The first massive gate for the Folsom Dam Auxiliary Spillway project arrived last month at Folsom, Calif.—about 20 miles east of Sacramento—after a four day, 600-mile journey. Carrying a bulkhead gate so large it took up two lanes of traffic to allow its passage, a 100-ft-long flatbed rolled onto the jobsite in the middle of the night on March 14 with a California Highway Patrol escort.

The gate's odyssey from Oregon Iron Works in Vancouver, Wash., where it was fabricated, will be repeated 17 more times to transport the dozen gates to the dam location above Sacramento. That's not counting the trips needed to move additional, smaller gate parts.