Vegas Road Trip: Bart Visits the Hoover Dam

On the third day of my stay in Vegas I decided with my friends that we would take an afternoon drive to see the Hoover Dam. None of us had ever been there, it was a nice day, so it was a perfect occasion. If you’ve never seen the Hoover Dam, take a look at my short video below. It’s a good summary of our visit there.

I don’t like ‘reinventing the wheel’ so I’ve borrowed some material from Wikipedia to tell you about the main features of the Dam.

Hoover Dam, once known as Boulder Dam, is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada. When completed in 1936, it was both the world’s largest hydroelectric power generating station and the world’s largest concrete structure. It was surpassed in both these respects by the Grand Coulee Dam in 1945. It is currently the world’s 38th-largest hydroelectric generating station.

This dam, located 30 mi (48 km) southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada, is named after Herbert Hoover, who played an instrumental role in its construction, first as the Secretary of Commerce, and then later, as the President of the United States. Construction began in 1931, and was completed in 1936, a little more than two years ahead of schedule. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981, Hoover Dam was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985. Lake Mead is the reservoir created by the dam. There is enough concrete in the dam to pave a two-lane highway from San Francisco to New York. The dam crosses the border between two time zones, the Pacific Time Zone and the Mountain Time Zone

Hoover Dam Statistics
- Construction period: April 20, 1931 – March 1, 1936
- Deaths attributed to construction: 112; 96 of them at the construction site
- Dam height: 726.4 ft (221.4 m), second highest dam in the United States. (Only the Oroville Dam is taller)
- Dam length: 1,244 ft (379 m)
- Dam thickness: 660 ft (200 m) at its base; 45 ft (14 m) thick at its crest.
- Concrete: 4,360,000 cu yd (3,330,000 m3)
- Traffic across the dam: 13,000 to 16,000 people each day, according to the Federal Highway Administration
- With 8 to 10 million visitors each year, including visitors to Hoover Dam but not all traffic across the dam, the Lake Mead National Recreation Area is the fifth busiest National Park Service area.

Thank you Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Dam