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Location:
Arizona and Nevada, USA
Completion Date: 1936
Cost: $165 million
Reservoir Capacity: 1.24
trillion cubic feet
Type: Gravity
Purpose: Hydroelectric
power
Reservoir: Lake Mead
Materials: Concrete
Engineer(s): Bureau
of Reclamation
In 1931, during the height
of the Depression, thousands of American workers came to the Black
Canyon on the Arizona-Nevada border to tame the Colorado River. They
began construction on what would be the largest dam of its time --
the Hoover Dam. But before the dam could be built, workers had to
divert the wild Colorado River away from the construction site. How
did they do this? They blasted tunnels -- as big as four-lane highways
-- right through the canyon walls. For the next five years, the Colorado
River gushed through these diversion tunnels while 8,000 workers toiled
in the harsh, dry canyon bottom. Amazingly, they completed the dam
in less than five years -- ahead of schedule and under budget.
The Hoover Dam is a curved
gravity dam. Lake Mead pushes against the dam, creating compressive
forces that travel along the great curved wall. The canyon walls push
back, counteracting these forces. This action squeezes the concrete
in the arch together, making the dam very rigid. This way, Lake Mead
can't push it over.
Today, the Hoover Dam is the second highest dam in the country and
the 18th highest in the world. It generates more than four billion
kilowatt-hours a year -- that's enough to serve 1.3 million people.
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