Hoover Dam Facts — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

Deep Inside Hoover Dam — Just the Facts

Look! I have pho­to­graphic proof that there is light at the end of the tun­nel. Unfor­tu­nately, there’s also a roughly 400 foot drop down a sheer sur­face to hot con­crete below. Most vis­i­tors to the Hoover Dam only get the Power Plant tour, but there’s a longer ver­sion that brings you down to this creepy tun­nel. Not even enough room for me to stand up all the way. As you get closer to the end, you feel the heat of the exte­rior radi­at­ing toward you. Best not to touch any­thing down there dur­ing the sum­mer months, espe­cially those metal pipes.

The tour guides have a lot of inter­est­ing trivia and facts, but they also seem to want to dis­pel the myths. For instance, there are no bod­ies buried in the damn. It wouldn’t be good for qual­ity con­trol. Besides, they only poured cement in a few inches at a time. There wasn’t some big vat that could hide a body. That doesn’t mean peo­ple didn’t die dur­ing the effort — includ­ing a father and son who died in sep­a­rate inci­dents 13 years apart. 96 were lost due to indus­trial acci­dents, but more died due to heat and illness.

I typ­i­cally thought of Hoover Dam as a project for elec­tric­ity — and it is — but I was sur­prised to learn how much impact it had on agri­cul­ture. Com­ing from a very wet place, it never occurred to me. The impact of bring­ing water to the desert was enor­mous for agri­cul­ture and the econ­omy. After all, some­thing had to fill all of those Las Vegas pools.