Hoover Dam - Inside and Out
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Good friends, Kelly and Mike from Wisconsin, visited last week. Like us, the allure of Las Vegas is not its casinos nor the neon lights of the Strip, but rather all the other interesting sights and experiences Las Vegas has to offer. With temps in the triple digits, taking a tour of the Hoover Dam topped their list of things to do when it was too miserable to be outside for any length of time.
Administered by the USBR (US Bureau of Reclamation), Hoover Dam including the Visitor Center is totally self-supporting, deriving its revenue from the sale of hydroelectric power and tourism which covers both its operational and maintenance costs.
We shelled out $40/pp (our contribution to the self-sustaining tourism pot) for an hour-long guided tour of the Dam which also included entrance to exhibits at the newly opened (June 2025) Visitor Center.
New Hoover Dam Visitor Dam just open in June 2025.
The visitor Center exhibits were impressive.
The exhibits in the Visitor Center were excellent and sometimes mind-boggling. The number of people involved in building the dam, the amount of supplies and materials required, the engineering innovations incorporated into the structure, and the record time in which it was built were all astonishing, i.e. contains 4.4 million cubic yards of concrete.
At 726.4 feet (221.4 meters) tall from the foundation rock to the roadway, 1,244 feet (379 meters) long, Hoover Dam is the second-tallest dam in the USA and the largest dam by volume. The dam can hold 9.2 trillion gallons of water stored in Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States. Nearly 90 years after its completion, Hoover Dam is still considered an engineering marvel.
The concrete in Hoover Dam is equivalent to enough concrete to build a 2-lane highway from San Francisco to New York City.
According to USBR, ~21,000 men worked in the construction of the dam. There were 96 officially recorded deaths due to on-site and construction accidents, but several other deaths due to pneumonia, heatstroke, and CO poisoning were not counted in the official total if the deaths occurred off-site. We were surprised there weren’t more, considering OSHA wasn’t around yet and the ever-present dangers of construction work.
The cost of the dam was amazing, too. Construction costs, including the dam, the power plant and generators, cost $49 million (~$1 billion in today’s dollars) and were completed two years earlier than scheduled. Compared to the projected cost of the new Athletics baseball stadium in Las Vegas at $1.75 billion, I’d say the dam was quite the bargain.
The tour itself included a trek inside the dam itself, along the power plant’s many narrow passageways with views of the turbines and peeks through a ventilation shaft to the Colorado River below. Considering the 104F (40C) temp outside, the constant 68F (20C) temps inside the dam were lovely.
We were surprised by the beauty and durability of native and Southwestern graphics incorporated into what seemed like miles of terrazzo floors. “Two Italian immigrant brothers, Joseph and John Martina, installed the terrazzo floors in 1936-37 with the help of 30 countrymen. […] The Martina brothers contracted to install the terrazzo for 48 cents per square foot, for a total of only $51,718.” Cost today would be $20+/sq foot.
Beautiful terrazzo flooring with native and Southwestern designs are hidden in the passageways inside the dam.
The guide was knowledgeable, interesting, and articulate. The hour-long tour went by in a flash. The last elevator ride in one of the original elevators took us to the top of the dam, where the heat hit us like a smack in the face as soon as we opened the door.
We walked over the crest of the dam for great views of the Mike O'Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge and the Colorado River below. Completed in 2010, the bridge bypasses US93 which crosses over the top of the dam. Considered a security risk since 9-11, we had to pass through a security checkpoint to access the Hoover Dam parking facility ($10). You can still drive or walk over the dam, but the bypass is much faster. There is a walk and observation platform on I-11 on the top of the bridge, but we’d had enough dam heat for the day. We headed to the Boulder City Brewing Company for lunch and a cold beer.
From the top of the Dam, we had a great View of the O'Callaghan- Tillman Memorial Bridge spanning the Colorado River far belo
A little trivia…
According to Wiki, ‘The bridge [which sits on the Arizona/Nevada state line] was the first concrete-steel composite deck arch bridge built in the United States, and incorporates the widest concrete arch in the Western Hemisphere. At 890 feet (270m) above the Colorado River, it is the second highest bridge in the United States.”
Next time… a new appreciation of Legos at the Brick Planet exhibit