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The building years of the dam at International Falls are read here from two public records: the 1986 National Park Service study by David L. Fritz and Lawrence F. Van Horn, and Warren Upham’s 1920 gazetteer of Minnesota place names. This instalment covers what the contracts required, what went up beside the falls, and how the river changed. The pages used give terms and measurements rather than the daily work of construction, so the account stays with those.
The study records that E. W. Backus renegotiated a 1904 Ontario contract on January 9, 1905, dealing with the Commissioner of Crown Lands for the Province of Ontario. It says both versions described a dam for electricity generating purposes, to be of “masonry and concrete,” and that Backus was to pay $5,000 for a grant in fee of the lands and power on the Canadian side. It also records that both versions bound him to put $50,000 into construction within nine months of the plans being approved.
According to the study, the contracts reserved navigation, the floating of logs and a fishway around any dam, and barred sawdust, chemicals and refuse from the water. It says the revised contract, approved by Order in Council on January 13, 1905, moved the completion date to January 1, 1907, and reserved a minimum of four-thousand-horsepower for the Canadian side.
On liability, the study records that paragraph 17 of both contracts stated the Ontario government’s immunity against flood claims and gave the company no permission to overflow lands that were not Crown property. It notes that any penalty for Backus and his associates went unstated. The study also describes an earlier American act that made the company liable for damage to private property from the raised lake, and it records that Section 3 of the General Dam Act, 34 Stat. 386, of June 21, 1906, made the company liable for damage caused by flood or overflow.
The study records that in January 1905 the Dominion’s Privy Council instructed the Minister of Public Works to warn Backus that, if the Dominion disapproved, he would have to remove the temporary coffer dams used in construction at his own expense. It says the council let work continue because removal would have cost another full season. In the study’s account, the coffer dams were already in use while approval was still being argued.
The study records that 4-5 Edward VII, Ch. 139, of July 20, 1905, placed the powerhouse and generators on the Canadian side, and that Privy Council conditions approved September 19, 1905 required the old lock and canal to stay usable. It also records that an Ontario act of May 14, 1906 extended the completion date to January 1, 1908.
Materials came by rail. According to the study, the Minnesota and International Railway came to fruition only in 1907, and Backus and his associates spent $4M completing it to the railhead on the Rainy River. The study records an indenture of November 20, 1906 in which Backus, for $25,000, pledged a flouring, oatmeal or pulp mill, or another manufacturing industry, within two years of the dam’s completion.
Upham’s 1920 gazetteer records the dam as completed in 1908, and records International Falls as incorporated as a city in 1909. As for the mill, the study’s account of 1911 finds the turbines in the Minnesota powerhouse driving pulp grinders, and its list of gauge sites by 1916 includes the US Pulp Mill gauge, on the Falls side of the dam.
Upham’s 1920 gazetteer records a natural descent of 23 feet through “broken rapids on irregularly jutting ledges of granitoid gneiss,” mainly within about 300 feet. It says the dam, completed in 1908, increased the head to 26 feet, raised the river to the level of Rainy lake and let lake steamboats reach the city.
Upham records that the spray of the falls “nearly always formed a rainbow in the sunshine,” and that it accounted for the original names of the lake and river. His gazetteer describes the dammed falls as supplying water-power for “the largest paper-making mills in the world.”
The study records that Canada’s Department of Public Works sent Resident Engineer J. H. McLaren to the dam in August 1911, and that his chief in Ottawa, S. J. Chapleau, told him to begin daily records of the flow. It says McLaren’s report of November 21, 1911 found six turbines in the Minnesota powerhouse connected directly to pulp grinders, not generators. On the Canadian side, it says, four turbines were each connected to a Westinghouse generator, and McLaren’s report gave the maximum head there as 30 feet. The two records give different figures for the head, and the pages do not reconcile them.
The study describes the completed dam as having 16 waste sluices, each 10 feet wide and 12 feet high, with a spillway crest at 1108.61 feet. It records McLaren’s complaint that a single gauge, at the Ranier Dock in Minnesota, was not enough for accurate daily determinations of inflow for Rainy Lake.
The study finds friction in the report. It records that McLaren sent written requests for minimum flows, and that at times the company “manifested an inclination to disregard requests for the continuous maintenance of what I estimated to be natural flows.” It adds that 1911 was a dry year: Rainy Lake began it at 1100.61, eight feet below the spillway crest, and stood at 1105.25 at its August high. The study says Backus wanted to conserve water because a greater head made the turbines more efficient.
The study records two sides of Backus. On one side, the study records what Backus built: a railway completed at a cost of $4M, a dam and powerhouses, and a pledge of mills to give gainful employment to residents of Fort Frances. Upham’s gazetteer records that the dam brought lake steamboats to International Falls and powered its paper mills. On the other side, the study records the objections to Backus’s plans, and the liability the contracts and the 1906 statute laid on his company for damages caused by flooding. It says an assistant to the Governor-General in Ottawa had misgivings in May 1905 about navigation, fishing and the old unfinished canal and lock at Fort Frances. Written from a national park’s point of view, the study also characterizes the high water sought for navigation as something that would in time burden the owners of shoreline. It records McLaren’s repeated requests that the company keep to natural flows.
The next instalment turns to the questions that followed once the dam was running. The study records that in April 1911 the dam application was forwarded to the State Department to solicit the views of the International Joint Commission, and that is where the record picks up.
How the Falls Got Its Dam is a 10-part series read from federal records that are in the public domain — a National Park Service historic resource study of water-level regulation in the Rainy Lake watershed, and the Government Printing Office transcripts of International Joint Commission hearings. How the Falls Got Its Dam — part 4 of 10. Every statute citation, every date and every named order in it is checked automatically against the pages listed below before it is published, and every quotation is checked word for word against the scanned text. The scans carry machine-read text, and where the scan is rough this series says so rather than tidying it.
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