Airwolfhound / flickr.com Airwolfhound / flickr.com Airwolfhound / flickr.com View from Hoover Dam (Alexander Russy / flickr.com) Ron Reiring / flickr.com Ron Reiring / flickr.com Lauri Väin / flickr.com David Herrera / flickr. com Viator.com / flickr.com Construction of the O'Callaghan Bridge (Alan Stark / flickr.com) Henner Zeller / flickr.com Hoover Dam Towers (Joseph Francis / flickr.com) Joseph Francis / flickr.com Hoover Dam Clock Tower (Ian Lee / flickr.com) Joseph Francis / flickr.com Omshivaprakash H L / flickr.com Xiquinho Silva / flickr.com Hoover Dam Electric Generators (Dennis Redfield / flickr.com) Joseph Francis / flickr.com Joseph Francis / flickr.com Electric Generators Hoover Dam (Joseph Francis / flickr.com)
In the lower delta of the Colorado River is located one of the most famous attractions of the United States and Las Vegas - the Hoover Dam. The hydroelectric power station, which is a huge hydraulic structure more than 200 meters high, was built in the 30s of the last century.
Black Canyon - the place where this structure is located, is located near the states of Arizona and Nevada. The Hoover Dam got its name in honor of one of the American presidents, namely Herbert Hoover. The 31st head of a huge state took an active part in the organization and progress of the construction of the dam, which gave him the honor of giving his name to such a grandiose construction project.
The Colorado River has repeatedly created many problems for the population living on its banks. Most often, farmland located downstream suffered: with the melting of snow, river waters overflowed their banks and covered everything that was within their reach.
The main reason behind the decisive step in constructing the dam was the designers' assumption that this was the only way to eradicate the Colorado's annual flood problems. In addition, hopes were pinned on the emerging new reservoir for the development of agriculture in the surrounding areas and the supply of drinking water in several areas of California.
Signing of the Treaty – Colorado River Convention
For quite a long time, the main obstacle to the construction of the dam was disagreements between the heads of neighboring administrative divisions. Most of them insisted that Colorado's resources should be distributed evenly among all likely consumers.
This fact contributed to the creation of a special committee, which included representatives of all those interested in the proceedings, including the main persons of the Neighboring States and the American government. All of them were afraid of the intentions of the California authorities, who were claiming the right to dispose of the main volume of water reserves.
The result of the activities of the above commission was the signing of a multilateral agreement - the Colorado River Convention, which legally established a mechanism for distributing the river reserve between interested parties.
Preparation of the project and investment resources
The Hoover Dam, according to its construction project, needed significant infusion Money, the source of which was the state budget. But approval from the US authorities for the construction of such a large-scale hydraulic structure was received only after some time.
Despite the decision signed by Coolidge in 1928, the first investments were received only two years later. It was then that Hoover occupied the post of head of state. Initially, construction work on the creation of Hoover Dam was planned to be carried out in the Boulder Canyon, as a result of which the construction project was later called the Boulder Canyon Project, despite the fact that the Hoover Dam was built in the Black Canyon.
Difficult working conditions
Leading US companies were appointed as construction contractors. The number of workers involved in the creation of the hydroelectric power station was simply incredible: the largest number of workers was recorded in 1934 - more than 5,200 people.
View of Hoover Dam (Joseph Francis / flickr.com)
A feature of the contract agreement was a ban on hiring Asians, and a limit on hiring Africans - only about 30 black people were allowed to take on the lowest paid jobs.
During construction, a special settlement for workers and construction workers was to be built next to the Hoover Dam. However, plans were changed as the work schedule was revised in order to increase the number of available labor vacancies. All these factors influenced the progress of building the town, which was not completed when the main number of mercenaries arrived. Construction workers had to live in temporary barracks near the Hoover Dam.
It is worth noting the terrible working conditions. The lack of normal accommodation during non-working hours and the dangers that await workers at every step due to neglect of safety regulations became the reasons for the strike that took place in 1931, which was not successful - the police were ordered to disperse the strikers using force. After these events, the state authorities decided to speed up the pace of construction, and a year later the mercenaries were settled in permanent homes in the adjacent completed city.
Joseph Francis / flickr.com
Until the very end of construction work on the territory of Boulder City, prostitution and the sale of any alcoholic drinks, gambling. Moreover, in fact, the ban lasted another forty years, and gambling has not been lifted to this day, which makes this city the only one in Nevada where such a taboo exists.
The Hoover Dam was born under difficult, inhumane conditions. People working in deep tunnels were suffocating from carbon monoxide, but management flatly refused to take responsibility for the illnesses and deaths of their subordinates.
The Hoover Dam and the history of its creation are distinguished by the fact that it was here that workers first used helmets to protect their heads from impacts. However, a total of 96 people became victims of the negligence of project managers who neglected to comply with technical safety rules.
Construction works
The Black Canyon, in which the Hoover Dam was to be built, was quite narrow and played a dividing role between Nevada and Arizona. It was planned to divert water in the opposite direction from the construction point using 4 tunnels, the total length of which is almost 5 km.
Hoover Dam, Arizona/Nevada, USA (Ron Reiring / flickr.com)
Hoover Dam has concrete base, which was filled in 1933. For this purpose, nearby non-metallic deposits were specially opened and factories for the production of concrete were built.
Faced with problems of cooling the concrete mixture during the construction of such a gigantic dam, the builders had to make adjustments to the original plan, and then the Hoover Dam was built from many individual trapezoidal columns interconnected. This construction methodology made it possible to significantly speed up the concrete hardening process.
The pit for the hydroelectric power station was supposed to be dug simultaneously with the main pit of the reservoir. All excavation work was completed by 1933.
Hoover Dam power generators (Joseph Francis / flickr.com)
Three years later, the first electric generators were installed and the first electricity. Today, Hoover Dam houses 17 electrical generators that reach a capacity of up to 2,074 MW.
They balance electricity consumption between households and manufacturing in the western United States. 25 years ago, the power management system at Hoover Dam was modernized and equipped with modern computers.
Architectural appearance of the dam
The exterior of the Hoover Dam was supposed to look like an ordinary wall, decorated with a neo-Gothic balustrade. The creators did not intend to take the issue of the architecture of the hydroelectric power station seriously at all, since the primary task was to complete construction as quickly as possible. At the same time, this decision caused a whole wave of critical discussions, and in the end, it was decided to work out the architectural appearance of the Hoover Dam.
Invited architect from Los Angeles, Gordon Kaufman, achieved dramatic changes by approving new project, related to the Art Deco style. In addition to the towers on the top of the dam, his idea was to place clocks on the spillway towers.
Legal name: Hoover Dam
Hoover Dam did not always have its legal name. The fact is that in addition to the original “Boulder Dam” associated with the site of the dam’s construction, there were other factors that prevented the legendary structure from bearing the name it deserved.
Some time later, after the dam was officially named in honor of President Herbert Hoover, he lost the election, giving way to Franklin Roosevelt. The US Congress again proposed returning the name to its original version. And only after the death of President Roosevelt, the project to return the structure named after Hoover was signed by the next American leader.
New O'Callaghan Bridge
Until 2010, the highway connecting Arizona with the Mexican border passed through the Hoover Dam. The part of the road adjacent to the dam did not meet the requirements of the highway and the number of vehicles to pass through.
Construction of O'Callaghan Bridge (Alan Stark / flickr.com)
Also, the winding, dangerous two-lane road had several difficult hairpin turns and narrow spots with low visibility.
The 2001 terrorist attack in New York left its mark on the vehicle access system. To avoid repeated terrorist attacks, more thorough inspections of vehicles were organized, which slowed down the passage of vehicles and increased traffic jams at the entrance.
But the O'Callaghan Bridge, opened 6 years ago, not far from the Hoover Dam, has significantly reduced the flow of cars passing through the dam.
The significance of Hoover Dam today
The construction of the Hoover Dam significantly affected the water regime of the Colorado River and its ecological system. Similar negative impacts inherent in all artificial hydraulic structures, however, the benefits of the dam are significant: the river canyon was freed from frequent floods.
I'm starting to write a report on my trip to Supai. The actual report will begin in the next post, but now I will talk about the Hoover Dam.
Hoover Dam is one of the most famous and one of the largest dams in the United States. It is located on the Colorado River on the border of Nevada and Arizona.
The Colorado River has always had a restive character. As a result of the floods, people died and caused great economic damage. Often the river changed its course. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the idea arose to build hydraulic structures on the Colorado River to reduce the risk of flooding and use the river's waters for agriculture. With the development of the electric power industry, the idea of building a hydroelectric power station also arose. Research has shown that the most suitable place for building a dam is the Black Canyon.
However, the construction required the consent of the seven states through which the Colorado River and its tributaries flow. Some states feared that the reallocation of water resources would not be in their favor. In 1922, a commission was created, which included representatives from seven states. Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, took part in the commission's work. As a result of the commission's work, an agreement on the use of water resources of the Colorado River was adopted, which paved the way for the construction of the dam.
Another problem was financing the construction. The Boulder Canyon Dam Act, which provided funding, was passed in 1928. The development of the project was led by John Savage, who later designed several other famous dams. It was decided to build an arched-gravity concrete dam, which has the shape of an arc in plan, convex upstream of the river. The thickness of the dam at the base should have been about two hundred meters, and at the top - fourteen meters. The dam provided for vehicular traffic.
Funds for the construction of the dam were allocated in the summer of 1930 by President Hoover, and work began in the spring of 1931. Construction was supervised by Frank Crow, who had extensive experience in dam construction. The project was originally supposed to build a city for construction workers - Boulder City. However, during the Great Depression it was important to provide jobs to as many people as possible, so construction of the dam began six months earlier than planned, housing workers in temporary camps. It was not until late 1931 that the houses built in Boulder City began to be occupied. It should be noted that all this takes place in the very hot climate of Nevada.
Sculpture of a steeplejack, built in 1995. The prototype was Joe Kine, a construction veteran.
Safety helmets were first used in construction during the construction of the Hoover Dam.
In order to divert the river water and free up the construction site, two temporary dams were built, and four tunnels were cut into the rocks of the canyon, two on the Nevada side and two on the Arizona side. Concrete work began in June 1933. In Nevada, not far from the construction site, two concrete plants were built. A variety of innovative solutions were used during construction. The design of the dam was not monolithic, but consisted of many columns, between which pipes were laid. Water was supplied through pipes to cool the concrete. After the columns hardened, the spaces between them were filled with mortar. This solution made it possible to avoid cracking of the concrete during hardening.
At the time of its construction, the Hoover Dam was the largest man-made structure in the world. Its height is 221 meters, and its mass is more than 6.6 million tons. The rated power of the power plant is 2080 megawatts; on average, the power plant produces 4.2 billion kWh of electricity per year.
The architectural design of the dam buildings was carried out by Gordon Kaufman in the Art Deco style. There are clocks on two towers, one of them shows the time in Nevada, the other in Arizona.
Arizona and Nevada are in different time zones. But in most of Arizona, the clocks do not change to daylight saving time, so the time is the same in the summer. In winter there is a difference of one hour.
The construction of the dam was completed earlier than planned. The opening ceremony took place on September 30, 1935, by which time Franklin Roosevelt had become President of the United States.
According to official data, 96 people died during the construction of the dam in 1931-1935. Some sources indicate a figure of 112 people, including those killed during research and preparatory work. It is believed that another 42 people died from carbon monoxide poisoning during tunneling (officially, they died from pneumonia).
People have chilling legends about workers who fell into liquid concrete, whose corpses were never found. However, this could not happen. The dam was built from interlocking blocks one and a half meters high, seven meters wide and seven to eighteen meters long. Concrete was delivered to the block in buckets with a volume of six cubic meters. Five or six workers leveled and compacted the concrete, making sure there were no air pockets left in it. Each time after unloading the bucket, the level of concrete in the block increased by five to fifteen centimeters, depending on the horizontal dimensions of the block. It is impossible to drown in such a thin layer of concrete, and besides, the accident would not have gone unnoticed if there were several people at the site. So there is no need to invent all sorts of horrors, especially since there were already plenty of difficulties during construction. The work was carried out in very difficult and dangerous conditions, in a very hot climate.
The dam was built during the administration of President Herbert Hoover, but these were the years of the Great Depression, and the president was extremely unpopular. Therefore, only in 1947 the dam was named after him, and before that it was called the Boulder Dam.
The construction of the giant dam, along with other hydraulic structures, provided irrigation to the fields of Southern California and eliminated the threat of devastating floods. Electricity gave a powerful impetus to the development of the Southwestern United States, including Las Vegas, which in the early 30s was a very small town. In the 80-90s, the power plant was reconstructed, and it continues to be one of the largest in the USA. About a quarter of the electricity produced is consumed by Nevada, a fifth by Arizona, and the rest by California.
Since 1937, the dam has been visited by tourist groups. Nowadays, the dam is visited by more than a million people a year.
Highway 93 ran through the Hoover Dam, connecting Nevada and Arizona. In 2003, construction began on a bypass bridge over the Colorado River, and it opened to traffic in 2010.
Now visitors can enter the dam from the Nevada side, having passed control at the entrance, they can cross the dam to the other side and climb, but then the road is closed, that is, they cannot go onto the main highway in Arizona. Visitors can also enter the bridge on foot, but they cannot walk to the other side. This is an excellent vantage point overlooking the power plant, dam and reservoir.
photo yevgeniy_lysyy
Water intake towers
Water intake towers and Lake Med - a reservoir created by a dam.
Lake Honey is the largest reservoir by volume in the United States.
Spillway
Clock on the water intake tower.
"Republic" - monument to Oscar Hansen.
An image was made on the floor showing the positions of the stars on the day of the grand opening, September 30, 1935.
Inclined power line tower and visitor center.
There is an entrance fee to the visitor center. They show a film about the history of the dam's construction. You can take a tour of the dam or power plant. I took the second one and went down the elevator.
Turbine water pipeline.
Generators in the turbine room.
The power plant has 17 turbine generators - nine on the Arizona side and eight on the Nevada side. (for some reason only seven are visible here). In 1986-1993, the power plant was modernized and the turbogenerators were replaced.
Generator rotor.
Control panels.
Then the elevator takes visitors back up to the observation deck, where the view of the dam is slightly different.
Bypass bridge over the Colorado River. The bridge rises 260 meters above the Colorado River, making it the second tallest bridge in the United States and the tallest concrete arch bridge in the world. The length of the bridge is 579m, and the central span is 320m.
Colorado River, bypass bridge and power plant building.
Power plant building.
Inclined power line supports.
Power plant diagram.
photo
Airwolfhound / flickr.com Airwolfhound / flickr.com Airwolfhound / flickr.com View from Hoover Dam (Alexander Russy / flickr.com) Ron Reiring / flickr.com Ron Reiring / flickr.com Lauri Väin / flickr.com David Herrera / flickr. com Viator.com / flickr.com Construction of the O'Callaghan Bridge (Alan Stark / flickr.com) Henner Zeller / flickr.com Hoover Dam Towers (Joseph Francis / flickr.com) Joseph Francis / flickr.com Hoover Dam Clock Tower (Ian Lee / flickr.com) Joseph Francis / flickr.com Omshivaprakash H L / flickr.com Xiquinho Silva / flickr.com Hoover Dam Electric Generators (Dennis Redfield / flickr.com) Joseph Francis / flickr.com Joseph Francis / flickr.com Electric Generators Hoover Dam (Joseph Francis / flickr.com)
In the lower delta of the Colorado River is located one of the most famous attractions of the United States and Las Vegas - the Hoover Dam. The hydroelectric power station, which is a huge hydraulic structure more than 200 meters high, was built in the 30s of the last century.
Black Canyon - the place where this structure is located, is located near the states of Arizona and Nevada. The Hoover Dam got its name in honor of one of the American presidents, namely Herbert Hoover. The 31st head of a huge state took an active part in the organization and progress of the construction of the dam, which gave him the honor of giving his name to such a grandiose construction project.
The Colorado River has repeatedly created many problems for the population living on its banks. Most often, farmland located downstream suffered: with the melting of snow, river waters overflowed their banks and covered everything that was within their reach.
The main reason behind the decisive step in constructing the dam was the designers' assumption that this was the only way to eradicate the Colorado's annual flood problems. In addition, hopes were pinned on the emerging new reservoir for the development of agriculture in the surrounding areas and the supply of drinking water to several regions of the state of California.
Signing of the Treaty – Colorado River Convention
For quite a long time, the main obstacle to the construction of the dam was disagreements between the heads of neighboring administrative divisions. Most of them insisted that Colorado's resources should be distributed evenly among all likely consumers.
This fact contributed to the creation of a special committee, which included representatives of all those interested in the proceedings, including the main persons of the Neighboring States and the American government. All of them were afraid of the intentions of the California authorities, who were claiming the right to dispose of the main volume of water reserves.
The result of the activities of the above commission was the signing of a multilateral agreement - the Colorado River Convention, which legally established a mechanism for distributing the river reserve between interested parties.
Preparation of the project and investment resources
The Hoover Dam, according to its construction project, needed a significant infusion of funds, the source of which was the state budget. But approval from the US authorities for the construction of such a large-scale hydraulic structure was received only after some time.
Despite the decision signed by Coolidge in 1928, the first investments were received only two years later. It was then that Hoover occupied the post of head of state. Initially, construction work on the creation of Hoover Dam was planned to be carried out in the Boulder Canyon, as a result of which the construction project was later called the Boulder Canyon Project, despite the fact that the Hoover Dam was built in the Black Canyon.
Difficult working conditions
Leading US companies were appointed as construction contractors. The number of workers involved in the creation of the hydroelectric power station was simply incredible: the largest number of workers was recorded in 1934 - more than 5,200 people.
View of Hoover Dam (Joseph Francis / flickr.com)
A feature of the contract agreement was a ban on hiring Asians, and a limit on hiring Africans - only about 30 black people were allowed to take on the lowest paid jobs.
During construction, a special settlement for workers and construction workers was to be built next to the Hoover Dam. However, plans were changed as the work schedule was revised in order to increase the number of available labor vacancies. All these factors influenced the progress of building the town, which was not completed when the main number of mercenaries arrived. Construction workers had to live in temporary barracks near the Hoover Dam.
It is worth noting the terrible working conditions. The lack of normal accommodation during non-working hours and the dangers that await workers at every step due to neglect of safety regulations became the reasons for the strike that took place in 1931, which was not successful - the police were ordered to disperse the strikers using force. After these events, the state authorities decided to speed up the pace of construction, and a year later the mercenaries were settled in permanent homes in the adjacent completed city.
Joseph Francis / flickr.com
Until the very end of construction work, prostitution, the sale of any alcoholic beverages, and gambling were strictly prohibited in Boulder City. Moreover, in fact, the ban lasted another forty years, and gambling has not been lifted to this day, which makes this city the only one in Nevada where such a taboo exists.
The Hoover Dam was born under difficult, inhumane conditions. People working in deep tunnels were suffocating from carbon monoxide, but management flatly refused to take responsibility for the illnesses and deaths of their subordinates.
The Hoover Dam and the history of its creation are distinguished by the fact that it was here that workers first used helmets to protect their heads from impacts. However, a total of 96 people became victims of the negligence of project managers who neglected to comply with technical safety rules.
Construction works
The Black Canyon, in which the Hoover Dam was to be built, was quite narrow and played a dividing role between Nevada and Arizona. It was planned to divert water in the opposite direction from the construction point using 4 tunnels, the total length of which is almost 5 km.
Hoover Dam, Arizona/Nevada, USA (Ron Reiring / flickr.com)
Hoover Dam has a concrete foundation that was poured in 1933. For this purpose, nearby non-metallic deposits were specially opened and factories for the production of concrete were built.
Faced with problems of cooling the concrete mixture during the construction of such a gigantic dam, the builders had to make adjustments to the original plan, and then the Hoover Dam was built from many individual trapezoidal columns interconnected. This construction methodology made it possible to significantly speed up the concrete hardening process.
The pit for the hydroelectric power station was supposed to be dug simultaneously with the main pit of the reservoir. All excavation work was completed by 1933.
Hoover Dam power generators (Joseph Francis / flickr.com)
Three years later, the first electric generators were installed and electric current was generated for the first time. Today, Hoover Dam houses 17 electrical generators that reach a capacity of up to 2,074 MW.
They balance electricity consumption between households and manufacturing in the western United States. 25 years ago, the power management system at Hoover Dam was modernized and equipped with modern computers.
Architectural appearance of the dam
The exterior of the Hoover Dam was supposed to look like an ordinary wall, decorated with a neo-Gothic balustrade. The creators did not intend to take the issue of the architecture of the hydroelectric power station seriously at all, since the primary task was to complete construction as quickly as possible. At the same time, this decision caused a whole wave of critical discussions, and in the end, it was decided to work out the architectural appearance of the Hoover Dam.
Invited architect from Los Angeles, Gordon Kaufman, achieved dramatic changes by approving a new project related to the Art Deco style. In addition to the towers on the top of the dam, his idea was to place clocks on the spillway towers.
Legal name: Hoover Dam
Hoover Dam did not always have its legal name. The fact is that in addition to the original “Boulder Dam” associated with the site of the dam’s construction, there were other factors that prevented the legendary structure from bearing the name it deserved.
Some time later, after the dam was officially named in honor of President Herbert Hoover, he lost the election, giving way to Franklin Roosevelt. The US Congress again proposed returning the name to its original version. And only after the death of President Roosevelt, the project to return the structure named after Hoover was signed by the next American leader.
New O'Callaghan Bridge
Until 2010, the highway connecting Arizona with the Mexican border passed through the Hoover Dam. The part of the road adjacent to the dam did not meet the requirements of the highway and the number of vehicles to pass through.
Construction of O'Callaghan Bridge (Alan Stark / flickr.com)
Also, the winding, dangerous two-lane road had several difficult hairpin turns and narrow spots with low visibility.
The 2001 terrorist attack in New York left its mark on the vehicle access system. To avoid repeated terrorist attacks, more thorough inspections of vehicles were organized, which slowed down the passage of vehicles and increased traffic jams at the entrance.
But the O'Callaghan Bridge, opened 6 years ago, not far from the Hoover Dam, has significantly reduced the flow of cars passing through the dam.
The significance of Hoover Dam today
The construction of the Hoover Dam significantly affected the water regime of the Colorado River and its ecological system. Such negative impacts are inherent in all artificial hydraulic structures, however, the benefits of the dam are significant: the river canyon was freed from frequent floods.
Address: USA, 48 km from Las Vegas, Colorado River
Start of construction: 1931
Completion of construction: 1936
Height: 221 m
Coordinates: 36°00"58.0"N 114°44"15.5"W
Short description
Almost all tourists traveling to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon pass through the Hoover Dam or Hoover Dam.
Bird's eye view of Hoover Dam
This huge concrete dam, equal in height to a 70-story building, tamed the violent nature of the Colorado River. The Hoover Dam controls flood levels, supplies water and provides electricity to Arizona, California, and the “gambling capital of the United States” - Las Vegas (Nevada).
Historians believe that it was not gambling houses, but the construction of Hoover Dam that caused the development of Las Vegas, which turned from a village into a prosperous city.
Construction of Hoover Dam
Construction of the Hoover Dam, begun in 1931 at the height of the Great Depression, helped create new jobs for unemployed Americans. The construction of the dam was carried out in difficult conditions - the air temperature in the summer rose to +50°C. The work of rock climbers was particularly dangerous, and workers drilling tunnels suffered from excess carbon monoxide. However, there were more than enough applicants for vacant positions. According to official data, 96 people died during the construction of Hoover Dam. In 2000, a monument to rock climbers was erected near the entrance to the dam: a worker with a flashlight and a safety helmet hangs on a rope harness over a cliff.
I wonder what The Hoover Dam was built around the same years as the Dnieper Hydroelectric Power Station (1932 - 1939). Moreover, the same engineer from the General Electric company, the American C.G. Thomson, who was responsible for the installation of turbines and generators, took part in the construction of these hydraulic structures. In 1935, Soviet writers Ilf and Petrov visited the United States and visited a construction site.
They describe this “miracle of engineering” with admiration: “Imagine the stormy, mountainous Colorado River flowing along the bottom of a giant gorge, the walls of which are formed by high black and red rocks. And between these two walls created by nature, man created a third wall made of reinforced concrete, blocking the river flows.”
Hoover Dam - an engineering marvel
Construction of the Hoover Dam ended in 1936, two years earlier than planned. It was named after former US President Herbert Hoover. At one time, that is, in the mid-30s of the last century, Hoover Dam was a miracle of engineering. During its construction, many technical innovations were used: to divert river flows from the construction site, four channels were cut out in the walls of the Black Canyon, and the dam itself was built not as a solid monolith, but as a series of interconnected trapezoidal blocks - thanks to the smaller surface area, the concrete mixture cooled faster and hardened. Scientists have calculated that if the dam had been built in one piece, the concrete would have completely hardened in 125 years.
Hoover Dam Power Plant
Hoover Dam is the tallest dam in the Western Hemisphere and one of the largest power plants in the United States. Today, the station has 17 turbines with a total capacity of 2074 MW. According to experts, the equipment control automation system is so well adjusted that the power plant will be able to operate independently for two years without employee supervision, until the pipes become overgrown with algae.
Hoover Dam Bypass
At the top of Hoover Dam was Highway 93, connecting Arizona and the Mexican border. With the advent of the 21st century, frequent traffic jams led to the need to build a bridge across the Black Canyon, bypassing the dam. In October 2010, the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, better known as the Hoover Dam Bypass, was opened 500 meters from the dam. The bridge is named after Mike O'Callaghan, the ex-governor of Nevada, and Pat Tillman, an American football player from Arizona who left successful career and joined the US Army after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, to take revenge on the terrorists. The bridge is a grandiose arched structure 579 m long and 270 m high.
$240 million was spent on the construction of the Hoover Dam Bypass. The bridge accommodates 17 thousand cars daily, which made it possible to relieve congestion on neighboring highways. Activities at Hoover Dam It's been 75 years since the Hoover Dam opened, but this grand structure still attracts travelers. The Hoover Dam stands on the border of two states located in different time zones. There are clocks on the spillway towers, some of them show the time of the right bank of Nevada, others - the time of the left bank of Arizona. On one side of the dam, the defeated river flows calmly, on the other, the largest man-made lake in the United States, Lake Mead, stretches, which has become a popular recreation area. Here you can go boating, water skiing, fishing or sunbathing on the beach.
general information
Technically, the Hoover Dam is a reinforced concrete wall that curves toward Lake Mead. Thanks to this curved shape, the wall can easily withstand a pressure of 35 billion cubic meters. m of water. Building this wall was once a real challenge modern technologies. The extreme heat of the desert, when the thermometer rises to 50°C in summer, was a major problem from the very beginning. Due to the high temperature, it was impossible to simply pour all the concrete into the formwork. In this case, high temperature environment would not allow the liquid mass of concrete to harden for only 125 years! It was decided to use a different technique. Engineers assembled the Hoover Dam from individual concrete blocks that were fastened together on site.
A pipe system was left in the concrete blocks in advance. Ice water was poured into them. The water cooled the mass of concrete, and it hardened as expected. After that, concrete was poured into the pipes themselves. This also made the structure more durable. The pipes not only played the role of reinforcement (metal beams that make up the frame of modern reinforced concrete structures), but also reliably fastened the individual blocks together. All blocks had the same height - 1.5 m. The remaining dimensions depended on where each individual block was supposed to be placed in the dam. The largest had a cross-section of 7.6 X 18 m, the smallest - 7.6 X 7.6 m. In total, 2.6 million cubic meters were needed for the dam. m of concrete - it’s hard to even imagine such an amount of concrete! It would be enough to lay a road surface 20 cm thick and 5 m wide across the entire United States, from San Francisco to New York!
The Colorado River had to change its course during construction. For this purpose, huge tunnels were made in the canyon walls, through which the builders drained the water. There were 4 tunnels in total, the largest with a clearance of 17 m in diameter, 5 km long. 3,500 people worked at the construction site, of whom 96 died.
The dam was originally expected to cost $49 billion. But in the end, this figure more than tripled: 165 billion! The exorbitant costs were not recouped through the sale of electricity and tourism until 1985. Since that time, the Hoover Dam was removed from the list of debtors and began to generate a net profit.
Data
- Construction Time: Hoover Dam was built between 1931 and 1935. Its cost was $1.65 billion.
- Electricity production: The power plant was launched on September 1 2, 1936. Now 1 7 modern turbines generate 2000 MW of electricity per year. This is equal to more than 4 billion kWh of electricity, which is enough to
- meet the needs of 1.3 million Americans living in the southwestern states.
- Construction materials: Hoover Dam is built from 2.6 million cubic meters. m of concrete and weighs 6.6 million tons.
- Reservoir dimensions: Lake Mead is 177 km long and covers an area of 640 sq. km and a coastline of 885 km. Maximum depth 180 m, capacity - up to 35 billion cubic meters. m of water.
