The Hoover Dam

Departing the Grand Canyon we headed for Las Vegas to visit some of my old friends.  Somehow, a lot of my friends are "old".  Go figure!  Anyway, we took a side trip to see the Hoover Dam. 

We took a tour of the dam, descending by elevators deep into it's core.  A few facts we learned as we walked, and walked...  It's 726 feet high and 1244 feet across the top.  660 feet thick at the base and 45 feet thick at the top.  4,360,000 cubic yards of concrete was used in it's construction and 96,000,000 pounds of steel.  Surprisingly, to me anyway, NO STEEL was used IN the dam!..It's a "floating" structure, meaning each massive block of concrete making up the structure can move making it earthquake proof.  It's already experienced a couple, one of which was measured 5.2.
Construction began 9/30/1930 and last concrete was poured in 1935. 

We walked down this air shaft, which is pretty close to the bottom.  On the sides of the walls are notations dating back to the 40's and 50's where cracks are routinely monitored.

I was able to put my camera through the grate at the end of the air shaft and took this picture looking up.

There are stairways to the top of the dam in case of emegencies.  This is looking down and the next picture is looking up.  We can't remember the exact number of steps the guide said there is (it's thousands) , but he had to walk it once and had leg cramps for days.

 This is one of the electric power generating room.  There are 17 generators inside the dam producing 4 Billion Kilowatts of electricity!

The picture below shows one of the water intakes that supplies water to power the turbines that power the generators.  Half of the intakes are on the Arizona side of the reservoir and the others are on the Nevada side.

Finally a picture of a picture of a group of Native American Indians, Yaqui, Crow, Apache and Navajo's who did what was considered one of the most dangerous jobs.  Hanging from the canyon walls on ropes, no nets, drilling holes with steam powered jack hammers to place Dynamite charges to blast away the rock.

We very much enjoyed the experience of exploring and learning more about one of the world's largest dams.