On this day we planned on driving from Williams to Riverside. A short 6 hour. drive But at Kingman Arizona we saw a sign, Hoover Dam 115 miles. Initially we planned the dam into the trip but nixed the idea because the days were becoming so long. But it’s 115 miles away and it’s only 11 am. Why wouldn’t you……..
Yep. About 3 million cubic yards of concrete built the dam and an additional 1 million cubic yards were used in the power plant and supporting structures. A two-lane concrete road from Seattle to Miami all right here.
For years the Black Canyon of the Colorado was viewed as an ideal place to harness the Colorado River for flood control and power generation. This dream began to become reality in 1931 during the height of the Great Depression. Boulder Dam was dedicated in 1935 although construction continued into 1936. It was later renamed Hoover Dam during the presidency of Harry Truman.
The first exterior designs of the dam were terrible, so Los Angeles architect George Kaufmann was commissioned to redesign the outside of the dam. He added the art deco intake towers including two clocks one on each end of the dam, one showing the time in Arizona (mountain time) and one showing the time in Nevada (pacific time). Since Arizona doesn’t observe daylight savings time the clocks show the same time 6 months of the year.
The dam is 660 feet thick at the base and 45 feet thick at the top. Hoover Dam is 726 feet tall. The original project was given 7 years from start to completion, but the dam was completed in just over 6 years. The winning bid of $48 million dollars was submitted by the Morrison Knudsen Company, Utah Construction Company, J. F. Shea, Pacific Bridge, W. A. Bechtel, Warren Company, Henry J Kaiser Company and MacDonald & Kahn LTD, later referred to as the Six Companies Inc.
To facilitate construction a whole new city was built, today’s Boulder City Nevada. 22 miles of railroad track had to be built from Las Vegas to Boulder City and another 10 miles from Boulder City to the construction site. Also, for power a 220-mile transmission line was built from San Bernardino, Ca to the site. At the peak of construction in 1934, 5251 men were working at the site and over 21,000 workers in different trades participated in the total project.
100 lives were lost in the construction and the urban legend that men are buried in the concrete is just that, legend. Most of the men who died, died of pneumonia caused by the fumes in the diversion tunnels and construction tunnels not by falling into the concrete, although three of the deaths were from suicide.
The power station at the dam produces 4 billion kilowatt hours of power a year enough to service 1.3 million homes in Nevada, California and Arizona.
Hoover Dam is self-sufficient. Sale of the produced power has paid off all construction loans and today pays for all upkeep and maintenance.
Unfortunately, at the time we are here the visitor center is closed for renovations.
The reservoir at the dam is Lake Mead. You can see by the “bathtub ring” the lake is low. Lake Mead covers 247 square miles when full making it the largest reservoir in America in terms of capacity. At full depth some parts of the lake are over 590 feet deep. The Water at the dam is about 390 feet deep. Water from Lake Mead services over 20 million homes and untold amounts of farmland in Nevada, California, Arizona and Mexico.
U.S Route 93 once ran across the top of the dam. You can still do that today but only from the Nevada side after passing through a checkpoint. After 9/11 fears of a terrorist attack on the dam caused the highway to be shut down into Arizona and in 2010 U. S 93 was rerouted over the newly built Hoover Dam Bypass and the O’Callaghan-Tillman Bridge, more commonly known as the Pat Tillman Bridge.
The story of Pat Tillman is pretty well known. Pat Tillman played football at Arizona State University, was all PAC-12 and was drafted into the NFL in 1998 by the Arizona Cardinals. In 2002 in response to the 9/11 attacks Tillman suspended his pro football career and enlisted in the United States Army with his brother, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was killed in 2004 in Spera Afghanistan by friendly fire.
Mike O’Callaghan was the 23rd Governor of the State of Nevada from 1971-1979 and although there were no term limits in Nevada at the time O’Callaghan declined to run for a third term. He was a philanthropist and the editor in chief of the Las Vegas Sun newspaper. He died about one month before Tillman’s death in Afghanistan. O’ Callaghan was a decorated Korean War Veteran. In Korea he won a bronze star with a “V” for valor and a Silver Star for exposing himself to enemy fire to save lives at an American outpost.
The Pat Tillman Bridge is the second highest bridge in America at 890 feet above the Colorado River. It is the highest auto carrying bridge in America. The bridge is 1900 feet long. Only the Royal Gorge Bridge (955ft), in Colorado is higher but it does not continually carry traffic. The Tillman Bridge is 14 feet higher than the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia, America’s 3rd highest bridge.
Hoover Dam is on the National Register of Historic Places and is one of seven Architectural Wonders of the World.
After seeing the long dams in Texas I was surprised how compact the area around to dam was. Yeah………. I thought it would be bigger…….
Now we are off to Sin City………..
