Hoover Dam FAQ's, trivia and facts Pets are not allowed on Hoover Dam ...It is ... -- 726.4 feet high -- 1,244 feet across at the top -- 660 feet thick at the base -- 45 feet thick at the top It ... -- weighs 6.6 millions ton ... -- can store up 2 years 'average' flow from the Colorado River ... -- has a total storage capacity can be up to 30,500,000 acre feet ... -- the surface area of Lake Mead is 146,000 acres ... -- has a power generating capacity of 2.08 million kilowatts ... -- cost ONLY $49,000,000 to build the Hoover Dam ... -- cost $165,000,000 to complete the Boulder Canyon Project that includes the Imperial Dam, Hoover Dam and the American Canal ... The maximum water surface elevation of Lake Mead above sea level is 1229 FT The maximum depth of Lake Mead is 590 FT The length of Lake Mead is 115 miles ... 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 none of it IN the dam ... NO ONE IS BURIED IN THE DAM! ... It is not possible for anyone to have been buried in the dam because of the manner in which the concrete was poured. The concrete was lowered to each section and when deposited would only raise the level a few inches. The workers would then tamp down the concrete to remove air bubbles. This made it impossible for anyone to accidentally get swallowed up in the concrete or to be covered up accidentally. 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 deaths and that would include the entire time frame of the Boulder Canyon Project and not just the construction period. The larger estimate has an odd bit of irony to it. The death count begins on December 20, 1922 with J. G. Tierney, a Bureau of Reclamation employee, who was part of a geological survey. He drowned in the Colorado River 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 on Hoover Dam. Construction on the Hoover Dam began September 30, 1930. The last concrete was poured in 1935. Hoover Dam was the first single structure to contain more masonry than the Great Pyramid at Giza. 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 worlds highest dam, it now ranks as the 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. |
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dam
and a gravity dam that combines the strengths and benefits of both types of dam.
An arch dam is usually situated in a narrow, hard rock canyon with the arch
facing upstream. This deflects the pressure of the impounded water to the canyon
walls. The benefit of this design is that it requires less material.