Year 4, Day 152 “Living the Dream”. Sunday, 9/29/2024. Day 19 of 25-day Alaska to Las Vegas. Day 2 of 4 nights Las Vegas. Well actually today is Hoover Dam day for us. It was about a 45 minutes ride from our lodging to the Dam. After the security check we drove over the dam to the Arizona side and parked. We arrived at 7am and it was very quiet. The park opened at 5:30am and the visitor center opens at 9am. It feels super hot at 8am. The visitor center is on the Nevada side. However, the paid parking lots were not open yet. We walked over the dam from Arizona back into Nevada. This is awesome.
After wandering around for over an hour we moved our car to the parking garage for $10.00 and headed to the tour area. We wanted to get into the first tour group of 30. We were on line around 8:45am. We had bought Guided Power Plant tour tickets online for $15.00 each at https://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/service/. This is a federal government site for the Bureau of Reclamation. The Bureau is a provider of wholesale water and hydroelectric power in the U.S. We updated the tickets to the Guided Dam tour today for another $15.00 each. We were in the first Guided Dam Tour group. Guided Dam tours are every 30 minutes. We went into the dam and it also included the Guided Power Plant tour.
We went in an elevator that took us 537 feet down into the wall of Black Canyon. From there, we entered a tunnel leading to two points of interest. First, we visited the Penstock Viewing Platform. There, we saw 30-foot diameter pipes. These pipes transport water from Lake Mead to the generators. Next, we went to a room housing the power generators. Then we went up 32 feet to the dam tunnels. Hoover Dam was built in the 1930s, it cost $49 million. That would be about $760 million in today’s dollars, adjusted for inflation. It rises 736 feet above the canyon floor. Hoover Dam was the tallest dam in the world when it was completed in 1935. It provided water and power to dry Southwest states. The dam, power plant, and reservoir are owned and managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation. Hoover Dam is named in honor of Herbert Hoover. He was the U.S. president during whose administration (1929–33) construction began on the dam. As commerce secretary in the 1920s, he secured agreements necessary for the project to proceed. The dam was erected during the Great Depression and employed thousands of workers. These workers made $4.00 a day. There were around 100 fatalities during its construction. It was referred to as Boulder Dam during construction. In 1947 Truman signed a congressional resolution restoring the structure’s formal name to Hoover Dam.
Justin and Bobi went by the house and finished getting the garage ready for drywall.
Things to ponder today! Have to leave you thinking.
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