SUMMER EXCAVATION

DARTMOUTH men, and others, who drove to Hanover this summer with a mental picture of a green, quiet campus were brought up short when they arrived at the Inn corner and saw what looked like a World War I battlefield. Cutting its way from the heating plant, clear across the southern half of the campus, down Sanborn Lane and up Massachusetts Rowwas a deep, wide trench, into which workmen and clanking machines were installing 6,000 feet of new steam pipes.

The old underground system, nearly fifty years old, had lost a lot of its efficiency along with its insulation, and it was both to forestall serious trouble and to get ready for Dartmouth's planned building expansion of the next decade that the College began work on the new steam lines. Next summer the western line will be extended to the new dormitories on the former Clark School field and the loop around campus will be completed, going along Elm Street, between Steele and Wheeler Halls, and then behind Dartmouth Row, to join the new line near Reed Hall.

The steam pipes are cradled on an eightinch bed of concrete, over which domed tiles are locked to make a watertight casing. The new system is expected to give efficient service for another fifty years.

A view of the "big dig" across the campus, as seen from Robinson Hall.