Get to know all about the Hoover Dam

HOOVER DAM is one of the largest electrical power plants in the world and is considered as an engineering landmark.

Here’s what you need to know about the “greatest dam in the world.”

Where is the Hoover Dam?

It is situated on the Nevada-Arizona border and is 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas.

The dam is ginormous, stretching 1,244 feet across the Black Canyon.

Why was it built?

It was constructed to control flooding along the Colorado River and provides water and hydroelectric power for California and the Southwest.

It helped fuel the development of such major cities as Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix in the 1930s and 1940s. 

And it was credited with helping to jump-start America’s economy after the Great Depression.

The mammoth project was spearheaded by the President of the time, Herbert Hoover.

For that reason the dam was named after him. 

How was it built?

It took 30 years of planning before the construction of the Hoover Dam started.

Engineer Arthur Powell Davis, who worked at the Bureau of Reclamation, started the plans in 1902.

The construction then started in 1931 and it finally opened on March 1, 1936.

In those times, no company was strong enough to take the project on its own, so Utah Construction Company got in business with five others to fund the dam which cost them approximately $674 million USD in today’s money.

The sides of the Black Canyon were blown away with explosive and so space for construction was created.

There four direction tunnels built to redirect water while the dam was being built.

It took them a year to dredge the bottom of the canyon, blast and then remove the debris and dig to build the foundations of the dam.

Giant concrete blocks were fitted and used to build the dam.

It should be appreciated how over 5,000 workers done most of the labour by hand, mainly because the dam was built in the middle of nowhere.

The average pay for such workers was 62.5 cents an hour – the lowest being 50 cents an hour and the highest $1.25 an hour.

How many turbines are there?

There are 17 main turbines in the Hoover Power Plant.

Nine are on the Arizona wing and eight are on the Nevada wing.

They generate on average about 4 billion kilowatt-hours of hydroelectric power each year for Nevada, Arizona, and California.

Today that serves 1.3 million people.

Swimmers are banned from the reservoir because they risk being sucked under by the turbines.

But in September a stag-do Brit cheated death as the first person to swim across it.

He only escaped being dragged under during his 30-minute swim because nine of its ten hydroelectric turbines were switched off.

How much concrete was used to build it?

It is estimated some 4.3 million cubic yards of concrete were used to build the dam, its power plant and other features.

This was said to be enough concrete to pave a 16-foot-wide, 8-inch-thick road from San Francisco to New York City, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.

How many deaths were there?

Contrary to popular myth, no one was buried alive in the dam’s concrete as it was poured.

Officially the project had 96 construction-related deaths.

This resulted from falling rocks or accidents involving heavy equipment.

But it is thought the actual death toll was way in excess of 100.

Many workers were unhappy with the working conditions and in 1961, some of them went out on strike to demand iced water, flush toilets, and that the Six Companies who built the project follow mining laws.

Despite the danger and poor conditions of working at the dam, it was a job that many people moved to Nevada for in 1929, considering the poor economic state at the time.

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