1926 - Environment

Environment

Zürich-born German entrepreneur Andreas Stihl, 30, begins production of an electric chain saw in an old factory building at Cannstatt, near Stuttgart, and next year will introduce the "Cutoff Chain Saw for Electric Power"—a 150-pound machine that requires two men to handle. Having started a company for steam boiler prefiring systems, Stihl will build the world's first gasoline-powered chain saw in 1929, begin exporting his saws to the United States in 1930, and develop the first one-man chainsaw in 1950 (see Cox, 1946).

The U.S. Forest Service identifies 55 million acres of U.S. wilderness area. The largest area found in the survey covers 7 million acres (see 1961).

California's St. Francis Dam and regulating reservoir are completed 300 miles north of Los Angeles to give the city an alternative to the Owens River Aqueduct that opened late in 1913 and remains subject to sabotage by farmers and ranchers (see 1924). The largest solid concrete dam built to date, it has been designed by Bureau of Water Works and Supply chief engineer William Mulholland, who has had it built in secret with two powerhouses to generate electricity, but many geologic principles that will later guide construction of dams remain unknown, and rural residents soon complain that the new dam is altering the water table of downstream farms (see 1928).

Rainstorms drench Kansas and Nebraska for 2 weeks in August; rain continues to pour down in September; rivers in Kansas, Minnesota, and Illinois rise to alarming heights; October brings high waters on the Missouri and Ohio rivers; the Mississippi reaches a record high at Vicksburg; and flood waters cover 1 million square miles by November despite assertions by the Army Corps of Engineers that the levee system begun in 1879 is now complete. The floods recede in November, but the rivers rise again in December throughout much of Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee (see 1927).