Hoover Dam - Million Visitors

I have passed over Hoover Dam many times. Each time I always say, "Damn! What a dam!" Design plus engineering, that's the way it should always be. Who knew you could make such beautiful work from concrete. Especially when you think about the technology available back then....

Too bad so many people died, and some were never recovered. It is a tomb. To be used, not celebrated.

The Hoover project was an engineering marvel, not just because of the size of the project, but due to the techniques employed by the Chief Engineer, Frank Crowe, to speed up the concrete curing and allow faster and larger pours. Using the cooling lines, he reduced the cure time significantly, and completed construction 2 yrs ahead of time. Without the cooling technique, the concrete pour would have taken an estimated 128 yrs!! This man is an example to all engineers to not accept the 'commonly understood' and always look for 'better ways of doing the job', which after all, is what engineers do!!

Safety standards should be mourned not the structure that was built. It is still beautiful even if it is a tomb for some. What better tomb. We all die, but some die great and remembered. While others, you?, may never have been a part of anything that is truely great.

Can you refer please to the maximum span of the Nervi structures. I had a discusion where I said (it was) hundreds of meters, the other party said "wrong" it was only tens of meters.

Regards

My wife and I are going to Vegas in October and the dam is the highlight of our trip. I don't know if it is good or sad that the highlight of the trip will not be the slots, tables or even the shows, but a gigantic wall of concrete.

People like to believe in tall tales, legends and myths, and this seems to be the one for Hoover Dam. The story of workers being buried in the dam has been around for a very long time, it originated when Hoover Dam was being built in the 1930's. Tourists would come and watch the dam being built, and they felt compelled to humanize the dam by concocting wild stories about its builders and the hair-raising dangers they faced. One of these stories was the myth of men buried alive in the concrete. But this is just a story, and here is the proof: Between the years 1922 and 1942, the total time for construction of Hoover Dam, a total of 114 men died. Of those, 37 died from being struck by an object like a falling rock, 28 died from falling off either the dam or the steep canyon walls, 14 died from heat prostration (before everyone learned the importance of drinking enough water while working in the hot desert heat), 10 died from accidental explosions, 9 died in construction traffic accidents, 6 men drowned in the river, 5 men were accidentally electrocuted, 4 died in a rock slide, and one man died when a form broke and concrete spilled out. All of the bodies of the men who died during construction were recovered, and no one was left buried at the dam site. With everyone accounted for, there was no one left to be buried in the dam. There is a bronze plaque at the dam which reads: "They Labored That Millions Might See a Brighter Day - In Memory of Our Fellowmen Who Lost Their Lives on the Construction of This Dam." This plaque was dedicated on May 30, 1935 so you can view this structure with awe as i have and have reverece for the men thad died during the construction but you need not view it as a toumb as there is no body entoumbed there ..........nevada digger

I'm glad that there are no people buried in the dam. I'm looking forward to seeing it as a monument to human achievement rather than as a tomb.
I know there are people buried in the Brooklyn bridge. Or so the people that try to sell it to me say.

I agrre that many others must have found their names going in the dust bin seeing this great work Hoover Dam and planting stories is as usual.

Few accidents can happen anywhere so are we going to put a ban on NASA? You have no other choice if you love to be in the front row.

Countries form armies and fight where they should never get their people killed, yet it happens. Our life if it is a for great cause then what else is the value of it? Great life is not in number of days one lives but in the purpose for which it was.

If you like Tajmahal then should also know that the hands of all those who built it were cut deliberately such that these people can't create anything similar in their rest of the life. That was shame and so called the love memorial was built by a such a king.