Hover Dam

       

 Hoover Dam

Managing Water in the West

One of the cool things that we did while our Georgia friends were here was to visit the Hoover Dam.  Visiting the Hoover Dam was on our 'To Do' list while we are living here in California.  So while we were out in Vegas we took the short trip over to the Hoover Dam, which is less than an hours drive.  

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Upon arriving at the Dam we were kinda surprised at how small it was.  The boys have seen the Transformer movie which depicts the Hoover Dam as a GINORMOUS structure, and it is pretty big, just not as GINORMOUS as the movies show.  

The Colorado River flows along a 1400 mile course from Colorado's Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of California.  In the early 1900s this river often flooded low-lying farmland and communities in the spring and early summer as it overflowed with water from melting snow.  In late summer and early fall, it often dried to a trickle.  To protect the low-lying lands from flooding, and to assure a stable, year round water supply, the river needed to be controlled.

The construction of the Hoover Dam began in 1931, and the last bit of concrete was poured in 1935.

Before the dam could be built it had to be diverted.  So they dug tunnels for the water to pass through until the completion of the dam.  We were able to walk thru these tunnels on our dam tour.  

Here we could see outside of the inside of the dam (down in the mist of dark tunnels)

  

This picture is the top side of the dam.  The side of the walls that form the lake have a white line made from calcium.  

The Hoover dam is on the state line of Nevada and Arizona.  To walk across is only about the length of a football field. 

Pretty cool place to visit! Glad we were able to enjoy our day at the Hoover Dam with friends.