Two Plus a Handful: Nomad UT/LV Trip, Day 8: Memorial Bridge and Boulder City

September 24, 2018

I was surprised at how much there was to see and do at Hoover Dam or in the area about Hoover Dam. So we went back for more.

(By the way, do you know how incredibly hard it is to write about a past trip (fantastic and amazing as it was) while my brain is in full excitement planning mode for another one?!)

First stop: Memorial Bridge. Point to note: the pedestrian walkway does close at sundown, which is why we didn't go there the first day after the dam. The road to the parking lot was gated. Also, not wheels-friendly. Stairs from the parking lot to the bridge. Last note: really hot, direct sunlight, no shade. Some of us may have melted a bit.

{Three, Five, Alana, Two, Four, One, Rachel, Maddie, Jills}

This is why I wanted to walk on the bridge. Get the full dam view. Worth it.

Nevada-Arizona State Line

Two is in Arizona!!

{Three, Four, Alana, Five, Two, One}

Rachel is taller than I. She got a better angle.

Okay, so weird weather for me...when it's 100 degrees and I was sweating on my chest just under my necklace but my skin touching open are was completely dry.

We went to the Boulder City Museum and learned a lot about the construction of the dam. These Western states petitioned the federal government for years, asking for financial help to build a dam to regulate the water flow so droughts and floods wouldn't be so devastating. But Eastern states argued that it wasn't a national matter and the states needed to figure it out without federal aid. After years of going back and forth on it, it was finally agreed that the federal government would finance the construction of a dam. A plan was ratified and Six Companies won the project bid. Men started migrating with their families to the dam site, eager for work as the Depression hit. They started arriving in 1929, even though the project would start for another year. That summer saw an average high temperature of 120 degrees in an area with no natural shade and most didn't have tents to provide protection. Boulder City was thrown together to house the men and their families, identical "dingbat" houses, each being built by two men in 11 hours. The reporting was that the houses cost $70 to build, but the workers said it was more like $18. It was common for a woman to come out of her room in the morning and see a man sleeping on her couch. She'd wake him and let him know he'd walked into the wrong house after his work shift. And those shifts...when dam construction started, first they had to spend a couple years blowing out the rocks so they could put in pipes to divert the river. Then muck out and dry the riverbed so they could begin building the dam. Overall construction took 5 years, but the dam itself was built in one week less than two years. Crews worked around the clock in shifts, all weather, having only two days off a year--Christmas and Independence Day. My tour guide joked that had they not taken those days off, the dam could've been completed four days sooner. I am in absolute awe when I think of the workers and their families living and working in the desert like that. Hearty people full of grit.

My kids loved the prolific use of the word "dam."

{Two, One, Four, Three, Five}