Al M. Rocca, Crowe Biographer: Theres no access there. A commanding presence that made a lot of men feel like, wow, hes the boss. To talk about flood control in the West was to allow the West to get up and ask for more than they had been asking for. Jay Fialkov Archive Films Guy Louis Rocha, Nevada State Archivist: Even the more loyal workers not interested in union activities, not necessarily even interested in striking, were at the point where they were saying, Weve gotta do something. They wanted clear water, good water, cold water, they wanted the electrical lines that were near puddles where people were being electrocuted, to be moved, they wanted the dynamite put into safety places. Producers Library Service Blood didnt even recognize him. The dam was moving so quickly, the Six Companies were not making the necessary provisions for safety. Crude as could be. Teatown Video, Production Assistants And the consequence is that they called in Gordon Kaufmann. It really does. And they were coming from anywhere and everywhere. Get the trucks moving! And of course there was a lot of miners in the background to tell him what a poor punk he was. And some of those guys could chunk ten sandwiches in there, two pieces of pie, and maybe a couple of oranges. Before long the cables were delivering a concrete bucket every 78 seconds. But the $165 million price tag for a Western water system made the Eastern establishment nervous. All the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that had to be in place for this industrial construction to go on is just simply amazing. Down at the bottom, there was no dry place to stand. W.A. Its like the chapel of the machine age. Ulli Bonnekamp To accomplish this task they turned to Gordon Kaufmann. And he went out, and a couple of weeks later, here comes this man back in, and hes dyed his hair, hes changed his name and he got in line and Mr. Metropolitan Water District

Getting in each others way. He stayed only briefly, and left just hours before his beloved project faced its most crucial test. There was money to be made. W.A.

Everybody knew he was good at his work. Security was beefed up and a control gate installed, while Leonard Blood and his staff at the employment office began re-assembling the work force. Negroes were not, there was no way a negro could get in here. Al M. Rocca, Crowe Biographer: There were always cave-ins, there were always loose and sharp rocks falling about. Then the staging would have to be taken down when they blew the face. Las Vegas was an opportunity, Las Vegas was a place to bring ones family and maybe have a livelihood. Davis, Photographer: When I was lookin at the dam, I thought of the young men that had given up their lives to build the damned thing. Dennis McBride Down below grunted and growled prehistoric monsters great brute dinosaurs, steam shovels and cranes feeding on the muck, a ton at a gulp. In 1922 Hoover negotiated an agreement among the seven western states that shared rights to the water to be captured by the proposed Dam. But the summer of 1931 was one of the hottest on record. It was logistically one of the toughest things they did on the dam. He had succeeded in turning a ragtag army of unemployed into Americas most celebrated work force. After six days, the strike collapsed. W.A. For two years, workerspoured concrete 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Tommy Nelson Narrator: Architect Gordon Kaufmann, gave the dam its futuristic style. This was the biggest project that anybody had ever thought of. And, uh, he yelled as he fell and this high-scaler below him swung out and caught him as he was falling and saved his life. Narrator: The Dams new name would be a subject of dispute for the next seventeen years. Narrator: A shiny new mess hall served 6,000 meals a day. Yet it stands as a monument to the ingenuity, and the sheer human will, that forever changed the face of America. Dyanna Taylor, Location Sound Narrator: In the first year of construction, not a single black worker had been hired. That week, a steel bulkhead gate closed off the last diversion tunnel. Politics had been dominated in the East. Workers moved the Colorado River from the bed it had known for 12 million years. Tommy Nelson, Worker: I should say I felt proud, 'cause I was a part of it. And he wanted to be known as the greatest dam builder who ever lived in America. They put me on the graveyard shift and I said to myself, I dont know whether I can take this or not, but Ill give it my all.. Its a perfect example of reaching to the past and abstracting from that, for the future. Ray Lyman Wilbur, Secretary of the Interior (archival): I have the honor and privilege of giving a name to this new structure. Survey crews were sent down the treacherous river to look for the best place to build what would be the largest dam in America. Tierney, his father. Bechtel Corporation One hundred twelve died on the job, while extreme heat and working conditions brought illness or injury to uncounted others. W.A. Pat Jacobsen Narrator: Las Vegas, of all places. But when the Bureau decided to hire outside contractors for their most ambitious dam ever, Crowe quit his government job and signed on with the men who planned to build it. Blood was sick well, hung-over is a better word, but anyway. Heidi Bahnck Four tunnels, each 50 feet in diameter (which today could accommodate a 747 without the wings), were drilled through the solid rock walls of the Black Canyon. Now this stemmed not merely from the his stated position that it was not seemly to name a dam after a sitting president, but because he really did not like Hoover at all. W.A. It wasabout the worst nightmare you could think of working in. Tommy Nelson, Worker: I was playing with a dance band in Grand Junction, Colorado, practically starving to death, yknow. Mark Mandler, Researchers By August, heat and dehydration had claimed fourteen lives. On September 17th, Ray Lyman Wilbur, Secretary of the Interior for Herbert Hoover, who was now President, came out to drive a silver railroad spike and mark the projects official beginning. The electrical transformers took on the look of a 1930s Buck Rogers space movie. Narrator: Crowe sent miners down the river to start the first and most dangerous phase of construction: the four diversion tunnels, two on each side of the river. W.A. Guy Louis Rocha, Nevada State Archivist: The Colorado River was out of control and everybody says, We have no dams, we need a dam, and people started seriously looking at where to put a dam after 1907, up and down the river. But it was the Depression, and many were grateful to have work. Richard Guy Wilson, Architectural Historian: The Bureau of Reclamation realized that this was an epic-making construction. Wilbur, wearing a wool suit in 100-degree heat, had his work cut out for him. Maxine Riepen, Secretary, Employment Office: A man came in one time. To his men, he was both God and the Devil fair, but intensely demanding. Narrator: Their challenge was to harness the countrys wildest river, the mighty Colorado, to bring water, power and people to the Southwest. Narrator: On December 20th, 1935, a worker named Patrick Tierney fell from an intake tower and drowned. Everything was baked, and hot, and brown. But Hoover Dam also raised policy questions about the economic and environmental impact of large scale irrigation throughout the West. The Fourth of July and Christmas. The workers will have to work under our conditions, they said, or not at all. They rejected every worker demand and banished suspected union members. Herbert Hoover Library Others there were two or three that fell to their death. UNLVSpecial Collections Before work could start, the river had to be diverted. Working conditions were dangerous, pay was low, housing inadequate. Reel Orange Films It was a modern, model community, free of the liquor and gambling that was Las Vegas stock-in-trade. Everything was just harsh, harsh, harsh. Broadway Video, On Line Editor But convincing Congress to send millions out West for the most expensive public project ever seemed impossible until the Bureau came up with the way to pay for itelectricity. The major event in every workers life was payday. There was a certain comfort level you paid, but you gave up freedom for the comfort level. Blood did it, it looked like an old peoples home. Narrator: On September 30th, 1935, a crowd of 20,000 swarmed over what was being called the eighth wonder of the world. In 1920, the Bureau embarked on an ambitious plan to dam the Colorado and distribute its water hundreds of miles in every direction. National Archives and Records Administration Youve got an amphibious assault of these troops coming down on barges, cutting out landings like a beach landing in a World War II amphibious assault. If the builders had tried to pour one continuous concrete wall, it would have taken 125 years to cool. A week later he stopped off at the dam site on his way from California to Washington. Narrator: In one final flourish, the designers inlaid a celestial map to mark the exact position of the stars on the day of the Presidents dedication. Maybe even more. At sun up, the men would stagger back to Boulder City, and for the next fifteen days, Las Vegas went back to bed. And how the people on the swing shift slept, Ill never know. Organizers from the radical labor union, the Industrial Workers of the World, pressed for action. Ralph Pitrie The man looked so dejected. Stephen Longstreth Stephen Stept, Additional Cinematography This was their future. Prominent among them were Henry Kaiser, an ambitious young road builder from Oakland, California, and his mentor, Warren A. Bechtel, a powerful old-line San Francisco contractor. Every week twelve tons of fruit and vegetables were shipped in, along with five tons of meat, and two-and-a-half tons of eggs. They said, Can you hire 90 laborers? And I said, Sure! You have a lot of confidence when youre young. Maxine Riepen, Secretary, Employment Office: There were hordes of men there, desperate men. Joseph E. Stevens Diane Lee Narrator: The men of Six Companies would be gambling their money and their reputations. The start of construction on Hoover in 1930 held the promise of employment for thousands of workers in the Las Vegas area. Grinberg Film Libraries, Inc. The canyon fell strangely silent. On December 20th, 1922, a surveyor, J.G. John Choi, Assistant Editors Tommy Nelson, Worker: This box lunch, theyd carry that down. Thats what I thought of when I was looking at the dam. When the dam was officially dedicated on September 30, 1935, the colossalproject on the Southern Nevada portion of the Colorado river had been called by several different names. I was the flagman, flaggin dump trucks. And down where we were it was like 130 degrees. Workers collapsed from the heat, some with body temperatures as high as 112 degrees. During the dam's construction, the job of the high scaler was by far the most dangerous. It ran wild until 1901, when Western farmers set out to tame it. Written by Billy Moll and Robert King, Post Production Sixty-five had already lost their lives. Tierney, fell off a boat and drowned. The press made an announcement that the government was going to build the largest dam in the world, so I went over to a car lot and bought a 26 Essex car for $75 dollars, got into it and took off for Las Vegas. Nevada State Museum and Historical Society These are men whi built the dam. U.S. Geological Survey, Archival Photographs and Graphics Ila Clements-Davey, Workers Daughter: We got into what I call now the little puddle that was the lake at that time, and we went up to the back part of the dam and this great big structure this, oh my God big hunk of concrete, corkin up the Colorado River. Millions of dollars were lost.

Winding through Californias richly fertile Imperial Valley, the Colorado River was wildly unpredictableflooding in the spring, drying up in the summer. Carly La Pierre, Archival Footage And my grandmother was so afraid, she didnt think that wed live through it. Moonlight on the Colorado He would build four more dams, but Hoover Dam the name officially given it by Congress in 1947 stands as his crowning achievement.

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