Hoover Dam: Southern Nevada’s local modern marvel of engineering. And feat of human ingenuity. Go and be awed and inspired.
The Hoover Dam might not have been a thing. Seven states in the southwest were at an impasse. They all agreed on two things:
- That the Colorado River was a bitch, and
- They needed a sustainable and controllable water supply.
Golden Dam Water
But they argued over how.
Hoover was instrumental in the unsticking. The Colorado River Compact split up the river and allowed for storage dams to be built. You could say it… paved the way for the dam? Maybe he just… kept the flow going? Made sure the talks didn’t… hit a wall? Okay, I’m done.
Abercombie Poster at the Hoover Dam?
Finished in 1936, the Dam was built in just 5 years – 2 years ahead of schedule. Before any work could be done on the dam, crews spent 2 years digging massive tunnels on either side of the Colorado River to redirect it, so that they could build the Dam where the river naturally flowed. Two years, just for that.
Then eventually, there were a couple of years of pouring concrete. Precisely a barrel of the stuff every 88 seconds, 24 hours a day in 3 shifts, every day of the year (except Christmas and Independence day, duh).
Hoover Dam brings power, irrigation for farming, and recreation. But no women, apparently 🙁
That’s every 88 seconds, without stopping, for 2 years, until 3.25 million cubic yards of concrete was poured. To give you an idea, that’s enough to pave a 4-foot sidewalk around the equator.
At peak, 5,300 workers were on the payroll of the Hoover Dam project. But all said and done, over 21,000 people contributed to it. Oh, and one dog:
No, this is not a control panel from the USS Enterprise. Nerd.
We took the tour. You go down into the power plant, which is just nuts. I just can’t express the sheer magnitude of this facility.
That picture there (the one that is NOT a control panel from the USS Enterprise) is a map of the facility.
And this is a picture of one of the four outer ribs – penstocks carrying water to the power plant. Enough water passes through each one of these pipes to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool every 7 seconds.
17 giant turbines generate electricity as water passes through them at 45 miles an hour, spinning their magnets against copper coils. Each of the turbines weigh more than 2 Statue of Liberties. That’s a lot. (Sorry, Libby. Just don’t ask us if you look fat in those robes.)
1.3 million people are served power from the Hoover Dam, including me.
But the outside is where the real spectacle is – and probably why a million people visit this place each year.
