Hoover Dam

The New Hoover Dam Bridge

View of Dam from Bridge

     Floyd Domini was Commissioner of the federal Bureau of Reclamation from 1959 to 1969. He viewed the construction of Glen Canyon Dam, which plugged the Colorado River at Page, Arizona, and created Lake Powell, as the crowning achievement of his career.
   During Domini’s entire tenure as Commissioner, Dave Brower served as Executive Director of the Sierra Club. In his mind, the greatest failure of his life was the Sierra Club’s inability to stop the construction of Glen Canyon Dam.

   In the late 1960’s, John McPhee persuaded Domini and Brower to accompany him on a raft trip down the Colorado. In Part 3 of his “Encounters with the Archdruid” (Brower is the archdruid), McPhee allows Domini, then Brower, to marshal the forces of good against evil, leaving it to the reader to decide what is good and what is evil, or whether the terms even have relevance in the context of water resources.
   The Hoover Dam, some 350 miles downstream, obstructed the Colorado’s flow some 30 years ahead of the Glen Canyon Dam. Yet even the most extreme Browerite (including Brower himself) would acknowledge that it is an extraordinary feat of engineering and expression of art deco styling. Today, it is embellished by the Hoover Dam Bridge, constructed 1500 feet south of the dam and opened to traffic in October 2010 — the dam’s 75^th anniversary year.
    We visited both on Monday and captured the images we have posted here.

Art Deco Detail

View Upstream from Dam
Showing One of 4 Intake Towers

Generators