[89] 
The Water Power op Texas. 
43 
Fork in the southern part of Young county, near Eliasville, and is 
owned and operated by the Donnell Brothers. The dam is situated about 
the middle of a rounded bend in the river and backs the water about two 
and one-half miles. The width of the bottom bed of the Clear Fork is 
about 150 feet. In the irregular bed of the river deep rock holes occur 
alternating with shoals. Some of these shoals give a fall of as much, as 
six feet in a distance of 300 feet, while others give only an inch or so. 
There is a fall of perhaps thirty feet from the dam to the mouth of the 
river, a distance of nine miles. The flow of Clear Fork is quite irregu- 
lar, often getting bank full, but seldom overflows the banks. The river 
is not supplied by many springs, and it falls fairly rapidly when rain 
ceases. It usually falls to a flow of about twenty square feet cross-section 
on shoals, and when dry weather continues will stop flowing altogether 
in four months or thereabouts. It has not quit running since 1880. The 
Eureka dam is built of sandstone slabs 6x2 by six feet long and is 120 
feet long and six high. At first the lower face was left vertical, but so 
much pounding occurred from drift logs that a timber apron was put 
in with a slope of one to two. This rock bed of the river is about six 
inches thick, underlaid by hard Hue clay. The swiftness of the current 
eroded the bank on north side of river and to prevent the waters going 
round dam a great quantity of brush and logs were piled in and proved 
successful in preventing erosion. In very high water the dam in invis- 
ible, the current is hardly swifter on crest than elsewhere. For a while 
the mill was an ordinary crusher mill for wheat and corn, run by an over- 
shot wheel. About 1888 patent roller machinery was added. Although 
often forced to shut down by low water, the mill has paid well. A cotton 
gin, of recent construction, is run by steam and doubtless an auxiliary 
steam plant will be put in for the mill. 
About six miles south of Whitney, Texas, B. M. Boyd owns a flour 
mill, which is operated by the water power obtained from a dam across 
the Brazos river. The river at this point has a vertical bluff on the north 
side about fifty or sixty feet in height, and in a gap in this bluff (the 
bed of an old creek, presumably) and at a safe distance above high water 
is located the mill. The dam is 300 feet long and is constructed of cedar 
timber and brushwood, rock and gravel, and rests upon the solid lime- 
stone bed of the river. The cross-section is triangular in shape, and it is 
built up by a foundation layer of logs placed lengthwise of the dam, 
brush and stone spread over this, then a layer of logs placed crosswise 
of the dam and brush and stone placed upon this. Then another course 
of logs is laid lengthwise, and more stone and gravel, etc., until the top 
is reached, flflie top surface of the dam slopes backward to the founda- 
tion and makes an angle of about twenty degrees within it, and a liberal 
backing of stone and gravel is deposited upon it within a few feet of the 
crest, which effectually prevents leakage through the dam. Iron pins are 
