Word: topsoil
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When Russians build on frozen ground, they sink piles deep into the permafrost, melting the holes with steam jets. The piles are then wrapped in tar paper and greased, so that the topsoil, freezing and thawing with the seasons, cannot stick to them and heave them. But piles are scarce in much of Alaska, and Army engineers think they know something better: thick insulating mats to keep the permafrost always frozen...
...last week more than 1,000 claims reportedly had been staked in the area. Twenty men were at work on the Burke-Bromley claims alone, clearing topsoil. Diamond drillers would start work soon. A tent city sprouted nearby and hundreds of gold-seekers lived in sleeping bags. Little Foleyet (pop. 2,000), twelve miles north, was jammed. Big mining firms like Hollinger, Mclntyre, Moneta and Vincent were buying up claims at fancy prices. The Canadian National Railways was already making emergency stops a mile from the strike site, and there was talk of putting in a spur...
While neighbors looked on approvingly, bulldozers dragged the fertile topsoil from John Haussermann's farm near Alma, Neb. and dug deep into the subsoil. The draglines and scrapers were collecting fill for a dam across one of Big Muddy's most fractious tributaries, the Republican. After more than a century of periodic suspense and terror, men were harnessing their old enemy, the Missouri River...
Four times between 1941 and 1944, fed by the Republican and its sisters-the Plattes, the Yellowstone, the Niobrara, the Cheyenne, the Belle Fourche-the Missouri had jumped its unstable banks. Men watched in misery while people, barns, houses, hogs, cattle and precious topsoil went tumbling down its chocolate torrent. Estimated damage: $149 million...
...Green Valley. This spring found the Tennessee Valley greener and richer than ever before. The river, which had once run brown with precious topsoil, was as clear as in Indian days - 21 dams had harnessed and controlled the floods...