No trip to Vegas is complete without seeing the Hoover Dam....just 30 miles southeast through Boulder City.
The Bureau of Reclamation (nope, cant use your senior pass here) has conducted tours through the Hoover Dam and powerplant since 1937.
Today close to 1,000,000 visitors a year take the tour.
As many as 20,000 vehicles drive across the dam between Navada and Arizona everyday.
The Hoover Dam can store up 2 years "average" flow from the Colorado River. Lake Mead was made when the dam blocked the Colorado River and flooded the Mojave Desert. The surface area of Lake Mead is 146,000 acres. It is the largest reservoir in the USA.
Lake Mead has a maximum depth of 590 feet and is 115 miles long.
Las Vegas gets almost all of its water from Lake Mead.
Each generator weighs 4 million pounds.
The Colorado River is 1,400 miles long and supplies water to Los Angeles, San Diego, and Phoenix.
The Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge carries US Route 93 over the Colorado River. As early as the 60's, the route over the dam was identified to be dangerous and inadequate. The bridge was completed in 2010 and the bypass route was opened to vehicle traffic. It was the first concrete-steel composite arch bridge built in the US and incorporates the widest concrete arch in the Western Hemisphere.
There are 8 miles of tunnels through the canyon walls.
Every state in the USA furnished supplies and materials for the construction of the dam.
Thanks for dropping by today. We have lots of new followers this week. I can not believe we have passed 40! Looking forward to a picnic and hike (heading back to Valley of Fire...yeah!) on Sunday with Steve and Joan from fosj-steve.blogspot.com. They are volunteers in Lake Mead NRA....just down the road from us. More later...
Look what we found in Boulder City on the way home....ummmm hard decision....felt like a snickers blizard kind of day to me!
Y'all come back soon!
I've always been rather in awe of Boulder Dam and the work it took to build it.
ReplyDeleteMe too.....this was my first time there. The pictures I have seen all my life just do not show the magnitude of it all.
DeleteThat is one big dam and a lot of water. I love DQ blizzards but the last time I ate a Snickers one I broke a tooth, that was one expensive blizzard.
ReplyDeleteOh my....that's not good! I best be careful from now on myself! Love those blizzards.
DeleteGlad you have time to hit all the top spots. The lake and dam are beautiful.
ReplyDeleteHave a great time with Steve and Joan hiking in Valley of Fire. I recently started following them. When I went with my daughter, we had time to do The Fire Wave (which is a must but is not on the map. I don't know why since it is on the cover of their brochure), White Domes, Rainbow Vista, and Mouse's Tank. It took us about five hours. Not hard hiking at all but each trail was very different.
Enjoy! Can't wait for pictures.
Can't wait!
DeleteSuch a wonderful site were there in our first year on the road. Time to travel back that way and see the new bridge.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reminder.
Oh yes....I think you can walk up to the new bridge. We saw people on it ( the looked like ants) . I wanted to do that, but we ran out of time. So, we will definitely go back too.
DeleteWhen we visited the dam last spring, I was too claustrophobic to go below and too fearful of the height to walk the bridge. The whole structure is quite an engineering feat.
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