Hoover Dam

Hoover Dam is a concrete arch gravity dam in the Black canyon area of the Colorado river on the borders of Arizona and Nevada.  It was constructed between 1931 - 1936. It was dedicated on September 30, 1935 by Franklin Roosevelt.  The dam generators provide power for public and private utilities in Nevada, Arizona and California.  Nearly a million people visit the dam each year since it opened for tours in 1937.  US 93 ran along the dam's crest until Oct 2010 when Hoover Dam Bypass was opened. The Hoover Dam Bypass was proposed after 9/11 when vehicles utilizing Highway 93 got inspected.  A bypass would also allow for the growing traffic that utilized the highway between Arizona and Nevada.  The Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman bridge is the first concrete-steel composite arch bridge built in the U.S. and is the longest concrete arch bridge in the Western Hemisphere.  It is located 1600 ft downstream of Hoover Dam and is 840 ft high over the Colorado river.  Some people refer to Hoover dam as Boulder dam.  That was the original name from 1931 - 1947 when the dam was renamed Hoover Dam honoring President Herbert Hoover.  Its construction was the result of a massive effort involving thousands of workers in some of the worst weather conditions especially in the summer when the temperatures actually hit 119 degrees.  There were over 112 deaths during the construction of the dam.  Two of the deaths were kind of creepy.  It happened  to a father and son.  J.G. Tierney was a surveyor who was searching  the Colorado river where the dam would be built in 1922 and drowned.  He is considered the first death of the construction of the dam.  His son, Patrick Tierney was the last man to die during the construction 13 years later to the day.
With building of the dam Lake Mead was created and is the largest reservoir in the U.S.  It was formed by water impouned by Hoover Dam.  It extends 112 miles behind the dam and hold approximately 28,500,000 acre feet of water.  Lake Mead draws most of its water from the snowmelt of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah Rocky Mountains.
Boulder City was originally built in 1931 by the Bureau of Reclamation (U.S. Department of the Interior) for the sole purpose of housing the workers building the dam.  It was decided to built this town as a semi permanent town instead of an area for temporary housing since building the dam was a years long project.  Boulder city was exceptionally rare as a town fully planned under government supervision.  With the building of Hoover Dam which represented optimism to the country during the depression the government continued that plan with Boulder city and used it as an example of what other cities built around the river would be like.  The town was designed to provide housing for over 5000 workers and their families.  House size and location was built by the jobs held at the Dam with executives and management homes builts on hills and around public buildings and parks and workers homes further away from public buildings and parks.  The government ran Boulder City well after the completion of the dam and did not relinquish the city until 1959.  On January 4, 1960 Boulder City was incorporated.  It was and is one of two towns in Nevada the does not allow gambling.  The population is 15,400 with a median income of $50,500 and a median age of 47.