Day 2 of our Las Vegas visit started cool and bright. We were up early as we had to catch the Hoover Dam tour bus. With the construction going on around Polo Towers, the driver had a challenge maneuvering the big, full sized bus around the sharp corners to the loading area at the West entrance.
Our Dam guide explained that the strong desire to harness nature’s power drove the human mind and body to build a dam in the hottest, driest area of the United States. People wanting to irrigate low lying plains, known as low desert areas, without suffering from flooding and the battle over water made it obvious to the United States government that the Colorado River was part of the solution and the perfect location was the deep gorge of the Black Canyon of the Colorado.
As a survivor of the “Big Dig” , Boston, one of the facts that most impressed me was that this giant project came in not only under budget but 2 years ahead of schedule! A consortium called Six Companies Inc. won the right to build the concrete arch dam.
They created a planned community to house the 5000-man workforce. Miles of street were paved and railroad tracks were laid to connect the canyon-side village to the project site and neighboring Las Vegas. The community, known as Boulder City, is still standing and is one of only 2 cities in Nevada that prohibit gambling. The casinos near the city are actually outside the city limits.
Our tour took us inside the dam to view the huge turbines that generate electricity for customers in California, Arizona, and Nevada and creates enough power for 1.3 Million people.
The Bureau of Reclamation, the department subsidizing the project, supplied a whopping 3.25 million cubic yards of concrete for the dam itself, plus another 1.11 million cubic yards for the power plant and additional facilities. This quantity of concrete would be enough to build 3000 miles of road—a full-sized highway from one end of the United States to the other. Additionally, the dam required about five million barrels of cement, nearly equaling the total quantity of cement utilized by the Bureau in its previous 27 years of existence.
Lake Mead formed behind the high walls of Hoover Dam creating a huge reservoir called the Hoover Dam recreation area.
The dam, the gorge and lake Mead all combine to make a spectacular vista.
