Ringstad Ramblings: Hoover Dam & KA

Today we headed to Boulder City and the Hoover Dam. We go to the inspection place just before the dam and had to pull over for an inspection because we have the tonneau cover on the truck and they had to check the back. They have really improved this area from the last time we were here. They had more lanes to do the initial questions and a separate inspection area so it does go much faster. We then headed to the base of the bridge and walked up to the top to get a picture of the dam from river side.

Traffic used to flow over the Hoover Dam and it would create large traffic jams all the way back to Boulder City which was 11 miles away and it got worse when they started vehicle inspections after Sept 11. Construction started on Feb 14, 2005 and ended on Oct 14, 2010. The total cost was $240 million. It is an arch bridge and the total length is 1,900 feet.

This is the view from the middle of the bridge

This is view of the bridge from the Hoover Dam.

In 1922 the U.S Reclamation Service recommended building a huge dam to harness the Colorado river. On October 29, 1929 the stock market crashed and pushed the United States into the Great Depression. By the end of the 1930’s more than 1/5th of the nations bank had failed and nine million Americans lost their life savings, many lost their jobs and their homes.

On Jan10, 1931 the government solicited bids for the huge Boulder Canyon Project. The winning bid was from a super company made up of 6 construction companies. Their bid came at just over $24,000 over the governments estimate. The man in charge of the project was Frank T Crowe. He was a hard task master but he kept the project on time as there was a penalty clause for the 6 companies of $3000 for every day that they ran over deadline.

In the summer of 1931 men began to die in the 140 degree heat and poor working conditions. Then on August 7, the company cut the wages of the workers. That night the workers took a vote to strike and came off with 9 demands on such issues as drinking water, flush toilets, safety and wages. Their demands were denied and they were all fired. On Aug 13, they started hiring back, giving preference to old worthy workers and rehiring many workers. The strike was over but Six Companies took steps to improve some of the working and living conditions and by 1932 attitudes and laws about unions began to change and by 1934 most of the workers were unionized.

On June 6, 1933 the first bucket of concrete was swung in, 800 feet over the canyon floor, then plummeted to within a few feet of the ground. Workers tripped the safety latches and 16 tons of wet concrete slid onto the bedrock. Then puddlers in knee high boots moved in to spread the concrete around. The pour continued day and night, seven days a week for nearly two years. Operators and signal ent used nearly telepathic teamwork to maneuver the buckets. They got better as time went by with a record pour of 10, 402 cubic yards in one day.

Despite the stories, no worker was buried alive in the concrete. For one thing each 8 yard bucket raise the level only about 2 feet, not deep enough to bury a worker. Engineers had calculated that if the dam were built in once piece, the heat produced by the setting concrete would take 125 years to cool. The stress caused by he hardening concrete would fracture the dam. So the dam was built as a series of interlocking concrete blocks stacked on top of each other. A grid of cooling pipe was embedded in each block, so that cold water old be pumped through. This huge radiator reduced the concreted cooling time to less that two years.

Only American citizens could work on the project which in practice came to mean “Whites Only” There were some African Americans who were hired in 1932 but they were not allowed to live in Boulder City. When FDR was elected President it was decreed that any minority who was working at the dam could live in the city.

The dam is 726.4 feet high, as tall as a 60 story building, 660 feet thick and 1,282 feet long from canyon wall to canyon wall. There are 3.25 million cubic yards of concrete are in the dam alone-more volume than in the Great Pyramid of Egypt. It also holds back 666 billion gallons of water and supplies irrigation to more that 1.5 million acres of farm land. It also generates 4 billion kilowatt hours of power per year.

The Dam is divided in half between Nevada and Arizona, you can literally be in two place at one time

This is the intake for the Arizona side for power generation.

This is looking over the edge of the dam straight down.

This is looking East to Lake Mead. The dark mark at the top was the high water mark. Even though this winter helped to put some water back into Lake Mead, they don’t know if the water level will ever return.

After the dam we went back to Boulder City, visited the local museum which is where I got most of the information above, excellent museum. We then visited a local metal art statue shop. Brenda picked up a couple of very neat flower sets as well as a dragon fly.

We got back into Vegas in time go change and head to the MGM Grand to see the Cirque du Soleil show KA. The show was excellent, I didn’t completely follow the story line but there was so much going on it was very exciting.

This is a video that Len took of the theatre. We were not allowed to film the show so this is all we have.

After the show we had to go across the street to New York, New York and the Excalibur to catch the shuttle bust back to the condo.

New York New York