Blog Series, Past Present & Future, A Little Piece of Nevada Construction History: Hoover Dam

This picture is taken from the Mike O'Callaghan - Pat Tillman Memorial bridge. Behind the Hoover Damn is Lake Mead, the largest man made lake in the Unites States.

In 1928, the United States Congress approved the bill for the most ambitious engineering and construction project of its time known as the Boulder Canyon Project Act. It is known today as Hoover Dam, one of the Top 10 Construction Achievements of the 20^th Century and a National Historic Landmark.

The dam provided the solution to harnessing the power of the Colorado River to provide much needed irrigation and limit the destruction its massive floods had caused. More than 200 engineers worked to design the largest building project the federal government had ever undertaken. But by 1930, when construction began, thousands of workers had flooded the surrounding areas, looking for work to survive the Great Depression.

It took a total of 21,000 men working around the clock (about 5,000 men per shift, 3 shifts per day) to complete the project. Workers were allowed one day off per year (no such thing as PTO!). It is estimated only 107 workers lost their lives during construction.

Constructed with more than 5 billion barrels of concrete, the dam was completed in the fall of 1935, 2 years ahead of schedule. It stands at 726 feet tall and features original art deco designs both inside and outside of the dam as well as original flooring inside.

Hoover Dam houses 17 generators, producing 4 billion kilowatts of electricity a year allowing Hoover Dam to be the only government facility whose operation and maintenance of the facility is solely supported by the revenue from power sales. Today, Hoover Dam experiences over one million visitors a year.

This stairway takes you to the bottom of the dam.

Here is one of two generator rooms located inside the Hoover Dam. The small brown generator to the right is an original generator from when the Dam opened & it still works to this day supplying the building with power.

One of the inspection tunnels located in the center of the Dam. Throughout the inspection tunnels, you will see cracks that are dated. These dates indicate when they were first noticed & it was how they monitored whether the crack grew or not.