Dam Workers -- Workers at Hoover Dam in Black Canyon, Nevada

by Darin Volpe

Title

Dam Workers -- Workers at Hoover Dam in Black Canyon, Nevada

Artist

Darin Volpe

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

Three workers at Hoover Dam on the Colorado River walk approximately 700 feet below the top of the dam.

Construction began on Hoover Dam in 1931 and it was completed in 1936, two years ahead of schedule. Located on the Arizona/Nevada border near Las Vegas, it was built for flood control, to provide irrigation water, and to product hydroelectric power. It was the largest concrete structure ever built at the time. It is a gravity-arch design that has a height of 726 feet and length of 1,244 feet. The width at the road level is 45 feet which grows to 660 feet at its base. The dam was originally called "Boulder Dam" due to the original proposed building site in Boulder Canyon, and when the project moved upriver to the Black Canyon site the informal name remained. (The act of Congress that authorized the project didn't specify a name.) It took on the name "Hoover Dam" when preliminary construction began and the Secretary of the Interior announced the new name at a ceremony. This was controversial because, while naming dams after presidents was a tradition, none were named after a sitting President. When President Hoover was defeated in 1932 by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the new Secretary of the Interior attempted to restore the name to Boulder Dam. But due to Congress having used the name "Hoover Dam" in appropriations bills for the project and the American public using the names Boulder and Hoover interchangeably, and because former President Hoover was being viewed in better light after World War II and as the Great Depression became a memory, Congress unanimously restored the name "Hoover Dam" in 1947.

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November 2nd, 2013

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