Flashback Friday - 1936 The Hoover Dam Begins Operations

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I have driven over this dam several times in my life, and every time I am still taken back by its magnitude.  On top of that the fact that it was built almost 100 years ago is amazing!  There are several wonders of the world and this is definitely one of them!

Source: Wikipedia


So here are some facts about the Hoover Dam:

Source: Wikipedia

  1. Was originally called the Boulder Dam - From 1933 to 1947 it carried this name until it was officially renamed by a joint resolution in congress for President Herbert Hoover.
  2. Cost to build - It cost $49 million to construct this dam in the 1930's, by today's standards that equates to around $700 million
  3. Dam dimensions - 726.4 ft tall, 1,244 ft long, 45 ft wide (crest),  660 ft wide (base).  Interesting that the base is nearly the same as the length.  I am sure there is some engineering reason for that.
  4. Capacity - The dam is capable of holding 28,537,000 acre⋅ft or 9,298,822,217,142 gal.  1 acre-ft is enough water to cover 1 acre of land in 1 ft of water. That's enough water to cover the state of Connecticut in ~8ft of water.
  5. People Died Building It - Over 100 people died during it's construction.  Many rumors abound that people were buried in the cement and were left there.  This has not been proven and in fact would cause weaknesses in the dam.  There was one instance of someone falling in and being buried, but they did recover the body.  He did not survive.  Whether true or not, it is creepy to think about.
  6. How Much Concrete? - There is approximately 4,360,000 cubic yards of concrete in the Hoover Dam.  An average of ~5000 cubic yards were poured per day for 2 years straight.  That's 500 standard cement trucks per day. The empire state building has ~62,000 cubic yards of concrete.  So that's enough to build 2.5 empire state buildings each month for 2 years.

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Source: Wikipedia


Engineering has improved and now we as humans build some crazy structures, but lets give a shout out to the peeps of 1933 for this amazing feet of engineering and construction!

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