Dam!

On our second attempt to visit Hoover Dam we finally made it. With the thermometer spiking at 110 we set off to explore this building marvel. The size of this Dam can't be captured on film. It truly is something that has to been seen first hand to appreciate the size.

The road to reach the Dam is like a snake twisting and turning along the barren red rocks until you get your first glimpse of the Dam. The first thing that caught my attention was all the cables running over my head. Some for support and most of them electrical wires surging with electricity.

We decided to take a tour and see the inner workings of this place. Our first stop took us down an elevator ride into the "belly" of the Dam. Here we saw the tubes that carry water to the generators. These tubes were 30' across and came from the water intake towers on the Lake Mead side.

The intake towers supply water to the 17 generators that produce 4 billion kilowatts of power a year. That is enough to supply energy to 1.3 million people. The best part it is green energy. Can't get any cleaner. This photo below shows the generators on the Arizona side of the Dam. There is another identical room on the Nevada side of the river.

The base of the Dam is about 2 football fields end to end and it tapers up to a final width of 45' across. An interesting fact about all the concrete poured into the Dam, it is enough to pave a 5' wide sidewalk around the world. It took 2 years and 24 hours a day 7 days a week to complete pouring all the concrete in this structure. What an amazing sight to walk along the top and look out over a small portion of Lake Mead and then walk back on the other side of the street while looking down 726' to the power plant below.

I pieced together some pictures to try and give you an idea of the size of this Dam. What caught me by surprise about all of this is the fact the Hoover Dam was not built for the electrical generators but in fact was built to control the Colorado River. All the farming that takes place down river and where 1/3 of all our produce comes from in the US, is irrigated from the water of the Colorado River. In years before the Dam, that area was prone to flooding or draughts. With the Dam in place the farmers know that there will be the correct amount of water for their crops every year. The Dam holds back so much water that it took 6 years to fill up completely with water after they completed it.

This is a place that you could spend hours looking at and reading about the history of this Dam. The technology they used for their time is amazing in itself.

With the sun cooking us alive we decided to head back and sit by the pool to cool off.

It is an amazing construction!