[63] 
The Water Power of Texas. 
17 
a foundation of hard sandstone. Two turbines are used to generate the 
power: one Leif el 66-inch wheel, giving ninety horse power/ and one 
54-inch Alcot wheel, giving sixty horse power, with an effective head of 
nine feet. 
There is a dam on the same river at Ottine, a few miles below Luling. 
It is about 100 feet long, constructed of cribbing and stones, and is of 
an irregular shape. The power is generated by a 72-inch Alcot turbine 
which, under the seven foot head, produces seventy horse power and is 
used in running a cotton gin and grist mill. 
The San Marcos join the waters of the Guadalupe a short distance 
above Gonzales, forty-two miles below New Braunfels. At Gonzales a 
timber and stone dam, 148 feet long, with a fall of nine feet, has been 
constructed and the power is used in running the gin and grist mill of 
Smith & Lowery, the electric light plant, and the pump for the water- 
works. The dam was built in 1891 and 1892, and the power is developed 
by two 60-inch, one 72-inch, and one 66-inch turbines. The ordinary 
minimum flow at this dam is slightly in excess of 450 second-feet, and 
the capacity of the plant is reliably 400 -horse power, with all the feed- 
ing streams on their minimum flow. • 
Forty miles below Gonzales, and three miles north of Cuero, is located 
the Buchel dam. The dam proper (Fig. 5) is a solid structure out of 
limestone, weighing 140 pounds per cubic foot ; its foundations and fill- 
ings being of concrete made from gravel, sand, and cement. In a strata 
of very tough clay, thirty feet in thickness, a splendid foundation is 
found ; the clay having been penetrated to a depth of five to six feet, here 
a foundation of concrete is laid twenty-five feet wide; then come courses 
of stone on the up and down stream side of the river, every course being 
set back until the low water line, fifteen feet from the base, is reached, 
where the dam presents a width of twenty-one feet; the middle being 
filled with layers of concrete. From this line, each layer of stone is set 
back on the down stream side so that its top, ten feet above the low water 
line (the coping), is six feet wide; the total length over all being 220 
feet. According to surveys made up stream, it is found that from three 
to fourffeet may be added in height to this dam without affecting seri- 
ously the low bottom lands up stream and subjecting them to more than 
usual danger or damage by overflows. By doing this an increase of from 
forty to one hundred per cent, in power can be gained. The dam was 
begun on the 1st of December, 1896, and was finished on March, 1, 1898. 
The stone used in the construction of the dam was obtained from the 
quarries at Van Baub, twenty-six miles northwest of San Antonio. 
There were used in the construction of the dam and penstocks 129 car- 
loads of limestone; 31 carloads of cement; 5200 cubic yards of gravel 
and sand; 9 carloads of cypress timber; 370 cypress piles, twenty to 
thirty feet long; 26 carloads of brick; and two carloads of iron columns 
