Las Vegas - The Hoover Dam

If you’re driving from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon, you will pass over the Hoover Dam. You have no choice. I decided to stop and check it out. While not generally thinking of myself as a dam fancier, it was a fun side trip.


The dam was built to control the flow of the Colorado River. As a side benefit, it was also turned into a massive hydro electric power station. It was built in the 1930s and is one of the largest engineering projects ever undertaken in the US. I know all this, because I sat through the informational video. I also found out, that it was a testament to the spirit of mankind and a soaring testament to man’s ability to dream. I also found out that American tourist videos tend to overdo things a bit and make you giggle whilst all the locals lap it up.

Once you are through the faintly nauseous video, you’re piled into a lift and taken into the bowels of the planet. The first stop, is the tunnel room. It’s a big room with a, you guessed it, tunnel! It’s impressive large with a big pipe in the middle. It was built to divert the river whilst the dam was being built and is now used to push water into the generators. As far as big holes with pipes go, it was the biggest I’d ever seen.


Now if that wasn’t enough, the next stop was the generator room. It’s a huge room, full of generators. Wow! They are large and they are gleaming in an early twentieth century kind of way. The tour guide made special note of the cement/marble floor, laid entirely by one Italian family. Cool.


After the excitement of the generators, it was time to return to the surface again. I think the tour was well worth doing to see the innards of the dam, but it isn’t a must see event. The dam itself is what everyone comes to see. It’s large and imposing. You can also see it for free, so I couldn’t really recommend the tour, unless you’re a dam aficionado!