Hoover Dam – A Great Man Made Wonder!



On the By Mass over looking Hoover Dam



We made it to Nevada!

We left Arizona and the great natural wonder of the Grand Canyon on way to Nevada. As we drove near the border of Nevada we came upon the great man made wonder, The Hoover Dam. It was named after Herbert Hoover and it is the second structure named after him that we knew, the first being Hoover Tower on the campus of Stanford University. Some call it Hoover's Last Erection.
We drove in to the parking lot and went through inspection. Security saw our Rocket Box and flagged us aside. Bummer, we thought. In San Padre we found out that our Rocket Box had a defective lock so we had to tie it down with ratchet tie down straps. So now John had to get up on the ladder and unstrap the box, open it and show the security guard that it had nothing but sails. We passed inspection and were told to go and park.

Hoover Dam-A Man Made Wonder!

We climbed up to the Hoover Dam Bypass just opened this year. This bridge is dedicated to Mike O'Callaghan, the governor of Nevada responsible for the building of the bridge, and Pat Tillman who gave up his football career to go to Iraq and lost his life to friendly fire. We stood by the memorial plaque and did some reading about the dam. Here are some stats: Building started in 1931 during the Depression employing people. 112 people died in the project. J.G. Tierney, a surveyor, was the first to die and his son Patrick was the last to die 13 years later to the day of his father's death. To those who died, a plaque was erected that said, "They died to make the desert bloom." The dam was built by a consortium of five companies two of which were Kaiser and Bechtel from San Francisco. It cost $49 billion dollars. It was finished by 1936 ahead of schedule. It is 726.4 Ft in height, 1,244ft in Length, and holds 250,000 cu. Yd. of water. This water created Lake Meade Reservoir and generates 4.2 Kwh of energy for Nevada and Los Angeles. Bugsy Siegel owes his success to this dam as well as the Motion Picture Industry in L.A. Wow!

We walked until we were right in front of the dam and took our pictures. We didn't have time to go into the dam and see the generators though we had been in several dams on the Columbia and studied how they work to generate electricity. I remember supervising the making of electro-magnates when I taught physics in middle school. This was just one on a grand scale. It just goes to show you the power of moving water with the help of gravity all being put to good use.