Hoover Dam is a 1930’s US Bureau of Reclamation civil engineering project that was conceived to prevent the Colorado River from flooding towns and farms downstream from the Boulder Canyon on the Nevada – Arizona border.
Power generation contracts negotiated prior to the start covered the cost of dam construction and power plant financing. River diversion started in 1931, dam construction commenced in June of 1933 and was completed in 1935. Commercial power generation started October 26th 1936. At 726-feet high, 1,244 feet long, 660-feet wide at the base and 45-feet at the top; Hoover Dam was built with 3,250,000 cubic yards of poured concrete in stacked blocks.
While the Hoover Dam is beautiful, an imposing structure and a testament to the ingenuity of man overcoming natures obstacles, what stands out in in marked contrast to today is that our country could take a project like this from start to finish two years early and under budget in four years.
All images were taken with Nikon D750 with AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 prime lens, AF Nikon 18mm-35mm f/3.5-4.5 wide-angle lens or AF Nikon 28mm-105mm f/3.5-4.5D zoom lens in RAW format and processed in Adobe Lightroom 5.7