Hoover Dam

Hoover Dam

Hoover dam also known as Black Canyon Dam is a massive Concrete Gravity Arch type Dam built on Colorado River in 1936 under the Govt. of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The dam was constructed with a purpose of controlling flood and to generate hydroelectricity. The project of dam actually started in 1900 when surveying the site for construction began. Looking forward for the permissions and bidding for the contractors started in 1922. Construction actually started in 1931 by a company named as Six Companies Inc. which was a joint venture of seven companies ‘Utah Construction Company’, ‘Morrison-Knudsen’, ‘Pacific Bridge Company’, ‘Hennery J. Kaiser’, ‘W.A. Bechtel Company’, ‘McDonald & Kahn Ltd.’ and ‘J.F. Shea Company’. Hennery J. Kaiser and W.A. Bechtel Company were together counted as one to match the name of the venture. Nations top Dam Builder Frank Crowe was employed by Morrison-Knudsen and he was appointed the General Supervisor of the whole project. Frank had a habit of finishing the work earlier than the schedule and he finished the construction 2 years before the deadline of seven years. He motivated his workers to work fast and efficiently by creating a competition among the teams working at different points to finish early.
Four tunnels were made, two on the either sides of the river to bypass the water and empty the canyon for construction. Construction of the tunnel took two years to complete and a lot of worker died while working inside the tunnel. The official reason for these deaths was recorded to be pneumonia but the workers protested that “the deaths were the result of carbon mono oxide produced by the rails inside the tunnel and company doesn’t want to provide the concession sanctioned for death on site due to hazardous work”. A total of 116 deaths were recorded officially in the whole construction including the deaths while surveying.
The dam was handed to the US Government in 1936 and it was opened in same year. it took about 6 years to fill the Lake Mead created by the dam, upstream of the Colorado River and many species of plants and fishes suffered in the downstream since no water reached the portion for about whole 6 years. The flood was controlled in the river basins by the dam and total of 19 turbines have been installed till date on the site to produce electricity.

The dam is 200 m thick at the bottom and 14 m thick at the top, with a height of 221.4 m and length of 379 m. and was the largest concrete structure to be built in its time. The Hoover dam was named after the Former President Herbert Hoover. BBC included the name of the Hoover Dam in the list of the ‘Seven Wonders of the Industrial World’.

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