Hoover Dam: An Engineering Feat of Wonder
Hello friends and readers! We are out on the road and finding new, yet old places to visit.
Our latest stop is one of the wonders of the world. Hoover Dam, which started life as Boulder Dam, is not only a magnificent feat of design and engineering, but a life-saving compromise for the southwest states back in the 1920s and ‘30s in need of power and water.
What we like about this landmark is that it’s a dam good ending for A Tease of Murder, our giveaway book releasing soon. Our hero is trying to clear his name and his company’s integrity and ends up at this historic, iconic location. Someone does not make it out of the tour. You can find out who the unlucky victim is by reading A Tease of Murder.
Hoover Dam is a tour worth taking if you ever have the opportunity. Our tour guide was born and raised in the area and was able to speak with original workers from the 1931 construction. Each tour guide is different, but the information is amazing and informative. A must see.
Settlers came west from the northeast. At $4 a day, they were the best wages available for the time. The government death tolls from 1931 to 1935 are stated as ninety-six. The real number is three hundred and fifty, more than half from heat exhaustion. Our guide who was able to speak to original 1931ers when she was growing up, enlightened us in during the tour.
Quite a feat, this massive dam. Contrary to myth, there are no bodies buried in the wall. A decomposing body would weaken the structure. At the overlook where in the updated A Tease of Murder, there’s a battle to the death. Someone doesn’t make it out of Hoover Dam.
Many inventions were made in order to even build this. Six companies came together to cooperate to design, engineer and carry out the work needed.
From the beginning, the builders knew the dam would bring tourism. They incorporated art deco design in the terrazzo floors and construction. The workers lived in rag tents outside the area that is now Boulder City. After the first year the city began to take shape and trees were planted by William Weed, agriculturist, who in the beginning refused to plant them seeing no need. With temperatures of 113 degrees he reconsidered.
The generator room is 530 feet underground. Each unit weighs four million pounds. Herbert Hoover gathered leaders from six states to establish a plan to harness the Colorado River to provide electricity, water for farmlands, and to tame what could be a raging and dangerous Colorado River. There are seventeen hydroelectric generators connected to turbines.
Above the generators are the crosswise cranes. Each crane can lift two hundred tons. When they need to replace a rotor, they combine two since each rotor weighs four hundred tons.
The dam is built in squares in order to be placed as the wall. Since it would take one hundred years for the concrete to harden, they invented installing pipes inside the squares. They then ran cold water through them to harden more quickly. The dam is 726.4 feet in height and 1,244 feet across. The elevation at the crest is 1,232 feet. The amount of water through Hoover Dam is about 118,000 cubic feet per second: 32,000 cubic feet per second for power generation and 86,000 cubic feet per second of valve discharge.
The dam was dedicated by FDR in 1935 as Boulder Dam. In 1947, congress approved the name change to Hoover Dam.
Read A Tease of Murder and feel like you’re there!
