Photos
Contrasting The Pre-Drought To The Drought Period
Ironically
this drought is one of the best times to get photos of the intake towers
at Hoover Dam. There were so many photos to choose from that we decided
to show the intake towers from the Arizona side with the emphasis on
showing the most difference between the pre-drought photos and the
current photos.
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 In
the earlier picture can still see trucks and long trailers. These are no
longer allowed to cross Hoover Dam.
Besides the trucks, note the water flowing over the gates at the left
lower center of this picture.
The area between the dam and the overflow tunnel on the Arizona side is
covered in water when this photo was taken.
In the August 2004 photo you will see quite a contrast.
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In
this set of photos we see Hoover Dam on February  20,
2002. At that time we were invited by one of the managers at to
Hoover Dam to take photos on the 'Dam Tour'. The result is, in part, our
popular 'Inside Hoover Dam' pages. At that time the Hoover Dam web site
was offline due to court order and we were flattered to get the visitors
who would have gone to the official web site. They have a great web site
and they were just innocent collateral damage in something that really
didn't involve information about the history and operation of Hoover
Dam. |
We also took dozens of other photos that day. The ones that are
published here were previously NOT used because they were not up to the
standards of this web site. We consider these image to be as good
as most on the web but flawed in some respects as to angle and sunrays
in the picture.
That said, the photos do not match the angles shown in the first and
last images but they do show the same areas. the picture  immediately
above, with that great little sunray ruining it, shows the Arizona side
of Hoover Dam between the dam and the spillways. In relation to the
first photo taken in 1999, this area is completely under water. In the
last photo on this page, the place where the water is lapping in the
2002 picture is, believe it or not, that first bench or notch right
below the highway immediately going towards the dam.
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For
the current photo we tried to get as close to the same field of view as in the
earlier photo as possible.
The area between 
the overflow channels and the Arizona side intake
towers is now a bare desert landscape as is the area between the intake
towers on the Nevada side and the spillways on that side of the river.
The distance in water level between the picture on the top of the page,
taken in 1999, pictures is 85 feet.
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