Two Days in Vegas
July 7-9, 2004
Part 2: Hoover Dam
My business took most of the day on Thursday. I found that driving the Mustang top down during the day in Vegas was difficult. Surprisingly, I felt I hardly ever broke a sweat in Vegas, probably because any moisture I generated evaporated before it could accumulate. However, during the hot day my eyes and lips became parched.
By late afternoon I was back at the hotel. After considering a couple of options, Joy and I decided to drive to the Hoover Dam, about 30 miles southeast of Vegas. We grabbed the camera gear and headed out.
Vegas is mostly flat but is ringed by mountains.
As we approached the dam we first passed through the pleasant little town of Boulder, Nevada. The part of Boulder we saw had little of the "bling bling" glitz of Vegas, but was a charming town. Passing through Boulder, we rounded a corner and saw Lake Mead, the Hoover Dam's reservoir, below us.
Like Vegas, the Hoover Dam is something to be seen in person to be believed. It is impossible to be prepared for the depth of the Colorado River gorge far below at the bottom of the dam. One of the first indications of the power of this facility was the size of the spillway tube burrowing into the rock on the Arizona side of the dam. In this picture one can gain a sense of perspective by noticing the car passing over the spillway on the bridge above.
This shot is a view directly into this vast hole plunging into the mountain rock.
This massive tube was clearly designed to flow huge volumes of water if needed. The two spillways measure 50 ft. in diameter and are capable of flowing 400,000 cubic feet of water per second.
The Lake Mead reservoir, named for Dr. Elwood Mead, the Commissioner of the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation from 1924 to 1936 stands behind the Hoover Dam at depths of up to 590 feet.
On the reservoir side of the dam, four cylindrical towers serve as the gates to the turbines below, which generate up to 1,835,000 horsepower. In the picture below, the four gate towers can be seen. At the middle left and upper middle right of the picture can be seen the sluices that lead to the enormous spillways on either side of the dam.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of this engineering masterpiece is the Colorado River face of the dam, rising some 726 feet above the river.
Constructed of some 4,360,000 cubic yards of concrete, it towers over the river far below.
