HOOVER DAM - WONDER OF CIVIL ENGINEERING

Jun 1, 2008. We were in Boulder City, Nevada visiting Hoover Dam - One of the most significant Civil Engineering achievements of all time.

Colorado River drains 242,000 sq. miles of seven large Western States ( 1/12 th of the US continental land area ). This river originated from Colorado and flows to The South West and finally to Mexico. The people in the basin depended on this water wherever they lived. Their right to use Colorado River water was far more valuable to them than their title to the land.

Before Hoover Dam was built a lot of legislation was passed to recognise riparian rights even though it was the most difficult argument for the equitable division of the river water. This scenario could be a good example for Nile River riparian countries in Africa to utilise this huge Water Resource for Hydro power, Irrigation and Water Supply development. Nile river is the longest river in the world, and part of the river originates from Lake Tana in Northern Ethiopia. (Editor's/Chu's note: Please realize that the true origin of the Nile is Lake Victoria in East Africa. Remember this is from an Ethiopian's point of view. That is all)

Engineers and Geologists selected 70 sites throughout the basin to build Hoover Dam.This site,where it was built,was an excellent site for many technical reasons.

Hoover Dam was the largest construction contract let by the United States Government up to that time. It costs 165 million. By the time completed in 1935, it was the largest ever built structure next to the Egyptian Pyramids in the world.

When Hoover Dam filled with water to maximum level, it is enough to cover the state of Pennsylvania ONE FOOT deep. The construction of the dam started in 1931 and finished in 1935 two years before the schedule working seven days a week and twenty four hours a day. I really impressed with hard working people of America. God Blessed America.

The other night, camped by Lake ( Hoover Dam Reservoir) Mead named after Dr. Mead a chief Engineer and Head of Bureau of Reclamation who has contributed a lot of professional input particularly in Hoover Dam study and in the West Coast Water Resource Development in general.

We swam in this lake. This lake is also a National Recreation Area and it is a contrast of desert and water. Desert environment is the best place helps people to understand how water is life. You recognise it while swimming, bathing, and drinking.

The whole idea of this dam was not only for Hydroelectric Power generation, Irrigation and water supply but also for Tourism. Since completed in 1935 it has been visited by more than 45 million people from US and throughout the world.

Our primary point of interest was not only to visit the lake so started driving towards the dam and the power house.It was on Sunday.There were a lot of people. We walked on top of the dam and by the reservoir. We also saw upstream and down stream part of the dam, the four intake towers, spill ways on left and right side of the dam, and power houses on the left and right side of the dam as well. However, just touring this dam from outside is not enough to tell, I visited Hoover Dam.

We scheduled time to visit the body of the dam and started visiting the power house. As I mentioned earlier there were a lot of people visiting the dam. Not all people were allowed to go down and visit the power house and the dam. Only a specific number of people were allowed to visit at a time. For each crew a tour guide were to be assigned. Before start touring, the crew entered in to a room for a ten minutes presentation explaining the history of this massive project.

Then the crew with tour guide entered inside elevator to go down to a tunnel in down stream side of the dam.It took 70 seconds to go down. This tunnel was not built with concrete rather the rock formation was hard enough to support itself. Then we started heading into a Pen stock. When we were walking through a tunnel I saw branched tunnels going into different directions. The height of the tunnel was a little bit higher than a height of an average person. We arrived a place where a pen stock connects with dam . A Pen stock is a pipe conveys water from a forbey/reservoir to a power producing turbines.

Since this pipe was massive it was not possible to ship from plants in Mid West or East Coast.To resolve this problem a Steel fabricating plant was to be built by the dam on the canyon side of the Nevada.

Then we headed through the tunnel towards the power house where the generators are located. This time we were off of the tunnel. Massive generators were placed. By the way Colorado river is boarder for the sate of Nevada and Arizona. Nine Generators were placed on Nevada side and the other nine were on Arizona side. There was another small generator, generating power for the dam facilities.

After we finished visiting the power house we had to wait for another one hour until for the scheduled time, to visit the dam body. So we went to a restaurant and had lunch. There were many restaurants, shopping centers, museum, visitor center and rest rooms by the dam.

Then we headed towards a visitor center by the dam to continue our visit. The visiting crew with the tour guide entered inside another elevator which is exactly located inside a body of concrete dam.We headed down and landed inside a tunnel. We walked inside the tunnel to different directions guided by the tour guide.There were tunnels going different directions.A tour guide explained us many things about this dam.The floor,roof and sides of the tunnel were well finished with shiny terrazzo tiles. There are pictures to see more about these tunnels. There were a moment when the tour guide turn off the light to show us how dark it is inside the tunnel without light. It was a complete darkness.

I couldn't believe myself I was there. I heard about this dam, read a story since I was senior student in college. It was fun and educational. Seeing is believing !!!

Next a story about Grand Canyon in Arizona will be posted soon. Hope you are enjoying this trip.

I can be reached for comment at : virginiacons@gmail.com