User:Killian441/sandbox



=ToDo=
 * Colorado State Treasurer - List of former position holders, see Colorado Attorney General
 * Denver Public Schools - Needs more attention
 * Water in Colorado - See below.
 * Boulder Railroad Depot - Could use some expansion. refs: ref 2:
 * Killian - Ref: ref2:
 * Coal Wars - clean up and add back references. See Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems

=Water in Colorado=
 * So I should have a couple of sections: history, management, individual water rights, water rights compacts, water projects, etc...



History
See Water in Colorado

Projects
One of the earliest water projects in the Colorado River basin was the Grand Ditch, a 16 mi diversion canal that sends water from the Never Summer Mountains, which would naturally have drained into the headwaters of the Colorado River, to bolster supplies in Colorado's Front Range Urban Corridor. Constructed primarily by Japanese and Mexican laborers, the ditch was considered an engineering marvel when completed in 1890, delivering 17700 acre.ft across the Continental Divide each year. Because roughly 75 percent of Colorado's precipitation falls west of the Rocky Mountains while 80 percent of the population lives east of the range, more of these interbasin water transfers, locally known as transmountain diversions, followed. While first envisioned in the late 19th century, construction on the Colorado-Big Thompson Project (C-BT) did not begin until the 1930s. The C-BT now delivers more than 11 times the Grand Ditch's flow from the Colorado River watershed to cities along the Front Range.
 * from Colorado River:

Colorado Strikes

 * The Cripple Creek miners' strike of 1894 was a five-month strike by the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) in Cripple Creek, Colorado.


 * Leadville Miners' Strike in 1896-97 occurred during, and as a result of, rapid industrialization and consolidation of the mining industry.


 * The Colorado Labor Wars involved a struggle between the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) and the mine operators, particularly the Cripple Creek Mine Owners' Association (CCMOA), during the period from 1903 to 1904.


 * Colorado Coalfield War (1913-1914) In retaliation for Ludlow, the miners armed themselves and attacked dozens of mines over the next ten days, destroying property and engaging in several skirmishes with the National Guard along a forty-mile front from Trinidad to Walsenburg. The entire strike would cost between sixty-nine and 199 lives. It was described as the "deadliest strike in the history of the United States".


 * The Ludlow Massacre was an attack by the Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel & Iron Company camp guards on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado on April 20, 1914.


 * In 1920, the Denver Tramway company workers voted to strike, the company brought in strike-breakers, and violence quickly broke out with seven dead and 52 seriously wounded before federal troops intervened. In the end the Denver Tramway Company filed for bankruptcy.


 * Joseph Conlin has written that the 1927 Colorado coal strike was a "unique, indeed critical event in the social and economic history of the West." First, it was a coal strike run by Wobblies, rather than the United Mine Workers. Second, many of the miners had a company union, yet still elected to strike under the IWW. Third, it had the first positive result for Colorado coal miners in sixty years of struggle.

History of electric trams in America
Basically just see this article: [http://books.google.com/books?id=FVpNAQAAIAAJ&dq=editions%3AIjSwbt_BvV4C&pg=PA434#v=onepage&q&f=false The Century Magazine, Volume 70 - The Electric Railway by Frank. J Sprague.]

"First Public Electric Cars for City Streets - 1880 - 1888: In 1881 Siemens and Halskc constructed a short commercial road at Lichterfelde near Berlin. Two insulated track rails were used in a 180 volt circuit. The wheel tire was insulated from the hub by a wooden band. Later an overhead trolley line with a rolling contact at the wire was used. See photograph in St Ry Journ Oct 8 1904 p 535. The road is now running as a 600 volt trolley line. In 1883 Siemens cars were operated in Paris London and elsewhere by storage batteries with 5 hp 100 volt motors. In 1883 Siemens and Halske constructed a third rail narrow gage line 6 miles long the Portrush Railway near the Giants Causeway in northern Ireland obtaining from a water fall the power for operating a 250 volt direct current dynamo. In 1884 E.M. Bentley and Walter H. Knight operated in Cleveland Ohio a road having two miles of underground conduit placed between the rails. This installation was perhaps the first in which the cars were driven by a series motor placed under the car floor. Wire rope and sprocket chain drive and later bevel gearing were tried. The road was operated about one year. See Martin and Wctzler's The Electric Motor 1887, St Ry Journ Feb 1889, Bentley Elec World March 5 1904. In 1884 Daft operated a pioneer line 2 miles long for the Union Passenger Railway Co between Baltimore and Hampden. Two 3 ton motor cars were used to haul trailers. The over running trolley and a third rail contact were both installed. The motors were a series 130 volt direct current single geared type. (Elec World March 5 1904) In 1885 John C Henry built an electric railroad in Kansas City. There were two cars each equipped with a 7 hp 250 volt direct current motor. The overhead trolley wires were 10 inches apart and two pairs of over running trolley wheels were held by springs in lateral contact with each wire the trolley wheels being mounted on a single carriage and connected with the motors by means of flexible cables. The creditors received 8 cents on a dollar (Elec World Oct 20 1910 p 934). In 1886 Van Depoele working at Minneapolis for the Minneapolis Lyndale and Minnetonka Railway which had been obliged to discontinue the use of steam locomotives in the business portions of the city equipped an electric locomotive car for hauling trains." (page 4-5)

"The first practical electric street railway embodied many of the essential features of modern practice It was installed by the Sprague Electric Railway & Motor Co for an 11 mile railway with 10 per cent grades at Richmond Va and was operated in February 1888 Energy was furnished from a central station by a 300 hp steam engine and a 450 volt direct current belted generator and was transmitted by copper conductors to small cars each equipped with two 7 hp series wound motors Thirty cars were in operation by July 1888 Mr Frank J Sprague in the Transactions of the International Electric Congress St Louis 11104 Vol Ill p 331 has summarized the features of this now historic road at Richmond Distribution was effected by an overhead line circuit over the center of the track reinforced by a continuous main conductor in turn supplied at central distributing points by feeders from a constant potential plant operated at about 450 volts with reinforced track return The current was taken from an overhead line at first by fixed upper pressure contacts and subsequently by a wheel carried on a pole supported over the center of the car and having free up and down reversible movement The motors were centered on the axles and geared to them at first by single and then by double reduction gearing the outer ends being spring supported from the car body so that the motors were individually free to follow every variation of axle movement and yet maintain at all times a yielding touch upon the gears in absolute parallelism All the weight of the car was available for traction and the cars could be operated in either direction from either end of the car The controlling system was at first by graded resistances afterward by variation of the field coils from series to multiple relations and series parallel control of armatures by a separate switch Motors were run in both directions with fixed brushes at first laminated ones placed at an angle and later solid metallic ones with radial bearings" (page 8)

In the winter of 1884 the first full-sized experiment in overhead electric streetcars in America occurred in Kansas City. John C. Henry installed an electric motor on a horsecar and connected the motor to a small wheeled device he called a "troller" that rode two over-head wires. The first experiment saw the car gain a speed of 12 mph and then jump the tracks and roll up an embankment. The speed of motor was difficult to control, the motor was connected to the axle by chain which often slipped, and when the car came to a stop the troller would continue rolling and disengage. Investors became disappointed and the project was abandoned. (page 79)