HARVEY SLOCUM

BEST DAM MAN IN THE WORLD

By: Vernon Gauntt

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

This is the first biography of Harvey Slocum (1887-1961). Slocum was born and raised in National City and San Diego and, with only an 8th grade education, built over 18 of the biggest dams in the world between 1917 and 1961.
Slocum is one of the most colorful, intriguing and unlikely characters to have ever risen to the top of the heavy construction industry and earn the recognition from his peers as the "Best Dam Man In the World."

Between 1933 and 1937, in his late 40's and the prime of his career, Slocum was in charge of construction of Grand Coulee Dam in the State of Washington, which at the time was the biggest dam in the world. He was fired from that job because he was an alcoholic and spent too much time in bars and houses of ill repute.

Within two years, Slocum got sober and went on to even bigger and greater things.
His last project was the massive and extremely challenging Bhakra Dam in northern India. Slocum was hand-picked by Prime Minister Nehru as lead construction engineer for the project. He worked on Bhakra from 1952 until his death on the job in 1961 at the age of 74. At the time of its completion, Bhakra was the tallest concrete dam in the world, provided irrigation to over 6.5 million acres of new farmland and hydroelectric power to over 5,000 villages.

Slocum's work on Bhakra made him a national hero in India.

Slocum’s story is bigger than the massive structures he built. It's a deeply rich and compelling look into a man who confronted and overcame enormous obstacles and odds to achieve worldwide acclaim: humble childhood, limited education, left home at age 15 to work in San Francisco's red light district, survived a gas heater explosion that nearly killed him and left him forever scarred, and a years-long battle with alcoholism.

This bigger-than-life individual in charge of some of the largest things ever built was widely covered by newspapers all over the world, and major U.S. magazines including Life, Time, Collier's, True, The New Yorker, and The Saturday Evening Post. Slocum spoke plainly and profanely, and even went toe-to-toe with Nikita Khrushchev when he visited Bhakra Dam in 1955. That sharp, colorful exchange was covered by almost every major news outlet. Consequently, Slocum's story was well chronicled and preserved by some of the best journalists of the day.

Among his countless, entertaining soundbites over his career, Slocum had this to say about Khrushchev:
“I couldn’t get mad at the guy. He spoke my language. He’s dug gutters; so have I. He’s a tough customer, a self-made man. So am I. He may be a bastard in politics, but I’d hire him on a construction job in a minute. And in my drinking days, I would have liked to get drunk with him.”