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Author : Andrew J. Dunar,Dennis Mcbride Publisher : University of Nevada Press Page : 378 pages File Size : 54,6 Mb Release : 2016-06-01 Category : History ISBN : 9780874173833
Building Hoover Dam by Andrew J. Dunar,Dennis Mcbride Pdf
Andrew J. Dunar and Dennis McBride skillfully interweave eyewitness accounts of the building of Hoover Dam. These stories create the richest existing portrait of the building of Hoover Dam and its tremendous effect on the lives of those involved in its creation: the gritty, sometimes grisly realities of living in cardboard boxes and tents during several of the hottest Southern Nevada summers on record; the fearsome carbon monoxide deaths of tunnel builders who, it was claimed, had died of "pneumonia"; the uproarious life of nearby Las Vegas versus the tightly controlled existence of the workers in the built-overnight confines of Boulder City; and of course the astounding accomplishment of building the Dam itself and completing the task not only early but under budget!
In the spring of 1931, in a rugged desert canyon on the Arizona-Nevada border, an army of workmen began one of the most difficult and daring building projects ever undertaken—the construction of Hoover Dam. Through the worst years of the Great Depression as many as five thousand laborers toiled twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to erect the huge structure that would harness the Colorado River and transform the American West. Construction of the giant dam was a triumph of human ingenuity, yet the full story of this monumental endeavor has never been told. Now, in an engrossing, fast-paced narrative, Joseph E. Stevens recounts the gripping saga of Hoover Dam. Drawing on a wealth of material, including manuscript collections, government documents, contemporary newspaper and magazine accounts, and personal interviews and correspondence with men and women who were involved with the construction, he brings the Hoover Dam adventure to life. Described here in dramatic detail are the deadly hazards the work crews faced as they hacked and blasted the dam’s foundation out of solid rock; the bitter political battles and violent labor unrest that threatened to shut the job down; the deprivation and grinding hardship endured by the workers’ families; the dam builders’ gambling, drinking, and whoring sprees in nearby Las Vegas; and the stirring triumphs and searing moments of terror as the massive concrete wedge rose inexorably from the canyon floor. Here, too, is an unforgettable cast of characters: Henry Kaiser, Warren Bechtel, and Harry Morrison, the ambitious, headstrong construction executives who gambled fortune and fame on the Hoover Dam contract; Frank Crowe, the brilliant, obsessed field engineer who relentlessly drove the work force to finish the dam two and a half years ahead of schedule; Sims Ely, the irascible, teetotaling eccentric who ruled Boulder City, the straightlaced company town created for the dam workers by the federal government; and many more men and women whose courage and sacrifice, greed and frailty, made the dam’s construction a great human, as well as technological, adventure. Hoover Dam is a compelling, irresistible account of an extraordinary American epic.
Audisee® eBooks with Audio combine professional narration and text highlighting for an engaging read aloud experience! The Hoover Dam is one of the largest dams in the world! It provides power and water to people in Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and California. Just how does the Hoover Dam work? And how many people did it take to build this amazing structure? Read this book to find out! Learn all about some remarkable sites in the Famous Places series - part of the Lightning Bolt BooksTM collection. With high-energy designs, exciting photos, and fun text, Lightning Bolt BooksTM bring nonfiction topics to life!
The Hoover Dam is called one of American's seven modern civil engineering wonders. Hurdles to clear included building access roads, diverting the Colorado River, and creating a way to cure massive amounts of concrete quickly enough to complete the project on time. Readers will learn how what was then the world's tallest dam was built in a region that presented challenges in geography and weather.
As breathtaking today as the day it was completed, Hoover Dam not only shaped the American West but helped launch the American century. In the depths of the Great Depression it became a symbol of American resilience and ingenuity in the face of crisis, putting thousands of men to work in a remote desert canyon and bringing unruly nature to heel. Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Michael Hiltzik uses the saga of the dam’s conception, design, and construction to tell the broader story of America’s efforts to come to grips with titanic social, economic, and natural forces. For embodied in the dam’s striking machine-age form is the fundamental transformation the Depression wrought in the nation’s very culture—the shift from the concept of rugged individualism rooted in the frontier days of the nineteenth century to the principle of shared enterprise and communal support that would build the America we know today. In the process, the unprecedented effort to corral the raging Colorado River evolved from a regional construction project launched by a Republican president into the New Deal’s outstanding—and enduring—symbol of national pride. Yet the story of Hoover Dam has a darker side. Its construction was a gargantuan engineering feat achieved at great human cost, its progress marred by the abuse of a desperate labor force. The water and power it made available spurred the development of such great western metropolises as Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and San Diego, but the vision of unlimited growth held dear by its designers and builders is fast turning into a mirage. In Hiltzik’s hands, the players in this epic historical tale spring vividly to life: President Theodore Roosevelt, who conceived the project; William Mulholland, Southern California’s great builder of water works, who urged the dam upon a reluctant Congress; Herbert Hoover, who gave the dam his name though he initially opposed its construction; Frank Crowe, the dam’s renowned master builder, who pushed his men mercilessly to raise the beautiful concrete rampart in an inhospitable desert gorge. Finally there is Franklin Roosevelt, who presided over the ultimate completion of the project and claimed the credit for it. Hiltzik combines exhaustive research, trenchant observation, and unforgettable storytelling to shed new light on a major turning point of twentieth-century history.
The Story of the Hoover Dam by Kelly Milner Halls Pdf
This book relays the factual details of the story of the Hoover Dam, which was built in the 1930s. The narrative provides multiple accounts of the event, and readers learn details through the point of view of a Colorado River explorer, a dam worker, and a dam worker's daughter. The text offers opportunities to compare and contrast various perspectives in the text while gathering and analyzing information about a historical event.
The Hoover Dam by Charles River Charles River Editors Pdf
*Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the project written by workers and their family members *Includes a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "This morning I came, I saw, and I was conquered, as everyone would be who sees for the first time this great feat of mankind...Ten years ago the place where we gathered was an unpeopled, forbidding desert. In the bottom of the gloomy canyon whose precipitous walls rose to height of more than a thousand feet, flowed a turbulent, dangerous river...The site of Boulder City was a cactus-covered waste. And the transformation wrought here in these years is a twentieth century marvel." - President Franklin D. Roosevelt, September 30, 1935 During the 1930s, at the height of the Great Depression, thousands of workers began work on the Hoover Dam, built in the Black Canyon, which had been cut by the powerful Colorado River. The Colorado River was responsible for the Grand Canyon, and by the 20th century, the idea of damming the river and creating an artificial lake was being explored for all of its potential, including hydroelectric power and irrigation. By the time the project was proposed in the 1920s, the contractors vowing to build it were facing the challenge of building the largest dam the world had ever known. As if that wasn't enough, the landscape was completely unforgiving, as described by the famous explorer John Wesley Powell generations earlier: "The landscape everywhere, away from the river, is of rock--cliffs of rock, tables of rock, plateaus of rock, terraces of rock, crags of rock--ten thousand strangely carved forms...cathedral shaped buttes, towering hundreds or thousands of feet, cliffs that cannot be scaled, and canyon walls that shrink the river into insignificance, with vast hollow domes and tall pinnacles and shafts set on the verge overhead; and all highly colored." The engineering that went into the Hoover Dam was not just dangerous but unprecedented, to the extent that the Hoover Dam relied on building methods that had never been proven effective on such a giant scale. The project also had to employ tens of thousands of people in often dangerous working conditions, which resulted in scores of deaths. At the same time, however, the large number of men that traveled to work on the project helped turn Las Vegas, a nearby small desert town in Nevada, into Sin City. Despite all the difficulties, the Hoover Dam was completed on time, and President Roosevelt summed up just how impressive the accomplishment was in his speech dedicating the site in 1935: "We are here to celebrate the completion of the greatest dam in the world, rising 726 feet above the bedrock of the river and altering the geography of a whole region: we are here to see the creation of the largest artificial lake in the world-115 miles long, holding enough water, for example, to cover the whole State of Connecticut to a depth of ten feet; and we are here to see nearing completion a power house which will contain the largest generators and turbines yet installed in this country, machinery that can continuously supply nearly two million horsepower of electric energy." The Hoover Dam: The History and Construction of America's Most Famous Engineering Project chronicles the construction of America's most famous dam. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Hoover Dam like never before, in no time at all.
United States. Department of the Interior,Ray Lyman Wilbur,Elwood Mead
Author : United States. Department of the Interior,Ray Lyman Wilbur,Elwood Mead Publisher : Unknown Page : 120 pages File Size : 42,6 Mb Release : 1933 Category : Hoover Dam (Ariz. and Nev.) ISBN : LCCN:33026242
Life and Death at Hoover Dam by Jerry Borrowman Pdf
It's 1931 and men are desperate for jobs. A lucky few will get to work in the searing heat of the Nevada desert on the massive Hoover Dam, the single largest public works project in history. Their goal is to tame the mighty Colorado River with a dam that will create the largest man-made lake in the world. But can they can overcome their own prejudices to do it?
Author : United States. Department of the Interior Publisher : Unknown Page : 1150 pages File Size : 48,6 Mb Release : 1948 Category : Hoover Dam (Ariz. and Nev.) ISBN : UCAL:$B116313
