Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, Who's Charles Chuck Bryant, And there's Jerry
Speaker 1: Roland over there. And if you put all three of
Speaker 1: us together you get a little something called Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know. Oh, Man, Damn, Hoover Damn edition. Have you
Speaker 1: ever been to Hoover Damn? I have been there twice show.
Speaker 1: Yeah I went. Um, I went in Oh the great
Speaker 1: Hoover Damn Tour of it was either or Man, it
Speaker 1: may have been nine. Almost cussed right then? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: heard that. I almost did that the other day to
Speaker 1: getting to a movie crushy. Um. It may have been
Speaker 1: eighty nine or ninety. It was when I went out
Speaker 1: to visit my brother when he lived in l A.
Speaker 1: And we met in Las Vegas, drove down to the
Speaker 1: Hoover dam and then back to l A. The first
Speaker 1: time you guys met, Yeah, it was great. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then I went again in ninety six for sure, ninety
Speaker 1: six and okay, I think both times I took the tour. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's have you ever been? It's really something else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for the first time you me and I went about
Speaker 1: a year ago. Um, we drove from uh Scottsdale to
Speaker 1: Vegas and stopped in Hoover Dam on the way and
Speaker 1: it was great, as you do, it was very very cool. Well,
Speaker 1: there's nothing, nothing, nothing nothing. Hoover Damn, Vegas is kind
Speaker 1: of how it goes. Yeah, and you know, we'll get
Speaker 1: to the water levels. But it's uh, it's startling from
Speaker 1: when I was there what it looks like now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can imagine like if you had gone any time
Speaker 1: before about two thousand. From what I understand, it's like
Speaker 1: a different, different place. But the damn still there and
Speaker 1: it's still intact and doing really well. You got that
Speaker 1: at least, right, it's just the ecological catastrophe that's kind
Speaker 1: of looming that kind of is a downer. That's right.
Speaker 1: And we should give a big shout out to Julia Layton,
Speaker 1: who used to be one of the great great writers
Speaker 1: for how Stuff Works dot com back when we were
Speaker 1: uh still associated with that website. I think she might
Speaker 1: still write for him occasionally. Really well, she's great and
Speaker 1: now we are commissioning some articles from her, and boy,
Speaker 1: she's good, Yes she is. So what's her nickname? Chuck
Speaker 1: the lates Julia Layton. Late's no, because that sounds like
Speaker 1: she's not tardy. Oh yeah, that's right. Um, let's just
Speaker 1: call her Dr Layton. Okay, there you go. Although I
Speaker 1: don't think she's a doctor, but she does have her
Speaker 1: masters in writing, that's right, So way better than me.
Speaker 1: She cranks out some good stuff, that's right. So thanks, Julia,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you called that out, Chuck. Well done. So
Speaker 1: let's go back, shall we to a time in the
Speaker 1: the little the little area of the southwestern United States
Speaker 1: where Arizona reaches out to hug Nevada, Nevada. Which way
Speaker 1: are we supposed to say it? Well, we're supposed to
Speaker 1: say Nevada, but we're not from there, so we'll say Nevada,
Speaker 1: right like everybody else, right, Um. And where they almost meet,
Speaker 1: there's a little gorge. There's a canyon. Well there's a
Speaker 1: lot of canyons, but there's one in particular, and it's
Speaker 1: called Boulder Canyon. And if you went to Boulder Canyon
Speaker 1: today to find the Hoover Dam, you would be s
Speaker 1: o l because while they're originally going to build the
Speaker 1: Hoover Dam at Boulder Canyon, so much so that the
Speaker 1: name of the project for the first decade or so
Speaker 1: it was called the Boulder Boulder Dam just Bold Boulder once,
Speaker 1: not two Boulders, the Boulder Dam project. Um, they actually
Speaker 1: moved it a little further upstream to a much more
Speaker 1: suitable site called Black Canyon. And if you go visit
Speaker 1: the Hoover Dam today, that's where you're actually going. It's
Speaker 1: Black Canyon where Nevada and Arizona almost meat, that's right.
Speaker 1: And um, this idea was conceived, this concrete gravity arch
Speaker 1: hydro electric dam, hydro electric almost almost high dough electric.
Speaker 1: Excuse me. Uh, this was all conceived because well, for
Speaker 1: three reasons plus a cherry on top. One is that
Speaker 1: the Colorado River had a had a bad habit of
Speaker 1: flooding and causing lots of devastation. Just a nasty boy,
Speaker 1: so too to lasso that that beast. Uh. Number Two,
Speaker 1: to create water in times of drought, as you know,
Speaker 1: creating a big reservoir that would be like mead uh,
Speaker 1: to create energy. I love things that kill all these birds,
Speaker 1: you know, so many dead birds. Uh. And then finally
Speaker 1: the little cherry on top. Those were the three big
Speaker 1: reasons they did it. But the cherry on top. It
Speaker 1: turns out has been like me tourism is huge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think like Mead was the first nationally designated recreation area. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It sounds almost Soviet, doesn't it. Like the government's like
Speaker 1: this is where you recreate on this particular designated lake.
Speaker 1: Travel to the fund zone. So um yeah, the first one.
Speaker 1: I think there's like this. This is the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: I think when the project is really starting to gain
Speaker 1: steam and the guy who was this Secretary of Commerce
Speaker 1: at the time, who Herbert Hoover, who would very soon
Speaker 1: be the President of the United States, who would very
Speaker 1: shortly after that be like the most hated man in America.
Speaker 1: Hoover was like, this is a great idea. There's like
Speaker 1: this whole spot of land down in the Lower United States,
Speaker 1: and it just wants to be so much more than
Speaker 1: it than it is. It wants to be cropland, it
Speaker 1: wants to be cattle pasture. It wants to be a
Speaker 1: big old city like l A or Vegas. They're just
Speaker 1: waiting to pop, but they really are having trouble with
Speaker 1: water and with flooding. Like it's it's weird. It's like
Speaker 1: the Colorado River would be like not enough, sorry, and
Speaker 1: then up too much, way more than you ever wanted.
Speaker 1: And because of this kind of mercurial nature of it,
Speaker 1: there was just not a lot that could be done
Speaker 1: with the Southwest unless you figured out a way to
Speaker 1: tame that that river. And you know, like you were saying,
Speaker 1: that's what the Hoover dam was originally intended to do,
Speaker 1: and that's definitely what it did. I mean, just to
Speaker 1: kind of let the cat out of the bag early. Um,
Speaker 1: it was successful as far as damn projects go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And just to clear something up when you just said
Speaker 1: Herbert Hoover said big cities like l A and Vegas,
Speaker 1: he had a crystal ball on Vegas because Vegas was
Speaker 1: cowtown back then. Yeah, population five thousand at around ninety. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Vegas didn't people didn't want to go there until gambling
Speaker 1: started happening. They did have gambling. They had gambling, they
Speaker 1: had prostitution, they had yes, they had drinking. I guess
Speaker 1: casinos thanks to h what's his name, Buggsy. Yeah, Bugsy
Speaker 1: was one of the first, wouldn't he. I think so
Speaker 1: he wasn't the first, was he? I mean I saw
Speaker 1: that movie and if I remember correctly, Warren Beatty built
Speaker 1: that Flamingo casino and hotel, and that was kind of
Speaker 1: the first major casino. If I'm not mistaken, that sounds
Speaker 1: like a guy who deserves his own episode of stuff.
Speaker 1: You should know who Bugsy or or Warren Beatty. But
Speaker 1: Bugsy okay, Warren Beatty maybe gets the short stuff. So,
Speaker 1: uh the cup man, what a cut burn. It's better
Speaker 1: than just ignoring his existence and something's uh. So the
Speaker 1: Colorado River, like we said, um, it's the seventh longest
Speaker 1: in the US, about close to fift miles of total flow,
Speaker 1: and I believe that it distributes water that the river
Speaker 1: itself and then its tributaries to about million people. Of
Speaker 1: the crops in the US and of the livestock drink
Speaker 1: its water in the United States. It does now. So
Speaker 1: before this, before the Hoover Dam project, when the Colorado
Speaker 1: just did whatever the Colorado wanted to do. It's not
Speaker 1: like the people of the Southwest had had not tried
Speaker 1: to tame it before. They had extensive irrigation canals and
Speaker 1: ditches and dikes and earthworks and everything they could think
Speaker 1: of to keep the river going this way or that
Speaker 1: way and to keep it from flooding, and none of
Speaker 1: it worked. I mean it would work some like yes,
Speaker 1: an irrigation canal would work and you could here get
Speaker 1: your crops. But eventually the river was gonna flood and
Speaker 1: because you had diverted the river towards your crop land,
Speaker 1: when it flooded, it flooded that irrigation ditch, and it
Speaker 1: flooded your crop land to which was a real problem
Speaker 1: for you because it would when eventually it would recede um,
Speaker 1: you might have a lot more dirt than you're used to,
Speaker 1: probably pretty fertile dirt, but your crops would be gone.
Speaker 1: Maybe some of your cows got carried away, you might
Speaker 1: have lost your ten gallon hat. It's not a good
Speaker 1: deal when your crop land gets flooded. And so this
Speaker 1: was kind of what was going on when they were
Speaker 1: trying to tame the Colorado. It was just way too
Speaker 1: big of a project for you know, a handful of
Speaker 1: even large scale farmers to take on, which was one
Speaker 1: reason why the federal government stepped in because at the
Speaker 1: time there was really no entity that could take on
Speaker 1: a project like this, And even then there were a
Speaker 1: lot of questions like I'm not even sure the U. S.
Speaker 1: Government can handle this kind of thing. And the government said, oh, well, watch,
Speaker 1: watch and learn suckers. Yeah. So it's when uh US
Speaker 1: Bureau of Reclamation said, all right, I think we can
Speaker 1: build a dam of all dams. Um, we're gonna make
Speaker 1: it a gravity arch design. I think that can handle
Speaker 1: the Colorado River. And we're gonna have tunnels and turbines
Speaker 1: and towers, and we're gonna prevent flooding, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: deliver water to people. And the best news is we're
Speaker 1: going to create well, all that's great news, but more
Speaker 1: great news is we're going to create energy for a
Speaker 1: ton of people, such that this thing will even pay
Speaker 1: for itself in fifty years time. And like you said,
Speaker 1: a lot of people, I mean, this was and a
Speaker 1: lot of people are like, I don't Even engineers were saying,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is possible, right, And so
Speaker 1: not only were people incredulous that it was even possible,
Speaker 1: there's some seven states that draw water from the Colorado River,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty long river. It goes it starts
Speaker 1: in the Rocky Mountains, that's where it's fed by snow
Speaker 1: melt up there, and then it goes all the way
Speaker 1: down to Mexico and so seven states lay claim on water.
Speaker 1: They need water from the Colorado River to live, to
Speaker 1: irriget their crops, to feed their livestock. It's the kind
Speaker 1: of like the main artery for life in in the Southwest,
Speaker 1: or one of them. And when they found out that
Speaker 1: people in the seven States found out the US government
Speaker 1: was was wanting to damn and control the river, they
Speaker 1: got really worried that really this was just a project
Speaker 1: to divert all that beautiful water over to California. Because
Speaker 1: California had it going on by the late twenties, you know,
Speaker 1: the early mid twenties already thanks to Los Angeles, thanks
Speaker 1: to well, thanks to Los Angeles, UM. But it had
Speaker 1: a lot of potential, and it was growing San Francisco
Speaker 1: to it was it. It was growing in between those two,
Speaker 1: those two cities. And so the people in like New
Speaker 1: Mexico and Colorado and Arizona and Nevada were really worried
Speaker 1: that this was really just the federal government stepping in
Speaker 1: and saying, thanks a lot, we're gonna take this water
Speaker 1: and send it off to California, and um. Herbert Hoover
Speaker 1: actually intervened and said no, no no, no, how about this.
Speaker 1: Before we even get this project underway, we will broker
Speaker 1: a deal for how the water from the Colorado River
Speaker 1: gets distributed. And I'm Herbert Hoover. I'm going to be
Speaker 1: the most hated man in the world. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to actually purposely inflate the the capacity that this reservoir
Speaker 1: will hold so that no one feels like they're they're
Speaker 1: going to get left out. And everybody ended up signing on.
Speaker 1: So that was technically step negative one or maybe step
Speaker 1: zero before the plan was even fully adopted by the government. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was called the Colorado River Compact. And again
Speaker 1: it was just to make I think the only ones
Speaker 1: you left out were Utah and Wyoming and then the
Speaker 1: other five. Um. And they said, all right, the way
Speaker 1: you a portion, it looks good to us. California is like,
Speaker 1: we all know that we're really going to get the
Speaker 1: most water, right, and it was like, totally don't worry about.
Speaker 1: Everyone's gonna hate me soon and many people will hate
Speaker 1: California one day too. Um. And so Congress said, this
Speaker 1: looks great, let's push forward. Uh, despite the fact, I
Speaker 1: don't think we mentioned yet that the private sector. Of course,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think the private sector and the
Speaker 1: government have been it's like a newish thing that they're
Speaker 1: arguing over stuff like this. Think again, because since the
Speaker 1: dawn of time in the United States, the government and
Speaker 1: the private sector have squabbled, and so obviously private power
Speaker 1: companies and and water companies and just everybody was like, geez,
Speaker 1: I don't like the sounds of this, like the government's
Speaker 1: gonna start getting into the electricity business. Um. But regardless,
Speaker 1: they had no choice. Congress approved the Boulder Dam project,
Speaker 1: like you said, that later moved to Black Canyon, and
Speaker 1: for many, many years it was kind of bounced back
Speaker 1: and forth between Boulder Dam and then Hoover Dam. Uh.
Speaker 1: They officially called it Hoover Dam in nineteen thirty one,
Speaker 1: but like you said, four times, Hoover people didn't like
Speaker 1: him when he left office, so they went, let's call
Speaker 1: it the Boulder Dam again. And then it took a
Speaker 1: congressional resolution in nineteen seven to finally bring it back
Speaker 1: and give Hoover his due right. The reason why people
Speaker 1: hated Hoover, especially right after he left office, like he
Speaker 1: was a super conservative president. He believed that the federal
Speaker 1: government should intervene in business and in personal affairs as
Speaker 1: little as possible. So in the grips the worst parts
Speaker 1: of the Great Depression, the greatest economic recession that's ever
Speaker 1: hit the world, he was literally vetoing bills that would
Speaker 1: give federal assistance to Americans. So he was very much
Speaker 1: hated and reviled by the average person and just about
Speaker 1: everybody when he when he was soundly defeated by FDR,
Speaker 1: I think in nineteen thirty two. That sounded so uneasy
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty ish to election. So obviously, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna undertake a project in award contracts to two companies
Speaker 1: to build this thing, there's probably not one company that
Speaker 1: can tackle something like this that has all the different
Speaker 1: UH skills necessary to build something like the Hoover Dam.
Speaker 1: So UH six actually companies, six big big construction firms
Speaker 1: got together and UH formed what was called, wait for it,
Speaker 1: the six Companies right in nineteen thirty one, and they
Speaker 1: served as the kind of UH mega construction firm that
Speaker 1: undertook this huge, huge project. Yeah, they bid the project
Speaker 1: out at like forty eight point eight million dollars um,
Speaker 1: which is so funny to think about now, Like it's
Speaker 1: a little money for something like this. Yeah, even when
Speaker 1: you adjust for inflation, it's still a surprisingly low amount.
Speaker 1: It comes out to about eight hundred million dollars. And
Speaker 1: it's like the federal government today spends billion dollars like
Speaker 1: it's nothing. This is like a huge deal that the
Speaker 1: federal government government was spending the equivalent of today's eight
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars. But one reason why they went with
Speaker 1: the six companies consortium is because the Bureau of Reclamation
Speaker 1: this is the department that oversaw the project. Um, they
Speaker 1: had calculated the costs themselves, and the six companies bid
Speaker 1: was only about twenty four thousand dollars more than the
Speaker 1: six company or than the Bureau of Reclamation had estimated
Speaker 1: the project would cost about twenty four grand over right,
Speaker 1: So they were like, all right, if you want to
Speaker 1: build this whole project for dollars have added UM. And
Speaker 1: I mean obviously they were six legitimate major construction companies
Speaker 1: and then all of them combined together form one super
Speaker 1: construction company. UM. So they seem to be pretty comfortable
Speaker 1: with this consortium. And from everything I can tell, unless
Speaker 1: you're a workers rights kind of person, um, this this company.
Speaker 1: Their faith in this consortium was well placed because they
Speaker 1: did a pretty good job, saving maybe one major mistake, um,
Speaker 1: which we'll get too later. It was it's a pretty
Speaker 1: good government construction project if you ask me, public private,
Speaker 1: all right, UM, I feel like we should take a
Speaker 1: break now and come back and talk about, uh, infrastructure
Speaker 1: right for this. All right, So we're back and uh
Speaker 1: it will take a couple of years. Obviously, you're not
Speaker 1: going to dive into a project like this right away
Speaker 1: because you can't back then because of where it was located.
Speaker 1: And if you think about it, um, like part of
Speaker 1: the problem with this project from the beginning was its
Speaker 1: location and how isolated the Southwest was from other like
Speaker 1: major parts of the U S at the time. And
Speaker 1: so they were like, wait a minute, we're not close
Speaker 1: to anything Like Vegas only is the closest place and
Speaker 1: it has five thousand people. That doesn't really help us much.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, miles away. So here's what we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to do. Um, we're gonna have to build
Speaker 1: a town that's really close by for all of our
Speaker 1: employees and our workers to live. And so they did
Speaker 1: just that. I think this was about six miles away.
Speaker 1: They literally constructed a city called Boulder, city, UM west
Speaker 1: of the damn site. It had seven fifty eight cottages
Speaker 1: if you were married and worked or had a family
Speaker 1: or whatever. It had nine dormitories for single men. I
Speaker 1: imagine that was a wild scene. Uh. They had a hospital,
Speaker 1: they had a department store, they had laundry, they had
Speaker 1: a school, they had a post office, they had uh
Speaker 1: liquor stills and and that's real illegal by the way.
Speaker 1: Sure of course this depression or prohibition, UM, but they
Speaker 1: needed their booze, like, let's be honest. Uh. And this
Speaker 1: this city actually remained under government control until nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: when uh it got its own incorporation, which is kind
Speaker 1: of crazy. Yeah, the the the Hoover Damn was dedicated,
Speaker 1: like the project was done basically UM by nineteen thirty eight, Um,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine. I think they're still working on outbuildings
Speaker 1: and stuff for a little while. But for twenty years
Speaker 1: after a lot of the people who had UM built
Speaker 1: the damn were like, I really like this Bowlder City town.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stay here. And one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: you would stay there is because like the government ran
Speaker 1: the town. There were no elected officials. There was an
Speaker 1: appointed Bureau of Reclamation, um department, uh like administrator that
Speaker 1: was like the de facto mayor of the town. And
Speaker 1: like if there was something wrong with your house, You're
Speaker 1: of Reclamation workers would come fix it, like your sink
Speaker 1: or paint your house or whatever. You didn't have to
Speaker 1: do anything because the government this is like federal land.
Speaker 1: And finally in nineteen what'd you say, the government was like,
Speaker 1: all right, freeloaders, you can paint your own houses from
Speaker 1: now on. This is your place. And they incorporated it
Speaker 1: into a city in nineteen sixty, I guess, yeah, And
Speaker 1: it's uh still one of two cities in Nevada that
Speaker 1: say no gambling here, which is pretty unique. You know.
Speaker 1: At the at the height of this project to Chuck
Speaker 1: Bowlder City, which hadn't existed just a couple of years before.
Speaker 1: Like it wasn't like they took over an existing city
Speaker 1: and built it up. There was nothing there before and
Speaker 1: they built a city from scratch. Um it was. It
Speaker 1: had the biggest population in Nevada at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: more than Vegas. Yeah, by by a few hundred people,
Speaker 1: I believe. All right, so they built I mean this
Speaker 1: is keep in mind again, this before they can even
Speaker 1: get started on this dam. They say, we gotta build
Speaker 1: a city. We gotta build um seven miles of highway,
Speaker 1: we gotta build twenty three miles of railway, we got
Speaker 1: to build um bring in like two miles of power lines,
Speaker 1: and we have to bring in cableways spanning this canyon.
Speaker 1: And it's just all this massive amounts of infrastructure to
Speaker 1: tackle this project where they were gonna be paying dudes
Speaker 1: fifty cents to a dollar an hour, which is between
Speaker 1: eight bucks and twenty bucks an hour in today dollars. Right,
Speaker 1: what's ironic is the harder and the more dangerous your
Speaker 1: job typically the less you were paid, kind of like
Speaker 1: today kind of. Yeah, there was there is a group
Speaker 1: called the muckers, and they were the ones who had
Speaker 1: to like get the stone in the sludge and all
Speaker 1: that stuff out of the canyon bottom. And um, they
Speaker 1: got paid the least even though they were the most
Speaker 1: um exposed to like falling rocks and falling items, and
Speaker 1: apparently like falling stuff was a real danger on this project. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll get to that later, but a lot of
Speaker 1: noggins suffered. Um, So then the other thing that they
Speaker 1: had to do, they're like all right, we got the
Speaker 1: city built, we got all these highways, We've got all
Speaker 1: this stuff, We've got all these people. We got a
Speaker 1: good plan. They're like, we need to do something with
Speaker 1: this river because you can't. You can't just start stacking
Speaker 1: rocks and divert the Colorado River. So they literally had
Speaker 1: to come up with a plan to reroute the Colorado
Speaker 1: River while they built this thing. I hadn't thought about that.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you knew about it two times over from
Speaker 1: your double visits and the tour. Now, did you just
Speaker 1: drive across it? No, we walked around. We didn't take
Speaker 1: one of these sexual like tours, tours like it was
Speaker 1: seventeen bucks, right, Like, I'm sure I know as much
Speaker 1: as this guy. Um, but no, No, I mean like
Speaker 1: we took out the whole thing and we were there
Speaker 1: for a couple of hours or anything. But it was
Speaker 1: self guided to her, How about that got you? No,
Speaker 1: that's great, but it had never occurred to me. And
Speaker 1: I didn't learn on this self guided tour that we
Speaker 1: just made up ourselves. Um, that that that you would
Speaker 1: have to divert the river, that the river was still
Speaker 1: going through um Black Canyon at the time. Um, and
Speaker 1: you just couldn't build a damn there while the river
Speaker 1: was trying to get through there. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff you could do so to to divert the river. Um,
Speaker 1: they did some really ingenious stuff. And if you step
Speaker 1: back and look at it from like the eyes of
Speaker 1: a like like a child, it's really just too three
Speaker 1: four steps and building this damn if you really look
Speaker 1: at a super high level or super I guess childlike again,
Speaker 1: um in all of them make total sense. But just
Speaker 1: the audacity of saying, yeah, we can do that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: add that extra step on before we get started. It's
Speaker 1: it really kind of goes to the heart of like,
Speaker 1: just what an amazing civil engineering project this was. So
Speaker 1: like with any damn, if you want to divert that water,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to go up straight a certain amount,
Speaker 1: and they have very smart engineers that figure out exactly
Speaker 1: where to do this. And in this case they built
Speaker 1: uh Coffer dams, which is a very common thing to
Speaker 1: do when you want to build a damn downstream. It's
Speaker 1: basically sort of like a big hole in the river
Speaker 1: that uh the water would just flow into these. So
Speaker 1: the water instead of going downstream, dumps into these Coffer Dams,
Speaker 1: and then it funnels that water into these four tunnels,
Speaker 1: two on each side of the canyon under the canyon,
Speaker 1: instead of between them, diverting everything around to then rejoin
Speaker 1: uh the other you know, those those tunnels rejoin each
Speaker 1: other as the Colorado River once again downstream, right. And
Speaker 1: I think the Coffer Dam is actually kind of like
Speaker 1: a like an earthworks, like a wall inside the water.
Speaker 1: Yeah you will, you pump the water out, you kind
Speaker 1: of make it a hole. But yeah, so so this
Speaker 1: these tunnels that they diverted this too, Chuck, where it
Speaker 1: combined four miles four miles of tunnel, so each each
Speaker 1: tunnel was about a mile because there are four of
Speaker 1: them through the canyon rock which was granite. And they
Speaker 1: dug out these tunnels as and built the Coffer Dam
Speaker 1: just to start the whole thing, not as part of
Speaker 1: the larger project, but this is like to to just
Speaker 1: to get started. That was the first thing they had
Speaker 1: to do. Yeah, there were fifty ft in diameter, like
Speaker 1: these were not small tunnels. They had to be lined
Speaker 1: with three feet of concrete to hold up. And I
Speaker 1: think the water was was racing through those at a
Speaker 1: rate of two hundred thousand cubic feet per second. So
Speaker 1: it's amazing. That's a hundred and thirty six um Olympic
Speaker 1: sized pools per minute passing through there. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: this would be remarkable today, dude. Yeah, you know for sure.
Speaker 1: And as we'll see those those things are still in operation,
Speaker 1: although they use them differently now. Um, but yeah, that
Speaker 1: that's that's just a ton of water. And and they said, yep, success,
Speaker 1: it worked. We diverted um this water down further downstream
Speaker 1: because you know, the tunnels ended below the damn project
Speaker 1: site and then all of a sudden, the Colorado River
Speaker 1: had been diverted around the dam and now they could
Speaker 1: get started, right, And so they're like, all right, we
Speaker 1: feel like we could just quit now because what we
Speaker 1: did was pretty awesome. But we don't have a damn yet.
Speaker 1: So in this huge canyon, we need, uh, if we're
Speaker 1: gonna build a dam, we need to make these walls
Speaker 1: smooth because they were you know, it was a canyon.
Speaker 1: It was just jagged rock and you can't just fill
Speaker 1: in a bunch of concrete against this jagged rock. They
Speaker 1: have these abutments that are gonna secure this huge concrete
Speaker 1: slab to the canyon walls. So they had to smooth
Speaker 1: these things out, and that was done by I mean,
Speaker 1: I want to say the most dangerous job, but it's
Speaker 1: kind of hard to pick. But the high scale ers
Speaker 1: are definitely up there as far as danger goes. If
Speaker 1: you go to the Hoover Dam site today, there's a
Speaker 1: statue of a high scaler. It's a guy like on
Speaker 1: a rope with like a toolbag hanging from me. He's
Speaker 1: like scaling down the side of the uh, the canyon wall.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what they did. Because if you're trying
Speaker 1: to clear the canyon walls and you're talking, you know,
Speaker 1: your seven hundred feet up between the bottom of the
Speaker 1: canyon and the canyon rim, You've got a lot of
Speaker 1: rock that you're trying to get out of there. Um,
Speaker 1: it's not easy. You can't just you know, hit it
Speaker 1: with a pole and priyate loose. You get to blast
Speaker 1: it loose, actually sure, but to no avail. They spent
Speaker 1: a good year and a half trying that and nothing happened. Um,
Speaker 1: but the uh I'm totally joking about that, by the way, Um, Okay,
Speaker 1: to to blast it the chuck, you have to drill
Speaker 1: a hole and then put the dynamite in and then
Speaker 1: blast it. But if you're trying to drill a wholesomewhere,
Speaker 1: you know, halfway between the canyon ridge and the canyon bottom,
Speaker 1: you have to have a guy on a rope who
Speaker 1: is willing to swing down there, have a jackhammer four
Speaker 1: pound jackhammer lowered to him, and then it drill a
Speaker 1: hole with a jackhammer suspended from the edge of the
Speaker 1: canyon um into the into the mid air um and
Speaker 1: then pack it full of dynamite. Light it, get out
Speaker 1: of the way, let the blast happen, and then come
Speaker 1: back and then use a pole to private rocks loose.
Speaker 1: That's what these guys had to do. And if you
Speaker 1: want to know how Jackhammers work, everybody, let me tell you.
Speaker 1: We have maybe our best episode ever in eleven years.
Speaker 1: Jack It was the worst one we've ever done. Like
Speaker 1: there's no question, Like the sun ha ha, you know
Speaker 1: it was terrible. Jackhammers was actually bad. At least the
Speaker 1: son's an interesting thing, right A right, good point. Um,
Speaker 1: All right, so they're they're blasting these things out. These dudes, uh,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, did not even have hard hats
Speaker 1: at the time. They were not supplied with hard hats. No.
Speaker 1: That's one big criticis some of the six six Companies
Speaker 1: consortium that they did not care about workers, right. So
Speaker 1: there was a strike that happened in and the guy
Speaker 1: running the show for the six companies name was Frank Crow.
Speaker 1: They called him hurry up Crow. Um, he fired everybody.
Speaker 1: He just fired everybody and brought in new workers. They
Speaker 1: didn't get hard hats until they basically said, we're not
Speaker 1: gonna work anymore unless you give us hard hats. They
Speaker 1: had to make their own hard hats by taking soft hats,
Speaker 1: which I guess it's just a hat, and then putting
Speaker 1: it in like coal tar and letting it like molten
Speaker 1: coal tar, and then letting it cool, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden you had like a homemade hard hat. And
Speaker 1: then finally the company is just like, all right, you're
Speaker 1: making us look bad. We'll we'll get some actual ones.
Speaker 1: But it took like a little while before they had
Speaker 1: any any actual hard hats on site. Yeah, those homemade
Speaker 1: ones are called hard boiled hats, and they really actually
Speaker 1: worked that. Um. I know that thing you sent said
Speaker 1: that some of the rocks falling on these hard boiled hats.
Speaker 1: Their their head would be fine, but it would be
Speaker 1: such force that would actually break their jaw. So these
Speaker 1: they worked, these hard bowl hats actually worked, um, but
Speaker 1: I imagine they wanted the real thing. You'd be like
Speaker 1: if I don't think though, And they would do tricks
Speaker 1: and stuff like in their downtime they would you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of these people were I mean not a lot,
Speaker 1: but some of them were like circus workers, right, and
Speaker 1: people like former military that could do this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And apparently between working they would fly around and do little,
Speaker 1: uh high wire tricks and stuff basically, and Native Americans too,
Speaker 1: And you always hear about when the skyscrapers were built,
Speaker 1: they'd be like, yeah, we just hired a bunch of
Speaker 1: Native Americans and they'll run all over steel beams as
Speaker 1: much as you please without any fear. And I've always
Speaker 1: wondered why that's the case, and is it is it?
Speaker 1: It's got to just be some sweeping generalization that Native
Speaker 1: Americans aren't afraid of heights, obviously, but like, are there
Speaker 1: specific tribes that were exposed to things like cliff walls
Speaker 1: for generations and generations and that they became used to
Speaker 1: these dizzy heights so that it wasn't a big deal.
Speaker 1: And those are the same tribes that you know made
Speaker 1: their way out to New York to build the skyscrapers too.
Speaker 1: We gotta get to the bottom of that one. Or
Speaker 1: maybe they were just tough and not scared of anything.
Speaker 1: They just didn't let on. But there we have to.
Speaker 1: We have to tell this once, the story of Burrel
Speaker 1: Our Rutledge, though, man like like, I almost faint just
Speaker 1: just reading about it. I'm sure because you don't love heights. No,
Speaker 1: I don't love heights. So let's just go over this
Speaker 1: one more time. If you were in the canyon rim
Speaker 1: of the the Boulder Damn Hoover Dam project at the time,
Speaker 1: you were more than seven feet above the bottom of
Speaker 1: the canyon, which for all intents and purposes, is straight down.
Speaker 1: That's like a sixty story building. Basically, it's a really
Speaker 1: really big height and you can sense it, man, when
Speaker 1: you're there, and Hoover Dam, if you haven't been, go
Speaker 1: it's totally worth the trip for sure, um, especially if
Speaker 1: you're in Las Vegas. Um. But there was a guy
Speaker 1: named Burl Rutledge who was one of the engineers for
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Reclamation, and I guess he lost his
Speaker 1: footing or something and he fell off off the canyon
Speaker 1: rim on his way down to the canyon bottom a
Speaker 1: sixty story building below him, that's right. And then thankfully,
Speaker 1: um he either had a a former circus worker or
Speaker 1: somebody who was just very brave named Oliver Cowen about
Speaker 1: below apparently heard this, I guess it calls a bit
Speaker 1: of a commotion and swung himself out. He's hanging in
Speaker 1: a it's called abortion seat that's like sort of like
Speaker 1: a little sling seat. He rushes over as fast as
Speaker 1: he can go, swinging out and grabs this guy's leg
Speaker 1: as he's sliding down the canyon wall. And then another
Speaker 1: high scaler named Arnold Parks then swings over, you know,
Speaker 1: helps him pin his body to the wall, and they
Speaker 1: held him there until they could drop a line and
Speaker 1: pull him up. If I were Rutledge, I would have
Speaker 1: been like, like, just let me go, let me go.
Speaker 1: I can't stand this. I'm so scared. They're like, Josh,
Speaker 1: we've really got you. You know. You're like it's all over.
Speaker 1: I'm never going to be the same again. Well, that's
Speaker 1: probably true. You would just moved to the to the
Speaker 1: lowest place in the continuous contiguous United States. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine what the rest of Burl Rutledge's day was after that,
Speaker 1: but it was good. I bet he drank a lot.
Speaker 1: I hope it was a good day. But yeah, So
Speaker 1: that happened like that, like the thing that everyone's imagination
Speaker 1: thinks of when you think of a bunch of people
Speaker 1: doing construction work on a canyon. Ledge, that happened, and
Speaker 1: it actually panned out pretty well for Burl Rutledge at least.
Speaker 1: All right, man, I think it's time for a message break, agreed,
Speaker 1: all right? So do are dying? Though? Um? I saw
Speaker 1: anywhere between like ninety three to ninety six to a
Speaker 1: hundred people died total in the whole project, which, all
Speaker 1: things being equal, for what they were doing, isn't that
Speaker 1: high of a number. Um A hundred lives is a
Speaker 1: lot though to be lost on a specific engineering project. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw as high as a hundred and twelve. And
Speaker 1: the six companies, again, they weren't exactly known for having
Speaker 1: like the loosest pockets. If you file the some sort
Speaker 1: of health claim against them for you know, an injury
Speaker 1: or an illness sustained working on the job, there was Um.
Speaker 1: I think like thirty six forty two people associated with
Speaker 1: the project died of pneumonia. But I think the Las
Speaker 1: Vegas Star did an investigation either years later at the
Speaker 1: time and said there were basically no deaths back at
Speaker 1: Boulder City of pneumonia. If there was pneumonia, it would
Speaker 1: have been going around Boulder City. And we think that
Speaker 1: really pneumonia is just a code word from the six
Speaker 1: companies or carbon monoxide poison because the six companies wanted
Speaker 1: to cover it up so they didn't didn't have to
Speaker 1: pay out any you know, money to the family because
Speaker 1: they accidentally killed the dad with carbon monoxide poisoning because
Speaker 1: he was working all day alongside like a diesel engine
Speaker 1: in one of these you know, mile long tunnels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that was the kind of stuff that they endured. Um.
Speaker 1: Heat stroke killed a lot of people too. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: in the summer of nine three alone, apparently about three
Speaker 1: people per week. We're dying a pete stroke because dude
Speaker 1: in in the sun in these tunnels in particular, apparently
Speaker 1: would get up to a hundred and forty degrees fahrenheit,
Speaker 1: which is some ungodly amount and celsius too, and then
Speaker 1: in the shade. On the worst days, it would get
Speaker 1: to like a hundred and twenty degrees in the shade.
Speaker 1: It's a dry heat though. Sure it's not the heat,
Speaker 1: it's the humidity unless it's a hundred and twenty and
Speaker 1: then it doesn't matter. Yeah, And one of the common
Speaker 1: um urban legends is that there are dead bodies um
Speaker 1: in the concrete of Hoover Damn. That is not true,
Speaker 1: and I love how Julia put it. Common decency aside.
Speaker 1: She says it would have compromised the structural integrity. So
Speaker 1: they they had to fish these bodies out, because if
Speaker 1: you were a body in concrete, you're gonna decompose eventually,
Speaker 1: and that's gonna leave bubbles and introduce gas into the concrete,
Speaker 1: and that's going to weaken the structure. So they had
Speaker 1: to fish all these bodies out and even still well
Speaker 1: we'll talk about the concrete next, but just just to
Speaker 1: kind of lay the foundation for this point, feel forgive
Speaker 1: the punt you when they when they poured a bucket's
Speaker 1: worth of concrete to build the damn face there the
Speaker 1: damn itself, I guess um the dam was so enormous
Speaker 1: that the whole bucket only raised the level of concrete
Speaker 1: by like two to six inches, depending on the block
Speaker 1: they were pouring. So if you fell into the concrete,
Speaker 1: you were you fell into two inches of concrete basically,
Speaker 1: So you were you were you were going to get
Speaker 1: lost in the concrete or anything like that. And then
Speaker 1: on top of that, yet they even if they did
Speaker 1: not care about whether you spent eternity entombed, they would
Speaker 1: be like, well, you're not gonna You're not gonna screw
Speaker 1: with the integrity of our damn So, yes, there's no
Speaker 1: dead bodies in there, no dead bodies. So so let's
Speaker 1: talk about the concrete, shall we, real quick? Yeah? Um,
Speaker 1: So at this point, the walls are clean and smooth.
Speaker 1: They've got these abutments in place, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: if I may, okay, So I looked all over for
Speaker 1: the abutments, and all I ever saw was it's the
Speaker 1: it's the walls of the canyon, the rock walls of
Speaker 1: the canyon, or the abutments from what I can gather. Um,
Speaker 1: you know how when you when you grab somebody nicely
Speaker 1: and in jokingly by the shoulders right and are holding
Speaker 1: them securely like this, right, so you've got your thumbs
Speaker 1: on the front of their arms, and you've got their
Speaker 1: fingers on the back of their arms like that, right,
Speaker 1: your fingers and thumbs are acting as abutments. And so
Speaker 1: the abutments that are holding rather than this poor sap
Speaker 1: who again you're just joking around with um, rather than
Speaker 1: than that person, these abutments are the canyon walls holding
Speaker 1: the damn itself in places. Okay, I mean I had,
Speaker 1: but like I couldn't tell if they were like parts
Speaker 1: of that stuck out of the damn or parts that
Speaker 1: stuck out of the canyon walls. And I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was one of those things where everybody else
Speaker 1: knows what abutments is, and that's why no one went
Speaker 1: to the trouble of explaining it. But I couldn't find
Speaker 1: it like spelled out or a good picture saying here's
Speaker 1: the abutments. So I just assumed that no one else
Speaker 1: knew and I was the only one digging into it.
Speaker 1: But now I feel like my eyes have been open. Well,
Speaker 1: I have the three fake teeth and implants, so I
Speaker 1: know what abutments are. They go, that was it's different
Speaker 1: in your teeth but not really the same word, same function, right,
Speaker 1: So these abutments are in place, and they were like,
Speaker 1: all right, we gotta start pouring some concrete. The design itself, Um,
Speaker 1: a lot of damns use this design. It's called a
Speaker 1: gravity arch, and it's basically just using the natural pressure
Speaker 1: of of the land to uh kind of force everything
Speaker 1: tight into that uh tightened down that concrete between those
Speaker 1: two canyons. Yeah, it's really ingenious, dude. It's it's just
Speaker 1: like an arched bridge where gravity presses down on the arch,
Speaker 1: which makes the arch press in to say, like the
Speaker 1: walls of the canyon that the bridge is crossing, and
Speaker 1: the bridge the walls of the canyon pushed back, which
Speaker 1: only strengthens the bridge. Same exact thing. It's like if
Speaker 1: you took a bridge at arch bridge and put it
Speaker 1: on its side. That's what the Hoover dam is. So
Speaker 1: when the water presses into that curve of the arch,
Speaker 1: it tries to straighten the dam, which presses the damn
Speaker 1: into the sides of the canyon walls, which press back
Speaker 1: strengthens the damn. It's ingenious, ingenious, I tell you, yeah,
Speaker 1: And so uh they didn't even need that. That's kind
Speaker 1: of the funny part about all of this there's so
Speaker 1: much concrete that it could have been a flat slab,
Speaker 1: which a lot of damns are, but um, apparently engineers
Speaker 1: thought that would freak people out to have a flat
Speaker 1: slab damn that big, and so they said, let's just
Speaker 1: curve it anyway, because everyone understands basic physics, right, all right,
Speaker 1: and it looks cool and it does look very cool. Um, alright,
Speaker 1: so we're we're actually finally to the concrete. Um. There
Speaker 1: are three point two five million cubic yards of concrete
Speaker 1: that make up the Hoover dam, uh and then another
Speaker 1: one point one one million cubic yards and um, it's
Speaker 1: not just the damn face. There's a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: the houses, a power plant and all these outlying structures,
Speaker 1: and five million barrels of cement. Five million barrels went
Speaker 1: into mixing all this concrete, which they mixed on site, uh,
Speaker 1: sen in rail cars hoisted down on these cableways that
Speaker 1: they had built. And every seventy eight seconds, these workers
Speaker 1: would get a new bucket of concrete to poor right
Speaker 1: right for um until about five ft of the dam
Speaker 1: had been poured, and then after that they had to
Speaker 1: stop for seventy two hours to let it cure, because
Speaker 1: curing is a huge part when you're working with concrete.
Speaker 1: If it doesn't cure right, then the stuff inside is
Speaker 1: going to take longer to cure than the stuff outside.
Speaker 1: Um which isn't that big of a deal if you're
Speaker 1: pouring like you know, a driveway in a house or
Speaker 1: something like that. But when you're pouring a dam that
Speaker 1: has to have like really exact dimensions, you have to
Speaker 1: keep the outside and the inside curing at about the
Speaker 1: same rate. So they came up with this really ingenious
Speaker 1: um way to cure this concrete really fast. And they
Speaker 1: ran pipes, steel pipes all through all the concrete that
Speaker 1: they poured, So there's steel pipes running all over the
Speaker 1: Hoover dam inside of it, and they cooled water on
Speaker 1: site to like like just above freezing, and they pumped
Speaker 1: it through these pipes so that when they were pouring concrete,
Speaker 1: the concrete was being cooled internally and they were spraying
Speaker 1: it with water on the outside too, So it was
Speaker 1: curing at about the same rate inside as it was outside,
Speaker 1: and it was curing fast in about seventy two hours,
Speaker 1: where if they had poured a slab that if they
Speaker 1: poured the Hoover Dam in one big slab had just
Speaker 1: left it, first of all, it would have been all
Speaker 1: messed up all kinds of ways. But it also would
Speaker 1: have taken about a hundred and twenty five years to
Speaker 1: cure fully on its own. It'd still be curing now.
Speaker 1: But they get they managed to get these you know,
Speaker 1: five foot increments to cure in about seventy two hours.
Speaker 1: So again, I mean another just the idea that they like,
Speaker 1: nobody had really tried something like this on the scale.
Speaker 1: So these people were kind of making it up and
Speaker 1: going and doing the math as as they went a
Speaker 1: long and they were right like time after time. That's
Speaker 1: the most astounding part to me. Yeah, I mean that
Speaker 1: the heat is a big problem for concrete because it's
Speaker 1: going to expand in that heat, and then you know,
Speaker 1: in the desert it can cool down quite a bit.
Speaker 1: You know, the temperature variation between the heat of day
Speaker 1: and at night can be really drastic, and so it's
Speaker 1: really tough to control all that and they managed to
Speaker 1: do it, which is remarkable. Um, they divide this whole
Speaker 1: thing up into blocks, and there are two hundred blocks
Speaker 1: total making up the Hoover Dam. Um. Depending they're they're
Speaker 1: smaller at the downstream face and they are upstream, but
Speaker 1: they range from about square feet to sixty square feet. Uh.
Speaker 1: And all of those blocks together, all two hundred of them,
Speaker 1: make up the Hoover Dam. Finally, on they poured that
Speaker 1: last bucket of concrete, which I imagine was a pretty
Speaker 1: darn good day. I'll bet it was too. And then
Speaker 1: after that, after that last block of concrete cured, they
Speaker 1: squeeze grout, which is um cement and water, like a
Speaker 1: really kind of slushy mixture, into every crack and crevice
Speaker 1: there was in between those blocks to form a solid sheet.
Speaker 1: And then just for good measure, they pumped grout into
Speaker 1: those cooling pipes. So and then they cap that off.
Speaker 1: So inside the Hoover Dam there's enough concrete to make
Speaker 1: a sixteen ft wide, eight inch deep road all the
Speaker 1: way from San Francisco to New York. It is amazing. So, dude,
Speaker 1: I think we should do this into two parts. If
Speaker 1: Evil Kinevel got a two parter, I think the Hoover
Speaker 1: Dam deserves a two parter. Two. We've been at it
Speaker 1: for forty five minutes, so there's still a long long
Speaker 1: way to go. So should we do that? Yes, let's
Speaker 1: so since we're doing a two parter. Uh, well, I
Speaker 1: guess that brings up listener mail, right, Chuck, I think
Speaker 1: let's skip listener mail. Okay, Damn doesn't get too listener mails. Okay, fine,
Speaker 1: was just it was getting a little ambitious. Well, in
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you want to drop us a line,
Speaker 1: you can go to stuff you Should Know dot com
Speaker 1: and check out our social links. You can check me
Speaker 1: out on the Josh Clark Way dot com and you
Speaker 1: can send me Chuck, Jerry and everyone involved in Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know an email to stuff podcast at i
Speaker 1: heeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
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