Hoover Dam

Yesterday, we visited Hoover Dam. What a fascinating place! We took the "full" tour of both the power plant and the dam. Some interesting things I remember hearing:

• There were three shifts of workers, working 24 hours a day, every day - only 3 days off a year - Christmas day, 4th of July, and Labor Day. It was finished in 5 years (1931-1936), 2 years earlier than planned, and under budget.
• This was built during the Great Depression, so men were happy to have a job. The whole family relocated with the worker to the area near the dam. There was no place for them to live, so they initially stayed in tents near the Colorado River. It took about a year for Boulder City to be built. It was a "government town" and only changed that status in 1959 (to become an incorporated city). It remains one of only two cities in Nevada that do not have gambling.
• The dam was built as a "reclamation project" - before it existed, downstream communities were subject to flooding (and drought). In addition, it provides hydroelectric power for California, Nevada, and Arizona.
• The bypass bridge (that we crossed coming north on route 93) was completed in 2010. Before that, route 93 traffic crossed over the dam (I am really glad that this was not the case when we drove to Las Vegas on Wednesday - the road would have been narrow, steep, and curvy for Miss Daisy!

30' penstock that carries the water from Lake Mead to the Hydroelectric generators

A diagram that shows the water transmission vehicles around the dam - there are two inlets on the Nevada side, and two on the Arizona side. There are also overflow valves on each side if the lake ever gets too high (not a concern right now - was only used right after the dam was built for testing, and in 1983 during a flood stage on the Lake).

A photo of a photo of the overflow into the spillway in 1983

Generators

Ventilation tube

On the way to the vent at the end of the tube, we crossed a grate over another tunnel that went straight down

Looking out the vent toward the Colorado River

Looking down the back of the dam

Back of the dam

The arrow shows the vent (on the Arizona side) at the level where we looked out the vent on the dam tour.

Looking over the dam toward the downstream Colorado River and the highway 93 bridge that we crossed on Wednesday

 

Patti looking at the Nevada side inlets

Patti at the dedication seal

Looking at the back of the dam from the Arizona side

 

Dedication plaque

back of dam from Nevada side

Power generating plants (from Nevada side)

Tesla in the employee parking lot (the employees must make more now than the workers during construction)

Another car in the employee parking lot (note the license number!)

Nevada time on the intake

Arizona time on the other intake (if the road still came across the dam, maybe we would have known the time changed to Pacific time in Nevada!)

A list of the engineers who worked on the dam

One of the Arizona side intakes, and the southern end of Lake Mead - very low

A statue commemorating the workers who worked high up on the sides of the canyon during construction

Originally, the dam was to be placed in Boulder Canyon, and thus it was called the "Boulder Canyon Dam" - but it ended up being placed in Black Canyon.

Innovations during the building of the dam

Specs on the dam

Designations of the dam

All around the dam are huge power lines - this information plaque told about the insulators - it said that you could calculate the approximate voltage in a line by multiplying the number of segments in the insulator times 14,000.

There are 16 insulators on these - over 200Kv

 

Driving back toward Boulder City - another view of Lake Mead