Beaver Falls Creek, George Inlet

Beaver Falls Creek, George Inlet

by | Aug 28, 2022

Beaver Falls Creek is on Revillagigedo Island, on the western shore of George Inlet, 5.3 miles (8.5 km) northeast of Ketchikan, Alaska. The local name was reported in 1915 by G.H. Canfield of the U.S. Geological Survey. The stream starts in an unnamed cirque lake between Northbird Peak and Mahoney Mountain, and flows east for about 4 miles (6.5 km) through Upper Silvis Lake, over Beaver Falls and then through Lower Silvis Lakes to George Inlet. The Beaver Falls Hydroelectric Project consists of two developments, one at Silvis Lake and the other at Beaver Falls. The projects provide power for the Ketchikan Gateway Borough and are considered Ketchikan Public Utilities’ most important sources of electricity, providing approximately 30 percent of the total electric generation requirements.

The Silvis Lake Power Plant is a 2.1 MW project built in 1968 by Ketchikan Public Utilities to provide power to the City of Ketchikan. The Silvis Development includes Upper Silvis Lake and dam, a concrete spillway, a power conduit consisting of a tunnel and penstock, a single-unit powerhouse, and a transmission line. The powerhouse is located at the southwest end of Lower Silvis Lake, near the natural outlet of Upper Silvis Lake.

Beaver Falls is a 5.4 MW facility owned and operated by Ketchikan Public Utilities and consists of three separate generators built between 1947 and 1954. The Beaver Falls Development includes Lower Silvis Lake and dam, a concrete spillway, Beaver Falls Creek Diversion Dam, two power conduits, a powerhouse containing three active and one decommissioned generating units, a switchyard, and substation. The Beaver Falls Powerhouse is located along the shoreline of George Inlet. The powerhouse is a reinforced concrete structure, approximately 30 feet (9 m) by 147 feet (44 m) by 25 feet (7.5 m) high, and contains four horizontal shaft Pelton generating units, one of which has been decommissioned. Read more here and here. Explore more of Beaver Falls Creek here:

About the background graphic

This ‘warming stripe’ graphic is a visual representation of the change in global temperature from 1850 (top) to 2022 (bottom). Each stripe represents the average global temperature for one year. The average temperature from 1971-2000 is set as the boundary between blue and red. The color scale goes from -0.7°C to +0.7°C. The data are from the UK Met Office HadCRUT4.6 dataset. 

Credit: Professor Ed Hawkins (University of Reading). Click here for more information about the #warmingstripes.

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