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| The bypass bridge was opened in 2010 across the outflow of the Colorado River from the Hoover Dam. This allows traffic to flow continuously on the highway instead of the old 2-lane road that winds around. It also gives visitors a great view of the dam, towers and spillways. |
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| Fortunately, the rain we had driven through for 90 minutes had finally stopped so we had a great view of the everything including Lake Mead. Constructed in the 1930s by 21,000 men, the dam is 726 feet tall and 660 feet thick (at the bottom) and holds back the water pressure of 45,000 pounds per square foot. At 4.5 million cubic yards of concrete, that is enough to build a four-foot wide sidewalk around the Earth at the Equator. |
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| Just the facts, Ma'am. And there are plenty of them. Named after the former Nevada Governor Mike O'Callaghan and former NFL player and U.S. Army Ranger. Spanning the Black Canyon between Nevada and Arizona, the bridge is nearly 900 feet above the Colorado River. It is the seventh highest bridge in the world. |
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| A statue of a worker in harness called the "Dam High Scaler Monument", a larger-than-life, fearless, worker who would dangle hundreds of feet in the air, armed with jack hammers to jar loose rocks and dynamite to blast away at the canyon walls. And the faithful mascot who spent years along side the workers. |
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| The Memorial to the 96 men who died in the construction of the dam. The low-relief panel by sculptor Oskar J. Hansen, edicated in 1935, shows naked man emerging from waves in front of the dam. A thunder cloud spits lightning bolts, stalks of grain sprout, and fruits and vegetables flourish. The monumnet states: "They died to make the desert bloom." Intake towers on the Lake Mead side. The multistory Visitor's Center which opened in 1995 houses exhibits explaining how the dam operates and elevators for tour access to the Powerplant. And the Winged Figures of the Republic, dedicated in 1935, created by Oscar Hansen and made of more than 4 tons of bronze. The wings are about 30 feet tall, they may be angels, demons or far-future humans. The monument is surrounded by a terrazzo floor with a celestial chart showing the exact position of key stars on the day the Hoover Dam was dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. |
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| Panels on the elevator towers shows the purposes of the dam: flood control, navigation, irrigation, water storage and power. |
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| On opposite sides. I'm on the Nevada side and Bob is on the Arizona side. |
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| The Desert Princess, an authentic, three level, Mississippi-style paddle wheeler built especially to cruise on Lake Mead. At its highest point, Lake Mead elevation reached 1220.45 feet above sea level and was 580 feet deep, 120 miles long. |
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| A replica of one of hundreds of containers used to deliver the 4,360,000 cubic yards concrete in the dam, powerplant and appurttenant works between 6 June 1933 and 29 May 1935. |
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| On tour with our guide, the diagram shows the internal workings of the dam, generators and spillways. The four diversion tunnels behind the canyon walls were fifty feet in diameter during construction of the dam. Afterwards, one-third of the inner tunnels were plugged with concrete and now contain 30-foot-diameter steel pipes (called penstocks) which connect the intake towers in the reservoir with the powerplant and conyon outlet-works. The two outer tunnels are used for spillway outlets. |
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| One of two powerplant wings. Each is 650 feet long and rises 229 feet. The 17 main turbines--nine on the Arizona side and eight on the Nevada side--having a combined rated capacity of 2,991,000 horsepower or 2,080 megawatts. The average annual generation from 1947 through 2008 was about 4.2 billion kilowatt-hours. Smaller generators are used for moving machinery in the powerplants. And the inner steel pipe of the penstock. We could even hear the water churning through the pipe. |
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