At its completion, the 5.8-mile Gunnison Tunnel under western Colorado's Vernal Mesa was the longest irrigation tunnel in America. It carried water from the Gunnison River to the Uncompahgre Valley to irrigate 146,000 acres of cropland.
Work on the 30,582-foot tunnel was first performed manually. Adverse geological conditions provided great challenge for this pioneering project. The drilling crews had to deal with clay, sand, shale, and a badly fractured fault zone.
The early people of Costa Rica in the present-day area of Turrialba in Cartago Province built this ceremonial center with care and precision, and it is the country's primary and most important archaeological site. The Guayabo National Monument is of international significance because of its extensive roadways, retaining walls, underground channels, water supply, and flood control and drainage facilities that represent early civil engineering achievements by pre-Columbian people.
The massive Grand Coulee Dam, on the Columbia River, is the largest concrete structure in the U.S., the largest hydroelectric facility in the U.S., and the sixth-largest hydroelectric facility in the world. It provides irrigation for up to 1.1 million acres of agricultural lands and the hydroelectric complex maintains a generating capacity of 6.8 million kilowatts. It also serves as the primary flood control for the Columbia River basin (with a capacity of 5.18 million acre-feet of water) and provides recreational opportunities on the 150-mile-long Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake.
The Gota Canal is the biggest infrastructure project ever built in Sweden. The canal was dug by hand with shovels made of wood. It took over 22 years of 12-hour days - an estimated 12 million man-days of labor - to complete the project.
Wind dynamics were a major consideration in building such a huge structure. When winds blow against the building, they are deflected up over the roof, creating a partial vacuum that can draw the roof up with a force several times greater than the direct force of the wind. Wind tunnel testing on a model helped designers decide that a semi-parabolic shape would best resolve air current concerns.
Originally known as the Coolgardie Goldfields Water Supply Scheme, the Goldfields Water Supply, Western Australia, has exceptional and unique cultural significance for Australia. Western Australia's first Premier, the dynamic and visionary Sir John Forrest, recognized the need for this extraordinary project to support the young and burgeoning gold mining industry in the dry interior of the state. In 1896 he directed C Y O'Connor, the colony's first Engineer-in-Chief, to find a permanent solution to the water supply problem in the area, which lacked any permanent surface water supplies and
Put in service in 1937, this world-renowned bridge, conceived by Joseph Strauss and designed largely by Charles Ellis, was the longest single span (4,200 feet) in the world for a quarter century.
As with many civil engineering projects in their conceptual stages, naysayers scoffed at the Golden Gate Bridge. They said it would be technically unfeasible or too expensive to bridge the Golden Gate, a 1.7-mile-wide opening separating the Pacific Ocean from the San Francisco Bay. They said that the channel was too deep; the tides and winds too strong; the span too long.
Considered one of the world's most scenic mountain drives, the two-lane Going-To-The-Sun Road through Glacier National Park was the first major road to be constructed directly over high mountain terrain, proving that roads did not need to be limited to mountain passes.
Galveston Island is a barrier island located two miles off the Texas coast. The island is about 3 miles wide at its widest and about 28 miles long. The Galveston Seawall extends over 10 miles along Galveston's oceanfront, protecting life and property against hurricanes and tropical storms.
