In Las Vegas, the waiting was finally over. Though legend claims otherwise, no workers were buried in the dams concrete. The foreman come by and hed say Nelson go down the tunnel get a jackhammer, bring it up here and break up this rock. I hated to admit to him that I was so dumb. Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum Davis, Photographer: That really went over like lead balloon. Wilbur, wearing a wool suit in 100-degree heat, had his work cut out for him. He lost the 1932 election to Franklin Roosevelt by a landslide. The heat was terrific, the noise was unbearable. And to come out and set up camp out in the desert was a pretty rough deal. The canyon fell strangely silent. But it was the Depression, and many were grateful to have work. Its a perfect example of reaching to the past and abstracting from that, for the future. Maxine Riepen, Secretary, Employment Office: I remember this big, strong-looking man fell. T. H. Watkins, Author/Historian: The compelling temptation to build this thing drove them. He also was very, very irritated with the Six Companies in the way that blacks were discriminated against on the job, put a stop to discrimination in hiring. Keep the trucks movin, everybody movin. So I did. 5,000 working men and their families came to live in the Nevada desert. Narrator: In 1929, after twelve years of intense lobbying, Congress finally authorized the funds. Los Angeles, its ever-sprawling metropolis, would be by far the single biggest customer. By August, heat and dehydration had claimed fourteen lives. Jon Else 
When they were taken to the hospital, the doctors would say, Its pneumonia! They would not say, Its carbon monoxide poisoning and Six Companies is responsible. They were saying, Its pneumonia were not responsible.. To his men, he was both God and the Devil fair, but intensely demanding. The rank smell of Mesozoic ooze and primeval muck filled the air. It was a modern, model community, free of the liquor and gambling that was Las Vegas stock-in-trade. T. H. Watkins, Author/Historian: It was a very, very important thing as symbol of what they felt could be done in a world that had gone all to hell. Ila Clements-Davey, Workers Daughter: Boulder City was run really very much like an army camp with great restrictions to what could go on and what couldnt go on, and a law enforcement that saw to it that these things were carried out. Blaine Hamann, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation: It looks like it could be some place on the moon. Before long the cables were delivering a concrete bucket every 78 seconds. He was steering that thing by Braille, boy, Ill tell ya. Because before, theyd have to put up staging. Down at the bottom, there was no dry place to stand. Narrator: By the summer of 1930, the government had not yet hired a contractor to build the Dam. Bechtel Corporation Ray Lyman Wilbur, Secretary of the Interior (archival): I have the honor and privilege of giving a name to this new structure. He cant hurt anybody.. Everybody knew he was good at his work. Producers Library Service I didnt even know what a jackhammer was! President Roosevelt came to dedicate the Damtwo years ahead of schedule. In 1922 Hoover negotiated an agreement among the seven western states that shared rights to the water to be captured by the proposed Dam. Suddenly, thousands of jobless Americans were heading for a down-on-its-luck railroad stop in the middle of nowhere. Janice Flood Workers collapsed from the heat, some with body temperatures as high as 112 degrees. It ran wild until 1901, when Western farmers set out to tame it. Dyanna Taylor, Location Sound
Narrator: From the beginning, the dams visual design had been given extraordinary attention. Blaine Hamann, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation: 10 million cubic yards of rock had to be moved. AirWave Productions When Ickes took office there were only twenty four African Americans in a 4,000 man work force. Glenn Fukushima Narrator: The battle to conquer the Colorado soon turned deadly. It tamed a wild river and, for a time, renewed faith in American ingenuity and technology, Written, Produced and Directed by No way anyone with a colored skin could get in here. Las Vegas was the mecca. Single men moved into large dormitories, while row upon row of one, two and three room family cottages went up in a fury of sawdust and sand. Scott Kardel, Project Administration Narrator: Frank Crowe took the strike as a personal betrayal. And of course there was a lot of miners in the background to tell him what a poor punk he was. I didnt know what to expect. Richard Guy Wilson, Architectural Historian: They are modeled on Indian designs, Navajo pottery, symbols that look remarkably like the modern machine, the turbine, the gears that are all in motion. 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. And, in the midst of the Great Depression, it was a symbol of hope for the dispossessed. The dam will be about. UNLVSpecial Collections, Songs Blaine Hamann, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation: Doggone, pretty tricky job. Nothing. They would need to pour 4 1/2 million cubic yards of concrete enough for a two lane road from Los Angeles to Boston and build a city in the desert, virtually overnight, to house 5,000 workers and their families. Dennis McBride For two years, workerspoured concrete 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Then the staging would have to be taken down when they blew the face. Jenni Matz, Historical Consultants Kelsey Dorwart Its like a chapel in a sense. Blood didnt even recognize him. One of them was Herbert Hoover, the Secretary of Commerce, and a former engineer. Metropolitan Water District Id swam the river, Id boated the river, Id taken people up the river on trips I felt bad to see it tamed, to tell you the truth. Blaine Hamann, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation: The river was an enemy, and only in short periods of time could you look at it as a useful river. It was welcome news for a nation fallen on hard times. The Colorado slowly began to pool behind the dam. Everything was baked, and hot, and brown. A commanding presence that made a lot of men feel like, wow, hes the boss. Tommy Nelson, Worker: Hot!
Thirty miles from Black Canyon, it was the only town anywhere near the dam site. The contractor never had it so good, because he had the pick of the nations best labor at the price he wanted to pay him. Bureau of Reclamation, Lower Colorado Region Youd come out of there with a headache that wouldnt quit. For four bountiful years, farmers thought they were living a miracle. The work never stopped three shifts a day, every day. The federal government built Boulder City, an efficiently run, well-ordered company town, but dozens of tent cities sprang uphonky-tonk towns dotted the road from the dam to the small town of Las Vegas. Maybe even more. The power plants terrazzo floors recall the Native American heritage of the land. Narrator: It has been called an American pyramid a sixty-story colossus of concrete, built in the middle of a desert every bit as brutal as in ancient Egypt. Davis, Photographer: A lot of these young men, they wasnt used to this heavy work, the environment. 'Cause that dam was a part of me. T. H. Watkins, Author/Historian: Hoover Dam changed the history of the West. While the arch was going up, workers were constructing the four intake towers on the cliffs behind.
Nevada State Museum and Historical Society Camera One Narrator: Temperatures and tempers reached the kindling point on August 7th, 1931, when Six Companies re-assigned a number of workers to lower paying jobs. Erik Barnes, Production Interns He came by and says, Maxine, youre going to have to do the hiring today, Im going home. So they called in and wanted 90 laborers. Greg Shea, Legal Narrator: Their challenge was to harness the countrys wildest river, the mighty Colorado, to bring water, power and people to the Southwest. Leading the team of surveyors withinthe Reclamation Bureau was a small, bespectacled man named Walker Brig Young. Guy Louis Rocha, Nevada State Archivist: People were living hand to mouth, living at the Union Pacific Railroad Station on the grass, courthouse grass. Martha Olsen The steel and wood beast, called a drilling jumbo, carried three tiers of drills on a ten-ton truck. A week later he stopped off at the dam site on his way from California to Washington. The ancient river valley is long gone. Ila Clements-Davey, Workers Daughter: They built communities very fast. 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.. 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. It was a brilliantly conceived scheme, uniting public works and private enterprise. I couldnt remember sleeping that hammers werent going and stuff like that. Well, little did I know, Ive never done anything but blow that horn. And I thought, heres my chance to get all these young boys that havent had a chance to go to work, to put their names up. And he said to me, in no uncertain terms, What are you going to do with all these blankety-blank trucks? Patrick Ramirez, A Firstlight Pictures filmforAMERICANEXPERIENCE. Temporarily renamed Boulder Dam by the Roosevelt Administration, the projects electrical output helped build the ships and planes used in World War II; its water grew fruits and vegetables in California. But the $165 million price tag for a Western water system made the Eastern establishment nervous. Five thousand men and their families settled in the Nevada desert. In a sense of ah this is where we learned how to do it. Pamela Gaudiano, Marketing and Communications Guy Louis Rocha, Nevada State Archivist: I suspect most people came from places where things were green. A giant construction company was formed by six previously smalltime contractors. I think that he was quite embarrassed. During the dam's construction, the job of the high scaler was by far the most dangerous. Getting in each others way. Nothing but hard solid rock and deep canyon. Guy Louis Rocha, Nevada State Archivist: Boulder City had elements of both the model town and the police state. Ila Clements-Davey, Workers Daughter: It was like a movie of Tarzan, you know. Blaine Hamann, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation: This was built in a time when it was the first big one. Narrator: A Six Companies engineer admitted they were all scared stiff. The governments plans called for a massive concrete wedge over 700 feet high, twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty, and two football fields wide at the bottom. Mark Mandler, Researchers The lucky ones were packed in tubs of ice water and survived. Narrator: Maxine Riepen was fresh out of Las Vegas High School when she got a job at the dams employment office. On February 6th, 1935, the last bucket of concrete topped off the dam at 726 1/2 feet. W.P. Thats what I thought of when I was looking at the dam. After six days, the strike collapsed. Hoover Dam heralded the beginning of the modern industrial west. This was the biggest project that anybody had ever thought of. Twice a month, on the tenth and twenty-fifth, they cashed their paychecks, burst out of the moral confines of Boulder City and headed down the highway to Las Vegas to the gambling halls, bars, and brothels of its infamous Block Sixteen. 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. And that time he got a job. And she says, I dont think Ill ever see you again. But they had an ace in the holethe one man they believed could pull it offan engineer named Frank Crowe. Guy Louis Rocha, Nevada State Archivist: Once the water was being bypassed, over that site, people came to worship in a way. Most of the time it was something that would kill you or ruin your farm. But the Bureau did begin laying rail and phone lines from Las Vegas out to Black Canyon. Everybody knew he was firm and fair and consistent. 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. Youd hear the blast and then see those guys fling themselves down there and start ripping the rocks off and there were people above them and people below them. It hardly solved the unemployment problem, but it was a start. Jen Holmes Amanda Libman For Frank Crowe, it was a personal triumph he had beaten the river, and his deadline, by eleven months. Narrator: After four years of surveys and tests, Bureau engineers chose Black Canyon, on the Arizona-Nevada border, as the site for Boulder Dam. Negroes were not, there was no way a negro could get in here. And then theyd have to replace it. Donald Wolf, Author/Engineer: There were many people who said it was physically impossible to build Hoover Dam, engineers who said that. Sean Cleary There were two mess halls, each seating 600; the dishwasher was sixteen feet long. The town was overwhelmed. 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. If the builders had tried to pour one continuous concrete wall, it would have taken 125 years to cool. Carly La Pierre, Archival Footage He would be the last man to die on the project, 13 years to the day after the first man diedJ.G. Narrator: The buckets poured concrete into blocks five feet deep, that were stacked one on top of another in interlocking columns to form the dams structure. Wont you please reconsider and come. And Mother said, No, Ive got to be with my husband.. David B. Mooney
Their exploits became legend real honest-to-goodness cliffhangers. Get the latest on new films and digital content, learn about events in your area, and get your weekly fix of American history. Narrator: As the hellish year of 1931 turned to 1932, tensions eased when Six Companies finally moved workers and their families out of Ragtown and into Boulder City. And if you didnt like it, why theyd can you. Film/Audio Services, Inc. The intake towers rose out of the lake like rockets to the moon. Narrator: It was a brutal job under the best of circumstances. Tommy Nelson, Worker: Two days off a year optional, without pay.
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