Looking for a place to visit anytime soon? Why not travel and see the Hoover Dam? Here are some interesting facts about the place which, hopefully, will spark more interest in you to see the place yourself.
The Hoover Dam, once known as the Boulder Dam, is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between Nevada and Arizona. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin Roosevelt.
What was the reason for building it? Back in those days, as the United States developed the Southwest, the Colorado River was seen as a potential source of irrigation water. Thousands of men and their families came to the Black Canyon to tame the Colorado River. It took around five years to build it and now, the Hoover Dam still stands as a world-renowned structure. The Dam is actually 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.
It also considered as the nation’s largest water reservoir which covers about 248 square miles and is capable of holding some 28.9 million acre-feet of water. Today, the reservoir supplies water to farms, businesses and millions of people in Nevada, Arizona, California and Mexico.
The Hoover Dam was the world’s tallest dam when it was built in the 1930s. Today, the 770-foot-high Oroville Dam in Northern California which was built in 1968 is the tallest and the Hoover Dam is considered as second tallest. The world’s tallest dam, however, is the 1,001-foot-high Jinping-I Dam in Liangshan, Sichuan, China.
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