As part of RVworking, I get to visit all kinds of craziness, including, you guessed it – the touristy things! But, I’m completely OK with that. I love that I can go on off hours and I’m not rushed, and that I’m able to spend as little or as long as I want in places.
I recently moved from Arizona to Nevada (I’m so close to my coast-to-coast goal!), and driving the RV on the upper bridge of the Hoover Dam, I was quite amazed. I knew I’d have to go back and visit by car once I got my RV setup and got some time. Fast forward, two days later.
Driving to the Hoover Dam
Thankfully, I’m only about 30 minutes from the Hoover Dam, something I’ve always wanted to visit and spend some time at. I took off early Saturday morning, and after enjoying a nice breakfast buffet for $9 (seriously, how can they afford that?!), I headed back to the Dam. 32 minutes later, I arrived, and went through the guard shack. Ironically though, it was the first time in my entire trip of passing through three time zones that I came across this sign. I think every place should have these!
Now in Pacific Time Zone!
After parking in the parking garage (a $10 charge, cash or credit), you walk down a small pathway, and you are right at the dam. This dam is full of history, including some movies that I even recognized it featured in. I was there on a mid-day on Saturday, and shockingly it wasn’t very busy. It may have had to do with the fact the temperatures were nearing triple digits, but overall, it wasn’t unbearable.
Unfortunately, the dam tour, which takes you into the mechanical rooms were closed. Instead though, they offered a history based slideshow following a five minute featured film. I opted for the film and slideshow and was incredibly amazed by the history of the dam.
Some of the most intriguing things I learned were that when the dam was being built, it was built in under time and under budget. Apparently, all over the country, workers wanted to be a part of the construction. The construction company, Six Companies, even setup a local town (Boulder City, NV) to house the 21,000+ workers as a part of the project. Las Vegas, who ended up shutting down some speakeasies for a day during visits, didn’t help Las Vegas win the headquarters.
The total amount of cement on this project amounted to the same amount of concrete that the entire bureau used in their 27 years of existence. This happens to be enough to build a concrete highway from coast to coast (3,000 miles)! With all that concrete, engineering assistance was needed – thus creating a massive cooling plant, to cool all the concrete. This cooling plant ran cold water pipes up through canals of the concrete to help dry and cure this concrete – something that would have taken years to do naturally.
The project which started in April of 1931 brought 119 degree weather – something which these workers still worked through, despite the number of heat strokes.
Some of the workers were extremely innovative, and in fact they constantly competed with each other – this is when a Freightliner truck was retrofitted to have six to twelve drill bits mounted on the back of the truck that can drill simultaneously. No longer did workers have to drag a ladder, climb up the ladder, drill, insert dynamite and then run with their ladders. This truck was able to back up, drill, insert dynamite, and then switch with the workers to chisel out the rock. This was a huge innovation allowing the dam to be completed in 2 years under schedule.
The dam is self contained, and produces enough power for 1.3 million people in Nevada, California, and Arizona. German Nazi’s attempted to blow up the dam during World War II in order to destroy the power producing and hurting California’s aviation manufacturing economy. It obviously wasn’t attempted, but not before the thought of building a decoy dam further down the river.
Check out some of the photos from the visit, and let me know in the comments if you’ve been or what hidden history you’ve got. There is so much history here, I could probably write a book on it.
Comments are closed.
Copyright 2017 RVworking
Dad
June 4, 2018 at 3:06 pmThat Dam is an amazing thing, too bad you couldn’t go down the elevator to see the generators. Your Mom and I went when you were living in Phoenix. It was a great tour. We also may or may not have been there with the Griswold’s. You are right, the scale of things being built, the daring and the will power of the workers, the amount of materials,the speed of construction and the “by pass tunnels to divert the river while under construction was/is amazing.