parties.
Dam 48 was one of 51 dams built over two decades on the Ohio River to provide a 9-foot-deep navigation channel year-round. Eichel’s firm was the sole bidder on the project.
Leland R. Johnson, in his 1974 history of the Louisville District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, explained the lack of interest:
“Shifting sand foundations, recurrent flooding of cofferdams, short working seasons, and other problems so delayed construction that abandoning the slackwater project below Lock and Dam No. 48 was considered. Few contractors were hardy, or ‘foolhardy,’ enough to undertake the projects below Louisville,” which lacked a rock or compacted gravel base to build on.
Initially, the project was to cost $1.4 million and be completed in five years. It wound up costing more than twice that amount and took more than 10 years. Building on sand foundations was only one problem. Others included the gigantic flood of 1913, labor problems and shortages of manpower and materials caused by World War I.
Damtown, which sprang up on the Indiana side before work on the dam itself had even begun, was a model company town–but it was built on “a swamp and a desolate tangle of underbrush,” which had to be cleared and filled.
“Fifty portable houses have been purchased by the contractors and there will be many others erected,” according to The Gleaner of March 7, 1912. “A small town will spring up near the site in two weeks from the present.”
“The portable houses were picturesque, being covered with vines and surrounded with flowers with good-sized vegetable gardens behind them,” according to the Evansville Courier of Nov. 11, 1921, which detailed the town’s end.
Damtown had its own water plant, with a filtration system that preceded Henderson’s, that was laid out by Harry C. Corns, the engineer for the Ohio River Contract Co. It also had more than a mile of sewer lines. It didn’t initially have a fire department but one was formed after the hotel burned three times.
“The city has one street, on which is the blacksmith shop, the cable railroad, company offices, stores, homes of the workmen, ice house, (and) soft drink fountain,” according to Evansville Journal of June 14, 1914, during the heyday of Damtown’s existence.
The Courier of June 28, 1914, noted Damtown was Dry long before Prohibition. “No intoxicants are allowed on the government reservation except for medicinal purposes and then it cannot be gotten except in cases of emergency….” The same story said workers enjoyed spring chicken and roast corn at the bunkhouse for single men at $3.50 a week.
Dam workers who wanted a drink could take advantage of Ed Winstead’s motorboat that ran to Henderson hourly beginning in mid-1914.
But Damtown offered plenty of entertainment opportunities. Two teams played on a good baseball diamond. There were also tennis courts and a portable dance floor where an orchestra played for weekly dances. “Many a romance has flourished in Damtown,” according to the Nov. 11, 1921, Evansville Journal, which reported the town’s dismantling. Some workers married during the dam’s construction, according to the Nov. 11 Courier. “Many ‘government babies’ have been born at Damtown during its 10 years of existence.”
