what was the original name of the hoover dam

 

For the dam to rest on solid rock, it was necessary to remove accumulated erosion soils and other loose materials in the riverbed until sound bedrock was reached. Originally known as Boulder Dam from 1933, it was officially renamed Hoover Dam for President Herbert Hoover by a joint resolution of Congress in 1947. With the opening of the bypass, through traffic is no longer allowed across Hoover Dam; dam visitors are allowed to use the existing roadway to approach from the Nevada side and cross to parking lots and other facilities on the Arizona side. The BCPA merely allows the government to "construct, operate, and maintain a dam and incidental works in the main stream of the Colorado River at Black Canyon or Boulder Canyon". [3] In 2015, the dam generated 3.6 TWh. Nig was also once seen in the front seat of a black Cadillac belonging to an executive touring the site. Twelve years later, Hoover was vindicated … They lacked sufficient resources even in combination with their longtime partners, Morrison-Knudsen, which employed the nation's leading dam builder, Frank Crowe. On August 13, the company began hiring workers again, and two days later, the strike was called off. Quail Lakes & Coal: Energy for Wildlife ... and the World, 2013, page 60, Bureau of Reclamation: Lower Colorado Region - Hoover Dam, U.S. National Register of Historic Places, Article I of the United States Constitution, Chinese benevolent association in the city, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Mike O'Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, List of dams in the Colorado River system, List of largest hydroelectric power stations, List of largest hydroelectric power stations in the United States, List of National Historic Landmarks in Arizona, List of National Historic Landmarks in Nevada, "Sharing Colorado River Water: History, Public Policy and the Colorado River Compact", "Impacts of the 1928 St. Francis Dam Failure on Geology, Civil Engineering, and America", "Lower Colorado Bureau of Reclamation: Hoover Dam, Facts and Figures", "Hoover Dam: Grout Curtain Failure and Lessons Learned in Site Characterization", American Heritage's Invention & Technology, "Catching a Wave - Jet Flow Gate Testing Brings a Crowd", "OPERATION PLAN FOR COLORADO RIVER SYSTEM RESERVOIRS", "Lake Mead Drops to its Lowest-Ever Level", "Drought Diminishes Hydropower Capacity in Western U.S.", "Receding Lake Mead poses challenges to Hoover Dam's power output", "Los Angeles considers $3B pumped storage project at Hoover Dam", "City Of Los Angeles Wants To Turn Hoover Dam Into World's Largest Pumped Energy Storage Facility", "President signs Hoover Dam Power Allocation Act", "House, after stiff debate, backs cheap power for 3 Western states", "Crossing Hoover Dam: A Guide for Motorists", "The Hoover Dam – Everything You Need to Know About Visiting", "Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program", "Resurrecting the Dammed: A Look at Colorado River Restoration", 10.1641/0006-3568(2001)051[0998:RTDALA]2.0.CO;2, "A Conservation Plan for Native Fishes of the Lower Colorado River", 10.1641/0006-3568(2003)053[0219:ACPFNF]2.0.CO;2, "Macrofaunal and isotopic estimates of the former extent of the Colorado River estuary, upper Gulf of California, México", "Science and Values in River Restoration in the Grand Canyon", Historic Construction Company Project – Hoover Dam, Hoover Dam, Spanning Colorado River at Route 93, Boulder City, Clark County, NV, Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum official site, Brownstone Canyon Archaeological District, Gold Strike Canyon-Sugarloaf Mountain Traditional Cultural Property, Grapevine Canyon Petroglyphs (AZ:F:14:98 ASM), Las Vegas High School Academic Building and Gymnasium, Las Vegas High School Neighborhood Historic District, Old Spanish Trail/Mormon Road Historic District, Sheep Mountain Range Archeological District, National Register of Historic Places listings in Nevada, Birthplace and childhood home National Historic Site, Presidential Library, Museum, and gravesite, International Boundary and Water Commission, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hoover_Dam&oldid=1018192762, Buildings and monuments honoring American presidents in the United States, Buildings and structures in Clark County, Nevada, Buildings and structures in Mohave County, Arizona, Dams on the National Register of Historic Places in Nevada, Energy infrastructure on the National Register of Historic Places, Historic American Engineering Record in Arizona, Historic American Engineering Record in Nevada, Industrial buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Arizona, National Register of Historic Places in Mohave County, Arizona, Tourist attractions in Clark County, Nevada, Tourist attractions in Mohave County, Arizona, Wikipedia indefinitely move-protected pages, Wikipedia pending changes protected pages, Short description is different from Wikidata, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Wikipedia articles with multiple identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Power, flood control, water storage, regulation, recreation, Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation and Drainage District, Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative, This page was last edited on 16 April 2021, at 18:20. [56], The men who removed this rock were called "high scalers". Water released from the Hoover Dam eventually reaches several canals. A total of 58 of the 393 holes were incompletely filled. The dam's generators provide power for public and private utilities in Nevada, Arizona, and California. California’s many success stories include large projects as the famous Boulder or Hoover Dam as much as the sun, oranges and tourist spots of this idyllic state in the West. May 29, 1935 – The final concrete was poured at the dam’s location. Congress then renamed the dam Hoover Dam after President Herbert Hoover in 1947. [33] Another camp, on the flats along the Colorado River, was officially called Williamsville, but was known to its inhabitants as "Ragtown". Hoover Dam (36°0′56″N, 114°44′16″W), also known as Boulder Dam, is a concrete gravity-arch dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada. Instead, the ground where the dam would rise was marked with rectangles, and concrete blocks in columns were poured, some as large as 50 ft square (15 m) and 5 feet (1.5 m) high. Bills to rename it for Hoover failed in both 1929 and 1930. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was present and most of the work on the dam (with the exception of the powerhouse) was completed at the time. Lake Mead fell to a new record low elevation of 1,071.61 feet (326.63 m) on July 1, 2016, before beginning to rebound slowly. When the dam was in its planning stages, in 1930, Herbert Hoover was President. Grout was also used to fill the hairline spaces between columns, which were grooved to increase the strength of the joints. Therefore, the side-walls were excavated too, to reach virgin rock, as weathered rock might provide pathways for water seepage. [117] Increased security concerns by the government have led to most of the interior structure being inaccessible to tourists. [133] In 1947, a bill passed both Houses of Congress unanimously restoring the name "Hoover Dam. [22] The Boulder Canyon Project Act[23] appropriated $165 million for the project along with the downstream Imperial Dam and All-American Canal, a replacement for Beatty's canal entirely on the U.S. side of the border. This is your last free article. Although Black Canyon was later deemed a better location for the new structure, it continued to be referred to as the Boulder Dam. Dam in Clark County, Nevada/Mohave County, Arizona, U.S. Groundworks, rock clearance and grout curtain, Olberhelman, Olberhelman, and Lampe. [3] The annual generation of Hoover Dam varies. As severe drought grips parts of the Western United States, Lake Mead, which was once the largest reservoir in the nation, has seen its surface elevation drop below 1,080 feet above sea level, its lowest level since the construction of the Hoover Dam in the 1930s. [120] The construction of the dam has been implicated in causing the decline of this estuarine ecosystem. The upper cofferdam was 96 ft (29 m) high, and 750 feet (230 m) thick at its base, thicker than the dam itself. [71] After the ceremony, Roosevelt made the first visit by any American president to Las Vegas. * The request timed out and you did not successfully sign up. For his part, Hoover, in his memoirs, maintained that having the dam stripped of his name was unimportant. When an individual block had cured and had stopped contracting, the pipes were filled with grout. [34] When construction began, Six Companies hired large numbers of workers, with more than 3,000 on the payroll by 1932[35] and with employment peaking at 5,251 in July 1934. In the years that followed, whether one called the under-construction dam “Hoover” or “Boulder” was often an indication of political party. In 1922, representatives of seven states met with then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. Finally, using pneumatic guns, the overheads were filled in. Nine of the main turbines are in the … [38] The company built bunkhouses, attached to the canyon wall, to house 480 single men at what became known as River Camp. (In 1947, Congress unanimously changed the name back to "Hoover Dam.") Included in the fatality list are three workers who took their own lives on site, one in 1932 and two in 1933. [96] Following an uprating project from 1986 to 1993, the total gross power rating for the plant, including two 2.4 megawatt Pelton turbine-generators that power Hoover Dam's own operations is a maximum capacity of 2080 megawatts. It should have been easy enough: in September of 1930, as Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur formally initiated construction on a major Colorado River dam, he proclaimed the following: “I have the honor to name this dam after a great engineer, who really started this greatest project of all time—the Hoover Dam!”. When the bottom of the bucket opened up, disgorging 8 cu yd (6.1 m3) of concrete, a team of men worked it throughout the form. [50] Their combined length was nearly 16,000 ft, or more than 3 miles (5 km). Formed by the Hoover Dam on September 30, 1935, the reservoir serves water to the states of Arizona, California, and Nevada, as well as some of Mexico, providing sustenance to nearly 20 million people and large areas of farmland. Six Companies ordered thousands of what initially were called "hard boiled hats" (later "hard hats") and strongly encouraged their use. The contractor had seven years to build the dam, or penalties would ensue. The excavation of this U-shaped structure located at the downstream toe of the dam was completed in late 1933 with the first concrete placed in November 1933. [57] One high scaler was able to save a life in a more direct manner: when a government inspector lost his grip on a safety line and began tumbling down a slope towards almost certain death, a high scaler was able to intercept him and pull him into the air. [127], When Secretary of the Interior Ray Wilbur spoke at the ceremony starting the building of the railway between Las Vegas and the dam site on September 17, 1930, he named the dam "Hoover Dam", citing a tradition of naming dams after Presidents, though none had been so honored during their terms of office. Subscribe for just 99¢. However, the name of the dam was never officially changed from "Hoover." Its construction was the result of a massive effort involving thousands of workers, and cost over one hundred lives. The strike ended. [123] The construction of the dam devastated the populations of native fish in the river downstream from the dam. [12] The river would carry off the smaller pieces of debris, and a dam would be built incorporating the remaining rubble. As the required grade of aggregate in the concrete differed depending on placement in the dam (from pea-sized gravel to 9 inches (230 mm) stones), it was vital that the bucket be maneuvered to the proper column. A government camp was established for surveyors and other personnel near the dam site; this soon became surrounded by a squatters' camp. [110], The large spillway tunnels have only been used twice, for testing in 1941 and because of flooding in 1983. December 20, 1922, while looking for an ideal spot for the dam. First the base, or invert, was poured. Known as McKeeversville, the camp was home to men hoping for work on the project, together with their families. The gates cannot entirely prevent water from entering the spillways but can maintain an extra 16 ft (4.9 m) of lake level. “But can we say that a five-foot brushwood dam across the head waters of an arroyo, and costing only a millionth part of Boulder Dam, is an undesirable project or a waste of money?”. [97], The amount of electricity generated by Hoover Dam has been decreasing along with the falling water level in Lake Mead due to the prolonged drought in the 2010s and high demand for the Colorado River's water. [109] Today, nearly a million people per year take the tours of the dam offered by the Bureau of Reclamation.