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The Water Power of Texas. 
25 
run the Llano Milling Company’s plant. The city water is pumped into 
an elevated standpipe the bottom of which is fifty-six feet from the 
ground and forty-four feet above the low water level in the tail race 
and thirty-five feet above the ordinary lake level. The capacity of the 
tank is 30,000 gallons and the pumps are run all day. When pipes and 
tanks are full, the safety valve is so adjusted that the water wastes 
through an automatic valve. The power will be conveyed to the flour 
mill by a cable from the power ,iouse. The motor for the polishing plant 
is operated by a direct current, while that of the electric light is an alter- 
nating current. As a precaution against breakdowns and low water, an 
auxiliary steam plant is provided, which consists of a fifty horse power 
engine and fifty-five horse power boiler, but these have not been used 
since July, 1899, when the exceedingly low water stages of the Llano and 
Colorado almost stopped the turbines at the Austin dam, the water level 
in Lake McDonald sinking to ten feet below the crest of the dam. 
At Marble Falls occurs the most remarkable natural dam (Fig. 6) 
along the course of the river. The formation of limestone rocks has con- 
structed a dam where a fall of twenty-two feet has been utilized to pump 
the water supply for the city. The minimum flow found in recent years 
was 197 second-feet, which could develop 375-horse power if all of the 
flow were used. Below the power house, the water flows over a rough 
formation and in about a mile has a fall of about sixty feet. A grand 
water power of 1000-horse powers capacity could he inaugurated at this 
place, the only expense would be in constructing a mill race and erecting 
the power plant. There will certainly be a big demand for the power in 
the future. Granite mountain is only two miles away, and is right along 
the tracks of the railway. By combining the water power and the granite 
industry, a corporation could command the best and the most economical 
manufactured output. Marble Falls offers greater possibilities for water 
power than any other point in Texas. 
In May, 1890, the city of Austin determined by a -vote of its people 
to construct a massive dam across the Colorado river near the city, and 
to expend $1,600,000 on the enterprise. It was estimated than 14,000- 
horse power could be developed, and all the elements of a boom took a 
firm grip on the town. No hydrographic data had been collected except 
the hazy memory of the oldest inhabitants, and in the spring of 1890 a 
measurement of the flow of 1000 cubic feet per second was taken as the 
minimum. This proved to he one of the saddest disappointments of the 
whole enterprise, the greatest being the failure of the dam on April 7, 
1900. 
The dam was built above Austin, at a point where the deep cut or 
canyon, which the river has worn in the limestone rock, is about 1150 
feet wide. The cross-section of the channel is not far from level on the 
bottom, and is bounded by nearly perpendicular walls of rock rising to 
