Even before Congress approved the Boulder Canyon Project, the Bureau of Reclamation was considering what kind of dam should be used. Officials eventually decided on a massive concrete arch-gravity dam, the design of which was overseen by the Bureau's chief design engineer John L. Savage. The monolithic dam would be thick at the bottom and thin near the top, and would present a convex face towards the water above the dam. The curving arch of the dam would transmit the water's force into the abutments, in this case the rock walls of the canyon. The wedge-shaped dam would be thick at the bottom, narrowing to at the top, leaving room for a highway connecting Nevada and Arizona.
Design, preparation and contracting
Hoover Dam
Hoover Dam | Design, preparation and contracting
John L. Savage. John L. Savage John L. Savage John L. Savage
who was president when the hoover dam was built
user
Franklin D. Roosevelt.
assistant
where is this dam located?
user
Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona.
assistant
did anyone try to find resources on this dam?
user
An initial attempt at diverting the Colorado river for irrigation purposes occurred in the late 1890s, when land speculator William Beatty built the Alamo Canal just north of the Mexican border; the canal dipped into Mexico before running to a desolate area Beatty named the Imperial Valley.
assistant
how the climate like in this valley?
user
It often has summer temperatures well over , but from late October until mid-April the temperature is relatively mild and can sometimes even reach low temperatures not expected in a desert.
assistant
is there any fort situated here?
user
Yes, Fort Yuma
assistant
and who was it built by?
user
Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context.
assistant
who is the design of the dam attributed to?
user
The initial plans for the facade of the dam, the power plant, the outlet tunnels and ornaments clashed with the modern look of an arch dam. The Bureau of Reclamation, more concerned with the dam's functionality, adorned it with a Gothic-inspired balustrade and eagle statues. This initial design was criticized by many as being too plain and unremarkable for a project of such immense scale, so Los Angeles-based architect Gordon B. Kaufmann, then the supervising architect to the Bureau of Reclamation, was brought in to redesign the exteriors. Kaufmann greatly streamlined the design and applied an elegant Art Deco style to the entire project.
Hoover Dam | Architectural style
On January 10, 1931, the Bureau made the bid documents available to interested parties, at five dollars a copy. The government was to provide the materials; but the contractor was to prepare the site and build the dam. The dam was described in minute detail, covering 100 pages of text and 76 drawings. A $2 million bid bond was to accompany each bid; the winner would have to post a $5 million performance bond. The contractor had seven years to build the dam, or penalties would ensue. The Wattis Brothers, heads of the Utah Construction Company, were interested in bidding on the project, but lacked the money for the performance bond.
Hoover Dam | Design, preparation and contracting
Even before Congress approved the Boulder Canyon Project, the Bureau of Reclamation was considering what kind of dam should be used. Officials eventually decided on a massive concrete arch-gravity dam, the design of which was overseen by the Bureau's chief design engineer John L. Savage. The monolithic dam would be thick at the bottom and thin near the top, and would present a convex face towards the water above the dam. The curving arch of the dam would transmit the water's force into the abutments, in this case the rock walls of the canyon. The wedge-shaped dam would be thick at the bottom, narrowing to at the top, leaving room for a highway connecting Nevada and Arizona.
Hoover Dam | Design, preparation and contracting
He designed sculpted turrets rising seamlessly from the dam face and clock faces on the intake towers set for the time in Nevada and Arizona—both states are in different time zones, but since Arizona does not observe daylight saving time, the clocks display the same time for more than half the year. At Kaufmann's request, Denver artist Allen Tupper True was hired to handle the design and decoration of the walls and floors of the new dam. True's design scheme incorporated motifs of the Navajo and Pueblo tribes of the region. Although some were initially opposed to these designs, True was given the go-ahead and was officially appointed consulting artist.
Hoover Dam | Architectural style
There were three valid bids, and Six Companies' bid of $48,890,955 was the lowest, within $24,000 of the confidential government estimate of what the dam would cost to build, and five million dollars less than the next-lowest bid.
Hoover Dam | Design, preparation and contracting
They lacked sufficient resources even in combination with their longtime partners, Morrison-Knudsen, which employed the nation's leading dam builder, Frank Crowe. They formed a joint venture to bid for the project with Pacific Bridge Company of Portland, Oregon; Henry J. Kaiser & W. A. Bechtel Company of San Francisco; MacDonald & Kahn Ltd. of Los Angeles; and the J.F. Shea Company of Portland, Oregon. The joint venture was called Six Companies, Inc. as Bechtel and Kaiser were considered one company for purposes of Six in the name. The name was descriptive and was an inside joke among the San Franciscans in the bid, where "Six Companies" was also a Chinese benevolent association in the city.
Hoover Dam | Design, preparation and contracting
Treshow was hired as a designer of construction tools, to work on the Hoover Dam. During the construction of the Boulder (now Hoover) Dam between 1930 and 1936 he designed and supervised the installation of the equipment that pumped concrete - more than 8 million tons of it - from where it was mixed to the dam site. "Something over a mile as I recall," says his son, Ken. Treshow switched to nuclear reactor design and engineering after World War II.
Mike Treshow | Hoover Dam
True's consulting artist job lasted through 1942; it was extended so he could complete design work for the Parker, Shasta and Grand Coulee dams and power plants. True's work on the Hoover Dam was humorously referred to in a poem published in "The New Yorker", part of which read, "lose the spark, and justify the dream; but also worthy of remark will be the color scheme".
Hoover Dam | Architectural style
With the assistance of the National Laboratory of Anthropology, True researched authentic decorative motifs from Indian sand paintings, textiles, baskets and ceramics. The images and colors are based on Native American visions of rain, lightning, water, clouds, and local animals—lizards, serpents, birds—and on the Southwestern landscape of stepped mesas. In these works, which are integrated into the walkways and interior halls of the dam, True also reflected on the machinery of the operation, making the symbolic patterns appear both ancient and modern. With the agreement of Kaufmann and the engineers, True also devised for the pipes and machinery an innovative color-coding which was implemented throughout all BOR projects.
Hoover Dam | Architectural style
The Hoover Dam is a massive concrete arch-gravity dam, constructed in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the US states of Arizona and Nevada between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression. In 1928, Congress authorized the project to build a dam that would control floods, provide irrigation water and produce hydroelectric power. The winning bid to build the dam was submitted by a consortium called Six Companies, Inc. Such a large concrete structure had never been built before, and some of the techniques were unproven. The torrid summer weather and the lack of facilities near the site also presented difficulties.
Dam | Large dams
In 1928, Congress authorized the project. The winning bid to build the dam was submitted by a consortium called Six Companies, Inc., which began construction of the dam in early 1931. Such a large concrete structure had never been built before, and some of the techniques were unproven. The torrid summer weather and lack of facilities near the site also presented difficulties. Nevertheless, Six Companies turned the dam over to the federal government on March 1, 1936, more than two years ahead of schedule. Hoover Dam impounds Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States by volume (when it is full).
Hoover Dam | Introduction
Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its construction was the result of a massive effort involving thousands of workers, and cost over one hundred lives. Originally known as Boulder Dam from 1933, it was officially renamed Hoover Dam for President Herbert Hoover by a joint resolution of Congress in 1947. Since about 1900, the Black Canyon and nearby Boulder Canyon had been investigated for their potential to support a dam that would control floods, provide irrigation water and produce hydroelectric power.
Hoover Dam | Introduction
When designing the Hoover Dam, Savage introduced artificially cooled mass concrete, which dramatically reduced the setting time of concrete, allowing for faster construction. He also introduced the trial load method of arch analysis, which removed theorized and actual stresses in a finished structure. While designing the Grand Coulee Dam, Savage and his assistants solved an engineering problem of "twists" by leaving gaps in a dam structure called "twist adjustment slots" in order to provide "give" as hydrostatic pressure amounted on a concrete dam, preventing cracking. Savage and his associates developed methods and equipment that determined the stress on penstocks — pipes responsible for directly transferring water to generators in hydroelectricity power plants.
John L. Savage | Contributions to civil engineering
The first concrete was poured into the dam on June 6, 1933, 18 months ahead of schedule. Since concrete heats and contracts as it cures, the potential for uneven cooling and contraction of the concrete posed a serious problem. Bureau of Reclamation engineers calculated that if the dam were to be built in a single continuous pour, the concrete would take 125 years to cool, and the resulting stresses would cause the dam to crack and crumble. Instead, the ground where the dam would rise was marked with rectangles, and concrete blocks in columns were poured, some as large as and high.
Hoover Dam | Concrete
On January 10, 1931, the Bureau of Reclamation made the bid documents available to interested parties, at $5 a copy (equivalent to $ in ). The government would provide the materials, and the contractor was to prepare the site and build the dam. The dam was described in minute detail, covering 100 pages of text and 76 drawings. A $2 million (equivalent to $ in ) bid bond was to accompany each bid. The winner would have to post a $5 million (equivalent to $ in ) performance bond. The contractor would have seven years to build the dam, or penalties would ensue.
Six Companies, Inc. | Hoover Dam
Each five-foot form contained a set of steel pipes; cool river water would be poured through the pipes, followed by ice-cold water from a refrigeration plant. When an individual block had cured and had stopped contracting, the pipes were filled with grout. Grout was also used to fill the hairline spaces between columns, which were grooved to increase the strength of the joints. The concrete was delivered in huge steel buckets and almost 7 feet in diameter; Crowe was awarded two patents for their design. These buckets, which weighed when full, were filled at two massive concrete plants on the Nevada side, and were delivered to the site in special railcars.
Hoover Dam | Concrete
The Board cautioned: "To avoid such possibilities, the proposed dam should be constructed on conservative if not ultra-conservative lines."
Hoover Dam | Planning and agreements
The final episode focuses on the construction of the Hoover Dam during the Great Depression of the 1930s, focusing in particular on the ruthless pace set by Frank Crowe, the builder, whose eagerness to complete the project well before schedule and subsequent exploitation of the workforce (who were desperate for any employment and were forced to accept conditions of extreme hardship in the process) resulted in many deaths and the eventual construction of a new city to house the workers.
Seven Wonders of the Industrial World | The Hoover Dam
Little is known about the construction of the dam. Efforts made to find photographs of the dam, pump station and electrical generation works have so far proved unsuccessful. The remaining abutments appear to be built of large blocks of limestone varying in dimensions with the largest approximately 4 feet by 3 feet by 2 feet.
Sherman's Dam | Design and construction
As the city grew, it gathered additional features, including numerous stores, a hospital, and even a jeweler. It was intended to serve a maximum population of eight thousand, accounting for the workers' families; the peak workforce would eventually exceed 2,500 in the busiest phases of construction. The engineer in charge of the project would be Lem F. Wylie, who had worked on Hoover Dam and had previously designed six other USBR dams. Prior to and during construction, three separate grants were issued by the National Park Service to document and recover artifacts of historical cultures along the river. These went to University of Utah historian C.
Glen Canyon Dam | Site preparations
The Six Companies board selected Frank Crowe, an employee of Morrison-Knudsen as the General Construction Superintendent of the Boulder Dam construction. Crowe also drafted the bid, hired each of the men who were employed during the course of the project, lived in Boulder City with his wife and two daughters and was on the dam site every day of the week until the project was completed. He was rewarded a bonus percentage of the profit for completing virtually every portion of the job well ahead of schedule. Six Companies, Inc. started working in late spring, around June of 1931. Six Companies Inc.
Six Companies, Inc. | Hoover Dam
Oskar J. W. Hansen (1891 or 1892 – August 31, 1971) was a Norwegian-born, naturalized American sculptor. He is most associated with the design of many of the sculptures on and around the Hoover Dam.
Oskar J. W. Hansen | Introduction
To protect the construction site from the Colorado River and to facilitate the river's diversion, two cofferdams were constructed. Work on the upper cofferdam began in September 1932, even though the river had not yet been diverted. The cofferdams were designed to protect against the possibility of the river's flooding a site at which two thousand men might be at work, and their specifications were covered in the bid documents in nearly as much detail as the dam itself. The upper cofferdam was high, and thick at its base, thicker than the dam itself. It contained of material. When the cofferdams were in place and the construction site was drained of water, excavation for the dam foundation began.
Hoover Dam | Groundworks, rock clearance and grout curtain
Six Companies was not required to complete work on one item, a concrete plug for one of the bypass tunnels, as the tunnel had to be used to take in irrigation water until the powerhouse went into operation.
Hoover Dam | Dedication and completion
The buckets were then suspended from aerial cableways which were used to deliver the bucket to a specific column. As the required grade of aggregate in the concrete differed depending on placement in the dam (from pea-sized gravel to 9-inch or 23 cm stones), it was vital that the bucket be maneuvered to the proper column. When the bottom of the bucket opened up, disgorging of concrete, a team of men worked it throughout the form. Although there are myths that men were caught in the pour and are entombed in the dam to this day, each bucket deepened the concrete in a form by only , and Six Companies engineers would not have permitted a flaw caused by the presence of a human body.
Hoover Dam | Concrete
To mark the occasion, a three-cent stamp was issued by the United States Post Office Department—bearing the name "Boulder Dam", the official name of the dam between 1933 and 1947. After the ceremony, Roosevelt made the first visit by any American president to Las Vegas. Most work had been completed by the dedication, and Six Companies negotiated with the government through late 1935 and early 1936 to settle all claims and arrange for the formal transfer of the dam to the Federal Government. The parties came to an agreement and on March 1, 1936, Secretary Ickes formally accepted the dam on behalf of the government.
Hoover Dam | Dedication and completion
Wilbur justified his choice on the ground that Hoover was "the great engineer whose vision and persistence ... has done so much to make [the dam] possible". One writer complained in response that "the Great Engineer had quickly drained, ditched, and dammed the country." After Hoover's election defeat in 1932 and the accession of the Roosevelt administration, Secretary Ickes ordered on May 13, 1933, that the dam be referred to as "Boulder Dam". Ickes stated that Wilbur had been imprudent in naming the dam after a sitting president, that Congress had never ratified his choice, and that it had long been referred to as Boulder Dam.
Hoover Dam | Naming controversy
agreed to join together as Consolidated Builders Inc. and construct the high dam. Six Companies had just finished the Hoover Dam and was nearing completion of Parker Dam. The new design, chosen and approved by the Reclamation office in Denver, included several improvements, one of which was the irrigation pumping plant. Roosevelt envisioned the dam would fit into his New Deal under the Public Works Administration; it would create jobs, farming opportunities and would pay for itself. In addition, as part of a larger public effort, Roosevelt wanted to keep electricity prices low by limiting private ownership of utility companies, which could charge high prices for energy.
Grand Coulee Dam | Design change
was composed of:
Six Companies, Inc. | Hoover Dam
During the years of lobbying leading up to the passage of legislation authorizing the dam in 1928, the press generally referred to the dam as "Boulder Dam" or as "Boulder Canyon Dam", even though the proposed site had shifted to Black Canyon. The Boulder Canyon Project Act of 1928 (BCPA) never mentioned a proposed name or title for the dam. The BCPA merely allows the government to "construct, operate, and maintain a dam and incidental works in the main stream of the Colorado River at Black Canyon or Boulder Canyon". When Secretary of the Interior Ray Wilbur spoke at the ceremony starting the building of the railway between Las Vegas and the dam site on September 17, 1930, he named the dam "Hoover Dam", citing a tradition of naming dams after Presidents, though none had been so honored during their terms of office.
Hoover Dam | Naming controversy
Gordon Bernie Kaufmann (19 March 1888 – 1 March 1949) was an English-born American architect mostly known for his work on the Hoover Dam.
Gordon Kaufmann | Introduction
Excavation for the powerhouse was carried out simultaneously with the excavation for the dam foundation and abutments. The excavation of this U-shaped structure located at the downstream toe of the dam was completed in late 1933 with the first concrete placed in November 1933. Filling of Lake Mead began February 1, 1935, even before the last of the concrete was poured that May. The powerhouse was one of the projects uncompleted at the time of the formal dedication on September 30, 1935; a crew of 500 men remained to finish it and other structures. To make the powerhouse roof bombproof, it was constructed of layers of concrete, rock, and steel with a total thickness of about , topped with layers of sand and tar.
Hoover Dam | Power plant and water demands
Unknown to the general public, Attorney General Homer Cummings informed Ickes that Congress had indeed used the name "Hoover Dam" in five different bills appropriating money for construction of the dam. The official status this conferred to the name "Hoover Dam" had been noted on the floor of the House of Representatives by Congressman Edward T. Taylor of Colorado on December 12, 1930, but was likewise ignored by Ickes.
Hoover Dam | Naming controversy
Reclamation chose Frank Crowe, the superintendent of Hoover Dam construction, to direct operations at Shasta Dam.
Shasta Dam | State Water Plan and the CVP
G.R. Schneider. The construction contracts for the dam were awarded to the Morrison-Knudsen company and the Utah Construction Company. Both companies had participated in the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam and Hoover Dam. Construction began in the spring of 1941 with the removal of of earth to expose the bedrock foundation and an additional had to be removed to stabilize it. This was accomplished using draglines and power shovels. Most of the smaller aggregate used in construction was removed from the sand and gravel bars of a twenty-mile (32 km) section of the White River. A quarry and crushing plant was required to create nearly 800,000 tons of larger aggregate.
Norfork Dam | Construction
On August 4, 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited the construction site and was impressed by the project and its purpose. He spoke to workers and spectators, closing with this statement: "I leave here today with the feeling that this work is well undertaken; that we are going ahead with a useful project, and we are going to see it through for the benefit of our country." Soon afterward, Reclamation was allowed to proceed with the high dam plan but faced the problems of transitioning the design and negotiating an altered contract with MWAK. In , for an additional , MWAK and Six Companies, Inc.
Grand Coulee Dam | Design change
Hoover Dam was recognized as a National Civil Engineering Landmark in 1984. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985, cited for its engineering innovations.
Hoover Dam | Recognition
Although this may have been sufficient time to answer what they had been directed to determine, they had been deprived of the sworn testimony at the Coroner's Inquest which was scheduled to be convened March 21, the only inquiry that took into consideration factors other than geology and engineering. The need for nearly immediate answers was understandable, having its roots in the Swing–Johnson Bill in Congress. This bill, which had first been filed in 1922, and failed to be voted on in three successive Congresses, was again before Congress at the time. This bill ultimately provided the funding for constructing the Hoover Dam.
St. Francis Dam | Investigation
In 1931 his firm was one of the prime contractors in building the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, and subsequently the Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams on the Columbia River.
Henry J. Kaiser | Early life
This memorandum included design of the dam, outlet works, spillway, and a concrete-lined channel in length (see para. 3-04a), as well as construction of drainage structures, relocation of two highways, modification of bridges, the removal of school buildings and residences, and the relocation of utilities.
Carbon Canyon Dam | Planning and design
"Mongolian" (Chinese) labor was prevented by the construction contract, while the number of blacks employed by Six Companies never exceeded thirty, mostly lowest-pay-scale laborers in a segregated crew, who were issued separate water buckets. As part of the contract, Six Companies, Inc. was to build Boulder City to house the workers. The original timetable called for Boulder City to be built before the dam project began, but President Hoover ordered work on the dam to begin in March 1931 rather than in October. The company built bunkhouses, attached to the canyon wall, to house 480 single men at what became known as River Camp.
Hoover Dam | Labor force
The 1927 Mississippi flood made Midwestern and Southern congressmen and senators more sympathetic toward the dam project. On March 12, 1928, the failure of the St. Francis Dam, constructed by the city of Los Angeles, caused a disastrous flood that killed up to 600 people. As that dam was a curved-gravity type, similar in design to the arch-gravity as was proposed for the Black Canyon dam, opponents claimed that the Black Canyon dam's safety could not be guaranteed. Congress authorized a board of engineers to review plans for the proposed dam. The Colorado River Board found the project feasible, but warned that should the dam fail, every downstream Colorado River community would be destroyed, and that the river might change course and empty into the Salton Sea.
Hoover Dam | Planning and agreements
He was appointed by President Calvin Coolidge in 1928 to the Colorado River Board commission to study the Hoover Dam project.
Daniel W. Mead | Introduction
A total of of concrete was used in the dam before concrete pouring ceased on May 29, 1935. In addition, were used in the power plant and other works. More than of cooling pipes were placed within the concrete. Overall, there is enough concrete in the dam to pave a two-lane highway from San Francisco to New York. Concrete cores were removed from the dam for testing in 1995; they showed that "Hoover Dam's concrete has continued to slowly gain strength" and the dam is composed of a "durable concrete having a compressive strength exceeding the range typically found in normal mass concrete".
Hoover Dam | Concrete
The Hoover Dam has made frequent appearances in various forms of media on account of its size and national prominence within the United States. Prior to the dam's completion in 1936, the Boulder Dam construction project was likewise the subject of a number of films.
Hoover Dam in popular culture | Introduction
Boulder City was carefully planned through federal supervision as a model community, with Dutch-born urban architect Saco Rienk de Boer contracted to plan it. DeBoer had been a planner for Denver, Colorado, and was to design many towns and suburbs around the Rocky Mountain region. Because the Hoover Dam project itself represented a focus for optimism for a country suffering from the effects of the Great Depression, the town itself was to be an additional manifestation of this optimism. There was to be an emphasis on a clean-living environment for dam workers. The plan submitted by DeBoer in 1930 was formal and symmetrical with a park and the Bureau of Reclamation building at the termination of the two main axes.
Boulder City, Nevada | Early years: 1930–1934
One potential site at Boulder Canyon was bisected by a geologic fault; two others were so narrow there was no space for a construction camp at the bottom of the canyon or for a spillway. The Service investigated Black Canyon and found it ideal; a railway could be laid from the railhead in Las Vegas to the top of the dam site. Despite the site change, the dam project was referred to as the "Boulder Canyon Project". With little guidance on water allocation from the Supreme Court, proponents of the dam feared endless litigation. Delph Carpenter, a Colorado attorney, proposed that the seven states which fell within the river's basin (California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming) form an interstate compact, with the approval of Congress.
Hoover Dam | Planning and agreements
With this technique, Crowe built some of the largest dams in the American west, including the Hoover Dam, Parker Dam downstream from Hoover; Copper Basin and Gene Wash Dams on the Colorado Aqueduct system; and Shasta Dam in Northern California. All these dams were important but none approached the mythic scale or mystique of Hoover Dam.
Frank Crowe | Introduction
In August 1927, the US Congress authorized the building of a dam in the canyon of the Owyhee River. Construction of the dam began in 1928 to provide water for irrigation projects. It was built on a foundation of massive rhyolite, massive pitchstone, and associated unmassive pitchstone agglomerate geologic formations adjacent to the Owyhee Mountains. A project of the Bureau of Reclamation, they hired General Construction Company from Seattle to build the dam. Former Oregonian and then United States President Herbert Hoover dedicated what was the highest dam of its type in the world on July 17, 1932. Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur delivered Hoover's message at the dam.
Owyhee Dam | History
For the dam to rest on solid rock, it was necessary to remove accumulated erosion soils and other loose materials in the riverbed until sound bedrock was reached. Work on the foundation excavations was completed in June 1933. During this excavation, approximately of material was removed. Since the dam was an arch-gravity type, the side-walls of the canyon would bear the force of the impounded lake. Therefore, the side-walls were excavated too, to reach virgin rock, as weathered rock might provide pathways for water seepage. Shovels for the excavation came from the Marion Power Shovel Company. The men who removed this rock were called "high scalers".
Hoover Dam | Groundworks, rock clearance and grout curtain
Materially, building the dam would have required of concrete aggregate, of rock fill, and another of various other types of fill. Engineers suggested that some of the material could be found at the site, but the remainder would have to be brought from outside sources.
Rampart Dam | Construction
Westergaard worked as technical expert to the Bureau of Reclamation on the design of Hoover Dam. In 1936 professor Westergaard was appointed to the Gordon McKay professorship for structural engineering at Harvard University. Between 1937-1946 acted as dean of the Graduate School of Engineering.
Harold M. Westergaard | Biography
Before the dam could be built, the Colorado River needed to be diverted away from the construction site. To accomplish this, four diversion tunnels were driven through the canyon walls, two on the Nevada side and two on the Arizona side. These tunnels were in diameter. Their combined length was nearly 16,000 ft, or more than . The contract required these tunnels to be completed by October 1, 1933, with a $3,000-per-day fine to be assessed for any delay. To meet the deadline, Six Companies had to complete work by early 1933, since only in late fall and winter was the water level in the river low enough to safely divert.
Hoover Dam | River diversion
Hoover Dam concrete is not subject to alkali–silica reaction (ASR), as the Hoover Dam builders happened to use nonreactive aggregate, unlike that at downstream Parker Dam, where ASR has caused measurable deterioration.
Hoover Dam | Concrete
In total, the report encompassed two volumes including more than 480 pages. Because the construction season at the site is only five months, the Corps of Engineers projected that several decades would be needed to build the dam and associated structures.
Rampart Dam | Final design
A consortium was formed by Utah Construction Company of Ogden, Utah, (general contractors), in order to submit a bid for the Hoover Dam construction contract. Because of the immense size of the first dam on the Colorado River, no single contractor had the resources to make a qualified bid alone. Utah Construction Company (Wattis brothers; E.O and W.H Wattis) and vice president Andrew H. Christensen asked Harry W. Morrison of Morrison-Knudsen (now Washington Group International, a division of URS Corporation) to join them on this venture. After they realized the bid would be much higher than expected, the Wattis Brothers and Morrison-Knudsen convinced others to join.
Six Companies, Inc. | Hoover Dam
Harza Engineering of Chicago, Illinois, United States, began site investigation in the 1960s with initial construction beginning June 15, 1980. A multinational team of designers, builders and engineers included members from Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. Engineering design was developed by Motor Columbus [now Colenco] of Switzerland. Italian companies were responsible for the construction of the underground machine room, while Italian and German companies were responsible for dam construction and ancillary works. Upon completion the dam became the largest piece of infrastructure in Honduras, requiring over half a million cubic meters of concrete to construct. Due to its double-curved arch design, this dam is relatively thin compared to say, Hoover Dam (gravity dam design) that spans a similar valley profile yet required roughly four times as much concrete.
El Cajón Dam (Honduras) | Construction
The structure was completed in 1888. The designer was Hermann Schussler, Chief Engineer of the Spring Valley Water Company. The dam was constructed by separately pouring large blocks of the structure in place, and allowing them to set before pouring the adjoining blocks. An important design feature is that neither the horizontal nor the vertical joints line up. This helps the structure act as a single monolithic construction despite being made of thousands of individual blocks.
Crystal Springs Dam | History
Louis Rea "Doug" Douglass (March 2, 1888 – January 13, 1979) was an American civil engineer. He spent more than 20 years with the United States Bureau of Reclamation and was in charge of Hoover Dam and the surrounding park land for four years. From 1933 to 1954, Douglass worked for the Bureau of Reclamation. He prepared construction drawings for Hoover Dam and other aspects of the Boulder Canyon Project. During the mid-1940s, he was an Assistant Regional Director with responsibility for the Davis Dam 67 miles downstream from Hoover Dam. In 1949, he was sent to Japan where he prepared a study and recommendations for the design and construction of dams and irrigation works.
Louis R. Douglass | Introduction
In the following years, the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), known as the Reclamation Service at the time, also considered the Lower Colorado as the site for a dam. Service chief Arthur Powell Davis proposed using dynamite to collapse the walls of Boulder Canyon, north of the eventual dam site, into the river. The river would carry off the smaller pieces of debris, and a dam would be built incorporating the remaining rubble. In 1922, after considering it for several years, the Reclamation Service finally rejected the proposal, citing doubts about the unproven technique and questions as to whether it would, in fact, save money.
Hoover Dam | Search for resources
Lars Jorgensen evolved the specific first design of the constant arch dam. However, AEL&P gives design credit to their then Chief Engineer Harry L. Wallenberg for the Salmon Creek Dam. The idea for building such a dam had been thought about 30 years earlier to economize on the use of construction material for building the dam. However, it was only in 1913 that the concept was transformed on ground by the pioneer mining engineer Thane.
Salmon Creek Dam | Evolution of the arch dam design
The All-American Canal was authorized along with the Hoover Dam by the 1928 Boulder Canyon Project Act and built in the 1930s by the United States Bureau of Reclamation and Six Companies, Inc.. Its design and construction was supervised by the Bureau's then chief designing engineer, John L. Savage and was completed in 1942.
All-American Canal | History
There were 112 deaths reported as associated with the construction of the dam. The first was surveyor John Gregory ("J.G.") Tierney who drowned on December 20, 1922 in a flash flood, while looking for an ideal spot for the dam. The official list's final death occurred on December 20, 1935, when Patrick Tierney, electrician's helper and the son of J.G. Tierney, fell from one of the two Arizona-side intake towers. Included in the fatality list are three workers who took their own lives on site, one in 1932 and two in 1933. Of the 112 fatalities, 91 were Six Companies employees, three were Bureau of Reclamation employees, and one was a visitor to the site; the remainder were employees of various contractors not part of Six Companies.
Hoover Dam | Construction deaths
For Hoover Dam, True based his designs on Native American pottery and sand paintings in their decoration. In 1942, The Bureau of Reclamation sent him to camouflage school in Washington, D.C., where he drew up plans to hide America's huge dams from the country's wartime enemies. In spite of a debilitating stroke suffered in the early Fifties, True completed one more mural; an exuberant depiction of a Native American eagle dance for the University of Colorado Student Union Building in Boulder (which is now owned by the Koshare Indian Museum in La Junta).
Allen Tupper True | Colorado National Bank Building Murals
Increased security concerns by the government have led to most of the interior structure being inaccessible to tourists. As a result, few of True's decorations can now be seen by visitors. Visitors can only purchase tickets on-site and have the options of a guided tour of the whole facility or only the power plant area. The only self-guided tour option is for the visitor center itself, where visitors can view various exhibits and enjoy a 360-degree view of the dam.
Hoover Dam | Roadway and tourism
He served as the Director of the Reclamation Service (now the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) from 1914 to 1923. Boulder Dam (later called Hoover Dam) was fundamentally the conception of Arthur Powell Davis. A month before he died, Arthur Powell Davis was appointed Consulting Engineer on the dam project. Mr. Davis had his vision back in 1902. He died in Oakland, California, on August 7, 1933, and is buried in St. Paul’s Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C., along with his wife, Elizabeth B. Davis. The Davis Dam is named after him. Arthur Davis brought more to his job than ambition.
Arthur Powell Davis | Introduction
The Smith Center Board wanted a timeless and elegant design, selecting architect David M. Schwarz to design the center, using inspiration from the Hoover Dam's Art Deco style as a major and lasting historical influence in the Las Vegas area. The building is a reinterpretation of Bertram Goodhue's 1922 design for the Nebraska State Capitol at Lincoln, and John & Donald Parkinson's 1929 Bullocks Wilshire in Los Angeles. White Indiana limestone for the facade (as at Lincoln), as well as numerous detail elements based on the Hoover Dam and 1920s motifs feature throughout the facility, including a winged sculpture in the Center lobby modeled after the dam's famous Winged Figures of the Republic statues.
Smith Center for the Performing Arts | Architecture and artworks
These six companies (Utah Construction, Morrison-Knudsen, Kaiser, Bechtel, Pacific Bridge and MacDonald&Kahn) with the help of Frank T. Crowe worked out the bid. In February of 1931 the Six Companies was incorporated. Six Companies, Inc.: President W.H. Wattis, First Vice President W.A. Bechtel, 2nd Vice President E.O. Wattis, Secretary Charles A Shea, Treasurer Felix Kahn and Assistant Secretary-Treasurer K.K. Bechtel. Board members included: W.H. Wattis, E.O. Wattis, Charles A. Shea, Felix Kahn, Stephen D. Bechtel, Henry J. Kaiser, Alan MacDonald and Philip Hart. On March 4, 1931 the US Secretary of the Interior awards Six Companies, Incorporated's bid for project Boulder Dam.
Six Companies, Inc. | Hoover Dam
Glen Canyon's overall design was based on that of Hoover Dam – a massive concrete arch-gravity structure anchored in solid bedrock – with several significant changes. The engineers wanted the dam to rely predominantly on its arch shape to carry the tremendous pressure of the impounded water into the canyon walls instead of depending on the sheer weight of the structure to hold the reservoir back, as had been done at Hoover. However, the foundation rock at Glen Canyon consists of porous sandstone prone to spalling, in contrast to the stronger granite at the Hoover Dam site, forcing the Glen Canyon design to follow more conservative lines by greatly thickening the abutments, thus increasing the surface area through which the weight of dam and reservoir would be transmitted to the rock and relieving the pressure per square inch on the highly breakable cliffs.
Glen Canyon Dam | Dam and spillways
President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Wirtz Dam | Introduction
Concrete was poured day and night, but was halted during the winter because of freezing temperatures. To organize the pouring, the dam was split into plots and each was raised about five or six feet at a time. Workers had about 150 days — before seasonal flooding — to construct the dam to a height of at least . Before flooding began, engineers planned to seal the diversion tunnels and begin filling the reservoir. To speed the pouring process, concrete was poured in casts by buckets that moved along three cableways suspended above the construction site. The deadline was met within the 150 days and a total of of concrete was poured.
Daniel-Johnson dam | Construction
In 1922, the Reclamation Service presented a report calling for the development of a dam on the Colorado River for flood control and electric power generation. The report was principally authored by Davis, and was called the Fall-Davis report after Interior Secretary Albert Fall. The Fall-Davis report cited use of the Colorado River as a federal concern because the river's basin covered several states, and the river eventually entered Mexico. Though the Fall-Davis report called for a dam "at or near Boulder Canyon", the Reclamation Service (which was renamed the Bureau of Reclamation the following year) found that canyon unsuitable.
Hoover Dam | Planning and agreements
No deaths of non-workers from pneumonia were recorded in Boulder City during the construction period.
Hoover Dam | Construction deaths
Concrete placement continued until November 15, 1962, when workers topped out the dam. By the end of 1962, both the river outlet works and the spillway tunnel were completed, and the diversion tunnel was closed, allowing water to begin rising behind the dam. The dam's hydroelectric generators were installed by mid–August 1963 and the first unit went into operation on September 27 at the press of a switch by President John F. Kennedy. The dam was officially dedicated by Lady Bird Johnson on August 17 of the following year.
Flaming Gorge Dam | Construction
On May 21, 1941, the Army awarded a contract to two engineers to design and build the dam. The engineers forecasted that the dam would take a year to complete, but the Army would only allow six months for completion. Planning, surveying, and construction were accelerated, and the dam was completed within the allotted timeframe, in early January 1942.
Salinas Dam | Construction, Design, and Specifications
The Boulder Dam is the former name for the Hoover Dam. Boulder Dam may also refer to:
Boulder Dam (disambiguation) | Introduction
Bill, the creation of the middle class, the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam, creation of the Internet, and landing on the moon as examples of what he was talking about.
You didn't build that | Speech
In particular he favored the area between where the hydroelectric power plants Powerhouses and were to be built, with what he perceived as favorable topography, a natural narrowing of the canyon downstream of a wide, upstream platform which would allow the creation of a large reservoir area with a minimum possible dam.
St. Francis Dam | Planning and design
The new arrangement began on October 1, 2017. The Bureau of Reclamation reports that the energy generated under the contracts ending in 2017 was allocated as follows:
Hoover Dam | Power distribution
Once a site was selected, a nearby source of sufficient materials for construction had to be located. Since the site was acceptable for either an earth or concrete dam, the types of construction materials and their locations would be the deciding factor in determining what type of dam would be built. The decision to build a concrete dam was made because sufficient quantities of concrete aggregate could be located near the construction site, while there was insufficient material for an earth dam. The detailed design of the dam, construction plans and specifications were prepared by the design section of the engineering division under Mr.
Norfork Dam | Construction
Owyhee's construction served as a prototype for the larger Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, including the use of refrigeration to cool the concrete. The dam cost $6,000,000, with the total reclamation project costing $18,000,000. Owyhee was designed by Frank A. Banks, who also designed other dams such as the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River. In the 1980s, electricity-generating capabilities were added to the dam. From 1990 to 1993, the dam was remodeled. Since the height of the dam made a fish ladder impractical, the dam closed off the Owyhee Chinook salmon runs that used to swim as far upstream as Nevada.
Owyhee Dam | History
With most work finished on the dam itself (the powerhouse remained uncompleted), a formal dedication ceremony was arranged for September 30, 1935, to coincide with a western tour being made by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The morning of the dedication, it was moved forward three hours from 2 p.m. Pacific time to 11 a.m.; this was done because Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes had reserved a radio slot for the President for 2 p.m. but officials did not realize until the day of the ceremony that the slot was for 2 p.m. Eastern Time. Despite the change in the ceremony time, and temperatures of , 10,000 people were present for the President's speech, in which he avoided mentioning the name of former President Hoover, who was not invited to the ceremony.
Hoover Dam | Dedication and completion
Electricity from the dam's powerhouse was originally sold pursuant to a fifty-year contract, authorized by Congress in 1934, which ran from 1937 to 1987. In 1984, Congress passed a new statute which set power allocations to southern California, Arizona, and Nevada from the dam from 1987 to 2017. The powerhouse was run under the original authorization by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Southern California Edison; in 1987, the Bureau of Reclamation assumed control. In 2011, Congress enacted legislation extending the current contracts until 2067, after setting aside 5% of Hoover Dam's power for sale to Native American tribes, electric cooperatives, and other entities.
Hoover Dam | Power distribution
Meanwhile, the Corps of Engineers continued engineering studies.
Rampart Dam | Planning
In response to this finding, the tunnels were patched with special heavy-duty concrete and the surface of the concrete was polished mirror-smooth. The spillways were modified in 1947 by adding flip buckets, which both slow the water and decrease the spillway's effective capacity, in an attempt to eliminate conditions thought to have contributed to the 1941 damage. The 1983 damage, also due to cavitation, led to the installation of aerators in the spillways. Tests at Grand Coulee Dam showed that the technique worked, in principle.
Hoover Dam | Spillways
The dam was built in 53 sections called monoliths. A grouting tunnel or gallery was built in order to fill gaps between the dam and foundation with concrete. The spillway consists of 22-tainter gates for overflow and at the base of the dam, 6-sluice gates were installed to maintain downstream flows. Construction was completed and the dam was opened in 1953.
John H. Kerr Dam | Background and construction
Further, according to the theory of constant-arch design, the arch action at the base of the dam exerts the maximum pressure on the base. A "V" shaped gorge in particular is considered an ideal feature for building this type of dam. This design ensures substantial savings in use of construction material as opposed to the constant–radius arch design. Lars R. Jorgenson who had conceived this concept had proved that the most economic design of the dam was obtained with an optimum opening angle of 133.6°, with the least quantity of concrete. This design was applied with some modifications for the Salmon Creek Dam, which was designed with constant opening angle of 113° with radius varying from at the base to at the crest.
Salmon Creek Dam | Theory and design
Roosevelt's New Deal legislation. The act authorizing TVA's establishment (signed on May 18, 1933) authorized TVA to immediately begin construction on a dam at the Cove Creek site. On July 30, TVA renamed the Cove Creek project for Senator Norris and began preparations for the dam's construction. As the agency lacked any engineering or dam construction experience, it relied heavily on the Army Corps' original design, and received ample consulting from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Hungarian-American architect Roland Wank (1898–1970) revised the initial plans from Bureau of Reclamation engineers, and gave the poured-concrete Norris Dam a modernist style, which was controversial and advanced for the era of construction, but the result would eventually succeed in elevating Roland Wank to the position of Chief Architect for TVA from 1933 through 1944.
Norris Dam | Background and construction
Such compacts were authorized by Article I of the United States Constitution but had never been concluded among more than two states. In 1922, representatives of seven states met with then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. Initial talks produced no result, but when the Supreme Court handed down the "Wyoming v. Colorado" decision undermining the claims of the upstream states, they became anxious to reach an agreement. The resulting Colorado River Compact was signed on November 24, 1922. Legislation to authorize the dam was introduced repeatedly by two California Republicans, Representative Phil Swing and Senator Hiram Johnson, but representatives from other parts of the country considered the project as hugely expensive and one that would mostly benefit California.
Hoover Dam | Planning and agreements
John Lucian Savage (December 25, 1879 – December 28, 1967) was an American civil engineer. Among the 60 major dams he supervised the designs for, he is best known for the Hoover Dam, Shasta Dam, Parker Dam and Grand Coulee Dam in the United States along with surveying for the future Three Gorges Dam in China. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the recipient of numerous awards including the John Fritz Medal.
John L. Savage | Introduction
Coolidge Dam was constructed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), which also owns and operates it, at a cost of US$10 million. It was built between 1924 and 1928. The overall structure used of concrete and consists of three domes, which are supported by massive buttresses on centers. It rises , with a crest length of . Two uncontrolled ogee crest spillways are concrete lined and located on each abutment.
Coolidge Dam | Construction
The building of Flaming Gorge Dam started just a few months after the CRSP was approved in Congress, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower pressed a button on his desk in the White House and set off the first blast in Red Canyon. Site preparations and geologic inspections continued as Dutch John, the company town that provided housing for the workers, was completed just northeast of the dam site by 1958. More than 3000 people would inhabit Dutch John at the peak of construction. The main contract for dam construction was awarded to Arch Dam Constructors, a conglomerate of Peter Kiewit Sons, Morrison-Knudsen Company, Mid-Valley Utility Constructors Inc.
Flaming Gorge Dam | Construction
The power station's design flow is and the mean hydraulic head .
Shuangjiangkou Dam | Design
On August 7, 1931, the company cut wages for all tunnel workers. Although the workers sent the organizers away, not wanting to be associated with the "Wobblies", they formed a committee to represent them with the company. The committee drew up a list of demands that evening and presented them to Crowe the following morning. He was noncommittal. The workers hoped that Crowe, the general superintendent of the job, would be sympathetic; instead, he gave a scathing interview to a newspaper, describing the workers as "malcontents".
Hoover Dam | Labor force
The town was designed and built by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Six Companies to support the construction of Hoover Dam between 1931 and 1935. The chief planner was Saco Rienk DeBoer. The town center is unified by the consistent use of the Spanish Colonial Revival style of architecture.
Boulder City Historic District | Design
Success with the O'Shaughnessy Dam convinced the Wattis Brothers to bid on more dam projects. In 1922, Utah Construction Company formed a partnership with Morrison-Knudsen of Boise. With Frank Crowe as the chief engineer, the MK-UC partnership successfully built dams throughout the American west. In 1931, the Wattis Brothers spearheaded the formation of Six Companies to build the Hoover Dam which was the largest construction project ever tackled by the US Government up to the time. Including the Hoover Dam, Utah Construction built 58 dams between 1916 and 1969.
Utah Construction Company | History
The dam was not a large one. The goal was to merely create a pond behind the dam, which would create enough water pressure (or "head") to turn turbines and generate electricity. The dam was built at a cost of about $515,000 (roughly $12,335,000 in inflation-adjusted 2010 dollars) on the upstream brink of the falls (to create the deepest reservoir possible). Construction bids were opened on February 5, 1890, with the request for bids specifying that all work must be finished by December 1, 1890. All the bids were rejected, and mechanical engineer Maurice Parker was employed to design and construct the dam.
Black Eagle Dam | 1890 dam
The dam was built by the Works Progress Administration of the New Deal. It is located on the site of an old log dam.
Chute Pond Dam | History
On September 30, 1930, President Herbert Hoover remotely initiated the generation of electricity from Comerford Dam, then New England's largest single hydroelectric development. This was the first in a series, harnessing hydroelectric power in the United States in the 1930s. The power was sent for use in Massachusetts. At the time of its construction, it was the largest "retaining wall" in the United States, representing more than of concrete. In 2005, USGen New England sold the dam to TransCanada Hydro Northeast Inc.
Frank D. Comerford Dam | History
Baker Dam used to refer only to: Now it may also refer to:
Baker Dam | Introduction