From the outset, a trip to Boulder Dam has been essential to
our plans, and that was yesterday. Arriving, at about midday we signed up for
the full Hoover Dam tour starting at 2:30. That gave us plenty of time to
browse the exhibits and take pictures. Both of us had been here as youths on
family vacations. Sharon remembered her visit, of course. I did so less, to say
the least.
One thing of interest to me was to learn that the renaming
of the dam for Hoover in 1947 was not just Republican payback after nearly
twenty years of Democratically controlled congresses, but reflected Secretary
of
Commerce Herbert Hoover’s instrumentality in bringing the states of Arizona and
Nevada together to allow the project to proceed, overcoming the water politics
of the west which all of us who live out here are all too familiar with.
For me the highlight of the day may have come when we pulled
into the parking structure, gave the attendant our $10 and, handing me the ticket,
he commented, “this car is sick!”
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| The dam, looking toward Lake Mead, named for Elwood Mead who engineered a number of western reclamation projects |
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| Looking down the Colorado. They had to literally move the river to build the dam |
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| Another lake shot, this one showing the results of the worst drought in 50 years |
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| Bored teens waiting on the tour, I liked the mural reproductions too |
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| Scott, our tour guide, trained as an historian, is the 4th generation in his family to work here. His great grandfather worked for the FBI during dam construction |
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| This tunnel led us out about 1/3 of the way down the dam to an observation port from which we were able to get a spectacular view down the river gorge |
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| The full tour took us right inside the dam and we got to see these generators |
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| Two miles of tunnels |
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