I'm sending out a big thank you today, to Margaret Andestad, who sent us a large collection of photos showing the construction of West Kootenay Power dam on the Goat River in Canyon.

There are over 100 photos in the collection, and they show the construction of the dam in step-by-step detail - a fantastic resource! We had a few of them in the collection already, but the vast majority of them are new - and they show everything from the construction of the cribbing to the superintendent's residence to the engines and turbines inside the powerhouse.

I can't show you all of them, because that would be a lot of scanning (feel free to come in and check them out in person, though), but here are a couple:



This one shows the falls in the canyon before the dam was built.  You can see the construction of the powerhouse underway on the right, but the river itself seems to be pretty much natural. I love this image!  We've got a couple already in the collection that show the falls from a distance, or from up on top of the cliff, but this is the first one I've seen that focuses so clearly on the falls themselves.

And here's how it looked after West Kootenay Power got through with it:



Pretty good "before and after," isn't it?