'Feat of mankind': Hoover Dam turns 89 and faces an uncertain future

USA Today

03-03-2025

'Feat of mankind': Hoover Dam turns 89 and faces an uncertain future
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The Hoover Dam on Lake Mead: 200 years in the making
Putting a massive dam on the Colorado River on the state line of Nevada and Arizona took decades of planning.
The Republic
Saturday commemorates the 89th anniversary of the Hoover Dam's completed construction, considered by most experts "a modern miracle" and one of the most visited sites in the world.
The 726-foot-high arch-gravity dam stretches 1,244 feet across the Black Canyon and was built over five years starting in 1931, helping provide water and hydroelectrical power to the West. The now-second-tallest dam was proposed to prevent flooding from Rocky Mountain snow-melting waters into the Colorado River, stretching south to the Gulf of California for more than 1,000 miles.
Constructed along the Colorado River at the border of Nevada and Arizona, more than 21,000 workers helped erect the dam, situated about 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas, during the Great Depression, one of the nation's most turbulent times in history, said Robert Glennon, a water policy and law expert and emeritus professor at the University of Arizona.
Construction on the dam was completed on March 1, 1936, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
"It is an American icon if there ever was one," said Glennon, author of the book, "Unquenchable, America's Water Crises and What To Do About It." "Given that it was built during the Depression, I consider it a modern miracle."
The Hoover Dam captures water from the Colorado River and fills Lake Mead. The dam also generates enough energy each year to serve 1.3 million people in Nevada, Arizona and California, the Reclamation Bureau said.
"That dam and the water stored became a very important piece of almost all of the uses in those lower basin states," said Jennifer Gimbel, a senior water policy scholar for the Colorado Water Center at Colorado State University. "They are controlling the water and move their economies forward to get water when they wanted it and helped the economies in all three of those states.
"The dam helped build Nevada, as the state felt that building it would bring economic development," Gimbel added.
Glennon said the dam is largely responsible for the growth of Las Vegas, then known as a major railroad hub of about 5,000 residents in a broad, underdeveloped desert valley situated between Utah and California. Now, with its bright lights, casinos and ubiquitous nightlife that attract millions of visitors each year, Las Vegas is known as the entertainment capital of the world.
"If there's no Hoover Dam, I strongly believe there's no Las Vegas," Glennon said. "Because Vegas back then was just a train stop until after the Dam was built, you had a water and an electrical supply that Vegas could tap into. Look what became of that."
The dam is a National Historic Landmark and has been rated by the American Society of Civil Engineers as one of America's Seven Modern Civil Engineering Wonders.
On September 30, 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt officially dedicated the dam and famously said, "I came, I saw, and I was conquered, as everyone will be who sees for the first time this great feat of mankind."
How did the dam get its name?
The Hoover Dam was named in honor of Herbert Hoover, the nation's 31st president. As commerce secretary, Hoover had a pivotal role in proposing the dam's construction on the Colorado River in the 1920s.
As construction of the dam was initiated on Sept. 30, 1930, then-Interior Secretary Ray Lyman Wilbur ordered the dam to be named after Hoover. Congress made it official five months later on Feb. 14, 1931, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's website.
When Hoover left office in 1933, the names "Boulder Canyon Dam" and "Boulder Dam" were frequently used when referring to the dam, the website said, allegedly because the new secretary of the interior did not like Hoover.
However, the dam's name was never officially changed.
The naming of the dam was considered controversial at the time, Glennon said.
"It was all about politics, even back then," Glennon said. "Despite a lot of back-and-forth, Roosevelt's Cabinet really wanted to acknowledge the former president and they fought hard to get it through."
An uncertain future
As the Hoover Dam was built to control water use, there are concerns that the giant reservoirs of the Colorado River, Lake Mead (the largest reservoir in the U.S. in terms of water capacity) and Lake Powell, remain far below their capacities because of drought conditions in the West.
The lakes, which provide the water that 40 million Americans depend on, are now only about 35% full, climatologist Brian Fuchs of the National Drought Mitigation Center told USA TODAY in February.
Fuchs said that while the lakes are "in slightly better shape than a few years ago when they were at record lows and it really was a crisis situation. They are still only holding about half of the water compared to the average over the last 40 years."
Glennon said municipalities will somehow have to find ways to use less water from the lakes. He compares it with "having too many straws drinking out of a milkshake."
'Mother Nature needs to do her part': Water crisis in West still looms as Lakes Mead and Powell only 35% full
"It's going to require political will and moral courage to solve the problem," Glennon said.
Gimbel agrees. "The dam has been really important in helping us survive the megadrought we've been forced with since 2001," she said. "But there are harder times to come, and the leaders are still trying to figure out how to the best operate the dam for a sustainable Colorado River in the future."
Yet, the dam overall remains a key attraction, as more than seven million people visit the site each year, according to travelnevada.com. Two guided tours of Hoover Dam, a 40-minute Power Plant Tour and an hourlong Dam Tour, are offered to visitors, Lane Whitlow, Hoover Dam tour operations manager, told the Arizona Republic.
"Both tours begin with a 10-minute introductory film and include visits to the original construction tunnels, the 30-foot-diameter penstock and power plant balcony," Whitlow told the publication.
Gimbel is amazed the dam is still a strong tourist attraction.
"It is so cool, you think of these guys building this in the 1930s and the fact that it is still there and operating when it's been nearly 100 years," Gimbel said. "Look at the engineering marvel that is the dam as well as and the environmental and recreational aspects it has held."
Contributing, Doyle Rice, USA TODAY, and Tiffany Acosta, Arizona Republic