When I was
10-years-old, my dad worked with one of the largest copper mines in the world. But
it’s probably not what you’re thinking. Although he was renowned for whistling
while he worked, he wasn’t marching off to the mines every morning – into a
cave in the darkest depths of the planet – singing “Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s
off to work we go…”. No, and he didn’t come home covered from head to toe in
black soot. Even though he wasn’t very tall, he certainly wasn’t a dwarf – but he
did marry a princess. All that aside, he did work for a mining company – in their
brightly lit technology department. It was a white-shirt-and-tie kind of position.
I remember
going to work with him on several occasions. His offices were in a high-rise
building in downtown Salt Lake City. He worked with computers the size of cars
that had 14” – 16” rolls of magnetic tape spinning around with a rhythmic hum,
lots of flashing lights, and spit out information on punch cards – boxes and
boxes of punch cards. Although I didn’t understand any of it, it was a
wonderland for a young boy. I was fascinated with this new advanced ‘technology’
and tried to understand my dad’s explanations about the potential and future of
our world through harnessing this power. He was smart – eventually a rocket
scientist – but about as down to earth, approachable, and humble as they come.
He described
the project he was working on for the mine – the Kennecott Copper Mine
smokestack. Over the years I’ve learned just how amazing this project was. It’s
still in use today. And recently I found out that my father-in-law also worked on
the same project – on the construction side as a subcontractor. Small world!
The
smokestack stands west of the Salt Lake City valley (20 miles from downtown and
less than a mile from the southern shore of the Great Salt Lake). As of 2023 here
are some of the amazing aspects of the Kennecott smokestack project that most
people don’t know –
- Construction
started in the August 26, 1974
- Construction
completed on November 19, 1974 (I was 14) it’s now 48 years old
- It
was a continuous concrete pour, 7 days-a-week, 24-hours-a-day, for 84 days
- It’s
1,215 feet high (equivalent to a 121-story high-rise)
o
The
tallest building in Utah is the Wells Fargo Center at 422 feet
o
The
tallest building west of the Mississippi - Wilshire Grand Ctr, Los Angeles at
1,100 feet
o
The
tallest building in the USA is the One Trade Center at 1,776 feet
o
The
Kennecott smoke stack is the same height as the Empire State Building at 1,250
feet (the Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world for 41
years - from 1931 to 1972 – and was the first building in the world’s history
to contain over 100 stories)
o
The
tallest pyramid of Giza is 481 feet
- It’s
177 feet diameter at the base
- With
12-foot wall thickness at the base
- \ It’s
12 feet diameter at the top (narrows down from 177 feet at the bottom to 12
feet at the top)
- With
12-inch wall thickness at the top
- The cost of the smokestack was $16.3 million in 1974 (an
equivalent of $100.3 million in 2023 dollars)
- The smokestack is THE LARGEST free-standing structure
west of the Mississippi River in the USA
- It’s
the 4th tallest smokestack in the world and 2nd tallest
smokestack in the USA (by 2 feet)
- It’s
the 59th tallest free-standing structure in the world
- Amazingly…
it’s one of the few cement structures in Western civilization that has miraculously
avoided getting tagged for almost 50 years
As amazing
and smart and accomplished as my dad was, he was just one of thousands that
worked together to construct one of the world’s true wonders. It wouldn’t
surprise me if the builders of the Giza pyramids, from a few thousand years
away, could look back at the Kennecott Copper smokestack with awe and
bewilderment, and ask themselves, “How in the world did they do that!?!?”
My dad was a
builder. He built sheds and houses, cars and engines, trailers and furniture,
music and books and programming source code, world record smokestacks and more.
Oddly, he seemed to love cement. It’s kind of perplexing – a rocket scientist
that had this strange, fond attachment to cement! He’s easy to remember for
being a builder because of the structures he left behind, but he built even
greater things. He bootstrapped to build a family. He had to fight to keep it
together. Maybe that’s why he had a fascination with cement – it had an uncanny
way of holding things together. Through all kinds of weather and turbulence and
upheaval it’s strong and resilient and bulletproof. That’s how he was, what he
did – regardless of adversarial circumstances, he found a way to hold it
together, make it last, sustain the storm, stand the tests of time, and thrive.
He found a way to lose himself in his labor, find love in it, and find a way to
be happy. I think on a lot of these things when I see cement…
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