Hoover Dam
In a display of political pickiness that is familiar today, the dam was named Hoover Dam while Hoover was still in office. His successor, FDR, called it Boulder Dam. It wasn't till after WWII that Congress officially named it Hoover Dam. Uploaded by hshieh.blogspot.com.
I should have written this dam article a long time ago. It’s one of the best dam feats of engineering in American history, which you don’t have to be a dam genius to appreciate.
Hoover Dam. Uploaded by goodreads.com.
Some dam facts that are almost too enormous to fully comprehend:
- It weighs 6.6 million tons (I’d like to see the scales used)
- It’s 726 feet high
- It’s 1244 ft. across the top
- It’s 45 ft. thick at the top, 660 ft. thick at the base
- It contains more masonry than the Great Pyramid
- Its 17 generators can produce as much as 2000 megawatts of electricity
No engineering feat of this magnitude (and danger) can be accomplished without some loss of life. Officially, 112 deaths are associated with the construction of Hoover Dam. Now this is really something – the first man to die was a surveyor who drowned while looking for the ideal spot for the dam. And the last man to die, 13 years later to the day, was his son. That’s a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not item if I’ve ever heard one.