visited Shasta Lake and went on a dam tour.

Using the campground  Mountain Gate RV park

which is located 6 miles north of the city Redding, CA. as our home base, we took a day trip to Shasta Lake which was about 12 miles away.

If you look at these lake pictures, you can actually see the water level is down at least 180 feet from its normal height due to the extreme drought they are experiencing here in California. The lake is normally up by the tree line seen in these pictures. 

There is a large hydroelectric dam (called Shasta Dam) here at Shasta Lake that is primarily used for flood control for the Sacramento River and secondarily used for power generation. Much of the water controlled by this dam is used for irrigation by much of the upper half of California. This gravity dam is the 2nd largest hydroelectric dam in the United States.

They offer free tours of the hydroelectric dam which Sue and I enjoyed. 

They told us the dams history and showed us on a map where all the water for Shasta Lake comes from and where it all goes after passing through the dam. They took us on an elevator deep inside the dam and then over to the power house to show us the 5 generators.

These 5 generators can produce up to 676 megawatts of power when all 5 are running. They recently replaced the iron impellers in the turbines with stainless steel impellers that were machined out of a single block of stainless steel which improves efficiency and should last 100 years before they need to be replaced.

Below are the 5 steel penstocks  feeding the generators in the power house at the foot of the dam.

A view of the Sacramento River valley from the dam.

A view looking up from the base of the dam. This dam is 602 feet high. Hard to tell that from these pictures. These penstocks are 15 feet in diameter.

I really enjoyed our tour and the fact that is was free was an added bonus. I understand the Hoover dam tour is $37 plus parking.