LV, NV - Hoover Dam and Boulder City

Again, it’s a bit cold and windy to straddle the ridge line up to Frenchman’s peak, the peak we see every morning beckoning to us. Maybe the next time we’re in Las Vegas. Today is a better day for the museums. We went to Hoover Dam in 2006 and took the full tour inside the dam itself. A few days ago we toured outside the Dam to see the new bridge and how the dam and the bridge complemented each other. Because we had all seen the Visitor Center in the past, we went on to visit other places.

Today I decided that I really wanted to see the VC again and we realized that we had miscalculated the pricing the last time we were here. We began with the usual donut, even though we aren’t going to hike today. We knew where the Dunkin’ Donuts was - in one of the local casinos - at the very opposite corner from where we had parked. We must had walked at least a mile through all that smoke to get to the prize, the donuts. And, walking back, our coffee cooled a little. Ah, well.

We first toured inside the dam, down the elevator embedded in the cement, through the tunnels

and into the cavernous room on the Nevada side where the 8 turbines were housed. Electricity was not one of the major reasons for constructing the dam but it has been a great extra. With the sale of electricity, the Dam has paid off all it cost to build it and now pays for its maintenance. There are also 8 turbines on the Arizona side.

The Colorado River always was both a blessing and a torment to those who lived along it. It brought lots of water for them to grow their corps but it could also bring devastating floods in the spring and parching droughts in the fall. Many had long speculated of ways to tame the river to make it more useful. Finally in the late 20’s, the momentum was there to build a dam across the canyon to control floods and drought, provide hydroelectric power and provide water for irrigation. Since no single company could manage this large a task, a conglomerate company called Six Companies, Inc. won the bid (And, if you surmised that six companies joined together, you’d be right.) Here is a view of the place where they decided to build the dam after some of the work had been done. It was a forbidding and remote location.

But the US was in the depths of the depression and thousands descended upon Las Vegas searching for work. Eventually they began to camp out near the work zone at around the river to the left. This area became known as Ragtown and I’ve got some pictures on 2/25 showing some of the families who lived here. Here is another picture of the area itself. The dam would be built off behind the mountains on the left and this area itself would be mostly flooded by the dam and be buried under Lake Mead when the Dam was operable.

It was one of the largest engineering undertakings ever in the world, comparable to some of the ancient wonders. At the maximum, there were 5000 men working on the dam in various functions.

Building the dam broke down into several separate tasks:

        Smooth the sides of the canyon walls so that the concrete dam would hold tight. here’s a picture of the ‘high scalers’ who, with only ropes and a bosun’s chair moved agilely along the canyon walls with jackhammers and dynamite to move rock outcroppings. These men had to be fearless and, because they had one of the more risky jobs, were paid more than the starting pay of $4.00 a day for the common laborers.

        ‘MOVE’ the Colorado so that they could build the dam on the canyon bottom. Above is a picture of three of the 4 56’ diameter tunnels drilled through the cliffs on either side of where the dam was going to be built to divert the river. And, here is how they got lots of drilling done fast. Look how many men can drill at once on the rig pictured below. This is called a ‘drilling jumbo’ and held 30 miners drilling all at once. Competition was fierce among the drillers and the record for the longest tunnel drilled was 46’ in 8 hours. Through solid rock. Makes my head throb.

        Make the concrete. They built a concrete plant near the dam site to supply the dam and, using rope pulleys, ferried it by bucket over the canyon walls, lowered it down to the section needing concrete and dropped it. Here you can see lots of small sections into which they divided the dam. Each section was about 10’ x 8’. The dam has enough concrete to build a 4’ wide sidewalk around the world at the equator. It is 660’ wide at the bottom, more than 2 football fields end to end.

        Build the dam. They did this in sections as I mentioned above. Concrete takes time to harden and, given the size of the dam, they reasoned that if they poured it all at once, it would take 125 years to harden. Thus they poured it in sections, pictured above, inserted pipes through which they pumped cold water to cool the concrete in record time. The rumors were that men were buried in the concrete. However, the concrete was poured in sections of 2 - 3” in depth. and they had ‘puddlers’ with huge rubber boots who tamped down the cement after each bucket was poured. Hard to miss a body under those circumstances and there are no bodies buried there.

        Build the spillways.

Whew, what a job. But it was done under time and under budget and with the continual sale of electricity, is still making money.

On a sad note, 96 men died building the dam. However, the exact number who died depends upon who is doing the counting and what was listed as the cause of death. Falls, drowning and being crushed by falling rock and concrete caused the most deaths. Pneumonia was listed as the leading ‘non-industrial’ cause of death. The kicker is that you had to actually die on the job to be counted and be paid an insurance claim. The death of those who were taken to a hospital or who died at home of carbon monoxide or other causes was attributed to ‘pneumonia’ to avoid having to pay these claims.

Before we left, Gary had to rub the toes of the statues in the dedication square to ensure good luck in the casinos. This s a legend which has grown up around these stares and we wanted to be sure we were ready for our big debut in the casinos. The statues may be green but the toes have been rubbed shiny metallic.

After we had visited the Dam, we toured Boulder City, the city built to house the workers, and the Boulder City Museum. The Museum was fairly small but very complete, very interesting and informative. It told the stories of the families and the men rather than the dam. Here we got a glimpse into the homes and the lives of the workers. Boulder City was one of the first planned communities in the US and he designed the center of the city. Here’s Cherry Street right after the homes had been built,

Cherry Street from the street level,

and, finally, my picture of Cherry Street today.

Boulder City is one of the first planned communities in America and those families who got to live her consdered themselves very lucky.

Again, the museum had lots of things that the workers used in their everyday job and that their wives used in their homes. It made the building of the dam so much more personal.

Here’s the washing machine that some of the women could rent to clean their clothes. Using the technique Gary is demonstrating, the round objects in the tub swirled the water around the clothes to get the dirt out. Then they would wring the clothes in the back of the tub then hang them out at their homes.

Here’s one of the water bags that the men carried to work in the hot summer sun. Water boys used to carry them around to those who needed them.

Here’s a felt hat that the workers wore before they developed the hardened tar hard hats.

And, here are some of the common everyday ‘appliances’ and kitchen tools used in the common home.

Small museum but surprisingly good.

But we enjoyed walking around the town center since they have instituted an art project. Sculptures are on every corner, some donated by citizens of town and others for sale either to put in someone’s home or to donate to the city. The first is of a Ragtown woman hanging out clothes to dry. The second - well, you can guess.

Here’s Gary’s favorite statue: not all workers on the Dam could be drillers or truck drivers or high scalers. Some had to be ‘sanitation engineers.’

Boulder City takes great pride in its center city and we agree that it was neat to walk around.