The Hoover Dam is an engineering marvel completed in the year 1935. The dam spans the Colorado River in the Black Canyon, about 30 miles south of Las Vegas. The dam provides hydroelectric power and irrigation in the arid regions of Arizona and California. At the time, it was the tallest dam in the world and it created the largest man made lake in the United States. The dam was built before the luxuries of modern tools and technology, so the workers faced many challenges during the construction. The Hoover dam has an intriguing history, a difficult construction, and used revolutionary technology.
The Hoover Dam has a very intriguing beginning. In 1922, the Reclamation Service gave a report requesting for a dam to be built on the Colorado
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First, seven states had to approve of the construction. After a while of debate, it was approved by the Colorado River Compact. Next, the dam had to be approved by Congress. The opposing congressmen had a strong argument. They thought that it would only benefit California and that safety could not be guaranteed for the people living downriver or working on the dam. Congress hired a board of engineers to review the idea, and they said it was possible. After voting in both houses, the bill passed. President Calvin Coolidge signed the bill, approving of the project. The Hoover Dam was given $165 million to be built, along with two smaller dams …show more content…
The dam could not be poured in a single pour due to its size, so the engineers had to think of a different method. They decided to pour the concrete in five foot high forms of varying widths, which were stacked together. Each form had multiple 1 inch steel pipes in it, totaling to 582 miles of pipe. These pipes had cool water pumped through them to speed up the curing process. The base of the dam alone needed 230 individual blocks of concrete. The blocks were stacked with alternating schemes to add to the strength. Once the block of concrete was poured and cured, the pipes were filled with grout to add extra support. Grout was also poured in between the blocks of concrete.
Huge steel buckets carried the concrete to the designated form. They were seven feet high by seven feet wide, and weighed twenty tons. The buckets were suspended over the canyon with steel cables, and lowered to the correct form on the dam. Then, the bottom opened up, dumping the concrete into the form. The buckets were delivered once every 78 seconds, which kept everybody very busy. The workers then stirred it into the form. The dam used a total of 3,250,000 cubic yards of concrete before the dam was finished in
Behind Millerton Lake, lies an existing structure made up of concrete of 319 foot high, this dam is called the Friant Dam. In the San Joaquin Valley below the project's authority of Fresno, Madera, Kern, and Tulare; the water holds and deliver up to a million acres. In 1933 and throughout 1934, the state couldn't find enough contributors to buy revenues bonds to complete the project. Luckily, the River and Harbors Act of 1935 by the United States Congress came through and financed under the United State Army Corps of Engineers.
In December 1936 the United States Department of the Interior authorized the Lower Colorado River Authority to construct a low dam at the site of an old crossing on the river known as Marshall Ford. Marshall Ford Dam was completed in 1941 through the collaboration of the United States Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) and the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) of Texas. The original purpose of the dam was to prevent floods from devastating Austin, TX. The capital city had substandard heavy damage from previous floods since its establishment in 1846. Soon bureaucrats came together to create the Colorado River Project, wanting to create a series of dams along the Colorado River to create hydroelectric power and serve to control floods and droughts. With Buchanan dam well under way with a total of six planned Marshall Ford was the only dam designed primarily for flood control and the only dam in which USBR oversaw construction. With money scarce there was debate over the final height dam and it reservoir capacity. This issue resolves itself with the flood of 1938. Once completed Marshall Ford Dam would flood 65 miles of the Colorado to form Lake Travis, creating the largest of the seven reservoirs known as the Highland Lakes.
The one feature common to the Hoover Dam, The Mississippi river and the three gorges dam is that they all tried to control nature’s swings, specifically in the form of flooding. Before the Hoover dam was built, the Colorado river “used to flood spectacularly…but after 1900 the Colorado provoked a vehement response” (Pg 177). The response was simple, but large. The U.S. built several large dams, including the Hoover dam, on the Colorado to decrease its flooding and increase power and irrigation. Unfortunately, just as human control of the Colorado’s flooding increased, its organisms and habitats were detrimentally influenced, and the water became more and more salinated.
The South Fork Dam collapsed and unleashed 20 million tons of water from its reservoir. A wall of water, reaching up to 70 feet high, swept 14 miles down the Little Conemaugh River Valley, carrying away steel mills, houses, livestock and people. At 4:07 p.m., the floodwaters rushed into the industrial city of Johnstown, crushing houses and downtown businesses in a whirlpool that lasted 10 minutes. (New York Times, 1889).
The negative aspects of Glen Canyon Dam greatly exceed the positive aspects. The dam’s hydroelectric power supply is only three percent of the total power used by the six states that are served by the facility. There is a surplus of power on the Colorado Plateau and with more and more power-plants being created in the western hemisphere, Glen Canyon Dam’s power is not needed (Living Rivers: What about the hydroelectric loss). Although the ‘lake’ contains twenty seven million acre feet of water, one and a half million acre feet of water are lost yearly due to evaporation and seepage into the sandstone banks surrounding the ‘lake’ (Living Rivers: What about the water supply?). The loss of that much “water represents millions, even billions of dollars” (Farmer 183). If the government were to employ more water efficient irrigation practices, as much as five million acre feet of water per year could be saved.
20 dams have been built, many of them by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, along the River and the tributaries. The Hoover Dam, which holds back at the Black Canyon to form the reservoir Lake Mead, one of the largest artificial lakes in the world. The Glen Canyon D... ... middle of paper ... ... nts for profit along the river's course can hardly complain when a river flows where it's supposed to go.
Today it is still the largest concrete dam in North America, as well as being the largest concrete structure in the United States with 11,975,521 cubic yards of concrete. The Dam is built on a massive granite foundation and stands at 550 ft tall which is about twice as tall as the statue of liberty, The reservoir has a capacity of 421 billion cubic feet of water, the dam releases about 110,000 cubic feet
Over the years Glen Canyon Dam has been the spark for hundreds of debates, rallies, and protests. These debates have been going on for almost forty years now. The fact is that the dam created a huge lake when it was built, this is what bothers environmentalists. This lake is called Lake Powell and thousands of people depend on its tourists for income. The lake also filled up a canyon called Glen Canyon, some people say it was the most beautiful place on earth. The anti-dam side of the debate has its basis in the fact that Lake Powell is currently covering Glen Canyon. It was very remote so few people got to witness its splendor. This is probably the reason the dam was built in the first place, ignorance.
The Dry Creek Station was created in the spring of 1860 by crew members. This station was the last one built on the Pony Express on Bolivar Roberts division. This station was built for the purpose of the Pony Express which delivered mail. William H. Russell, Alexander Majors, and William B. Waddell created the Pony Express because mail delivery by boat would take a substantial amount of time so they chose that delivering mail by horse would take a cut on time. During the building process they ran into some issues with Indians, and one day when a “heavy mail” carrier named William H. Streeper was headed westward and ran into two prospectors that asked if they could join him in the journey. They neared Dry Creek Station and saw that there were no Indians in sight, but when they got to the station they found the station keeper scalped and mutilated, this man’s name was Ralph Rosier. What had actually happened is that Indians came into the station and shot two men. One of the men shot was named Applegate, who was already suffering from being shot, one of the Indians gave him a bullet and they let him decide his fate. He chose to shoot himself in the head rather than try and shoot the Indian in front of him.
1902 The Bureau of Reclamation is established to construct dams and aqueducts in the west.
What: it gave jobs to unemployed workers. 726 ft high and 1,244 feet long. World's tallest dam, and second largest dam. Provided electricity and flood control, and regular water supply.
The Hoover Dam is a modern marvel and a testament to American ingenuity. At over six million six hundred thousand tons and jetting seven hundred sixty feet from the canyon floor, six hundred sixty feet across the bottom and, one thousand two hundred forty four feet across the top, the structure is awe inspiring even to a modern audience. Three quarters of a century since its completion it still stands as a symbol of one of the greatest construction projects of the ages. The need for a dam to block the Colorado River was not a new idea when construction began in 1931, but had been mulled around since the dawn of the century. Flooding due to runoff from the Rocky Mountains had devastated crops, and a need for hydroelectric power increased the need for a dam. In 1922 Black Valley was chosen as the spot for the dam’s construction. No one construction company was large enough to take on the project alone, so a group of companies formed a joint venture in order to bid the job. The Six Companies Inc. made up of Morrison-Knudson, the J.F. Shea Company of Portland, MacDonald & Kahn Ltd, Pacific Bridge Company of Portland, Henry J. Kaiser, Bechtel Company of San Francisco were awarded the winning bid for the dam at forty eight million eight hundred ninety thousand nine hundred fifty five dollars. The construction management team had a Herculean task in building this behemoth and faced many problems in its construction. A few of the major issues posed to the team were diverting the Colorado River, provisioning the men and material to get the job done, and the actual construction of the Hoover Dam. The heights involved with project led to many safety obstacles that had to be overcame.
Dams made from dirt are very weak and the South Fork dam was built entirely with dirt. From an engineering standpoint dams made with dirt needed to be built ...
The purpose of Wivenhoe dam was to be over-topped by runoff when that runoff water reaches its flood capacity of the dam. Without the dam,excess water will destroy millions of lives and houses will be crushed by heavy waves. The Dam is an earth and rock fill embankment. It is 59 metres in height. with a concrete spillway section on which steel gates are installed. The crest of the embankment is 2.3 kilometres long.
The paragraphs below will prove that the construction and presence of dams always has and will continue to leave devastating effects on the environment around them. Firstly, to understand the thesis people must know what dams are. A dam is a barrier built across a water course to hold back or control water flow. Dams are classified as either storage, diversion or detention. As you could probably notice from it's name, storage dams are created to collect or hold water for periods of time when there is a surplus supply.