Hoover Dam Trivia and fun facts

 

 

 

• Pets are not allowed anywhere on Hoover Dam

 The Hoover Dam is….

 - 726.4 feet high...

 - 1,244 feet across at the top...

 - 660 feet thick at the base...

 - 45 feet thick at the top...

 -  The Hoover Dam weights 6.6 millions ton ...

 -  can store up 2 years 'average' flow from the Colorado River ...

 -  total storage capacity can be measured in 30,500,000 acre feet ...

 -  the surface area of Lake Mead is 146,000 acres ...

 -  the maximum water surface elevation of Lake Mead is 1229 FT

 -  the maximum depth of Lake Mead is 590 FT

 -  the length of Lake Mead is 115 miles... 

 -  has a power generating capacity of 2.8 million kilowatts...

 -  cost ONLY $49,000,000 to build Hoover Dam... 

 -  $165,000,000 to complete the Boulder Canyon Project  which includes the Imperial Dam, Hoover Dam and the American Canal...

 

             (The City Center project cost 9.2 billion)
 -  the dam contains about 4,360,000 cubic yards of concrete...

 -  there are 96,000,000 LB's of steel and metalwork used by the dam - but no metal in the dam itself ...

 -  NO ONE IS BURIED IN THE DAM...

 -  about 16,000 men and women worked on the project...

 -  about 3,500 people were employed at any specific time.

 - Officially ... There were 96 'industrial' fatalities during the construction of Hoover Dam. This figure does not include deaths by other means including heat, heart problems and curiously, pneumonia. Another estimate is 112 and that supposedly includes a longer time frame than just the construction period. Oddly the larger estimate also holds some irony. It begins the count on December 20, 1922 with J.G. Tierney a Bureau of Reclamation employee who was part of a geological survey and drowned when he fell from a barge. Exactly 13 years later, in 1935, his son Patrick W. Tierney fell to his death from an intake tower.
   
 - Construction on the Hoover Dam began September 30, 1930 . The last concrete was poured in 1935.

 - The concrete used to make Hoover Dam was set with cooling tubes that sped up a process which would normally have taken more than a century to complete.

 - Once the world's highest dam, it now ranks as 18th highest.

 

 - Hoover Dam can store up to 9.2 trillion gallons of the Colorado River in its reservoir, Lake Mead .

 

 - Hoover Dam has 17 generators giving it the capacity to produce over 2,000 megawatts of electricity.

 

 - Hoover Dam is part of a system which provides water to over 25 million people in the southwest United States .