Hoover Dam

Taming the Colorado River

• too thick to drink, too thin to plow ....

Long before there was a Hoover Dam, the Colorado River flowed uninterrupted along its 1,450 mile course from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of California. For 12 million years the Colorado relentlessly carved out the Grand Canyon, Marble Canyon and other places along its path. As it cut its way through deserts, canyons and mountainous plateaus, the Colorado carried with it tons of silt to the lower Colorado and eventually the Gulf of California.

Spanish settlers noted the reddish color of its silt and they gave it the name we know it by, the Colorado River. The muddy Colorado was, in the past, actually known by several names. In 1540, Hernando de Alarcon sailed to the head of the Gulf of California and later up the Colorado River which he name Rio de Buena Guia, or 'River of Good Guidance'. An odd name considering that he did not find what he was looking for in the first place.

• a vengeful and unreliable river ....

Every spring the Colorado River flooded low lying areas along its route. The volume of water could be huge as the Colorado basin drains an area of over 242,000 square miles. The silt that it carried created a huge delta in the Gulf of California.

In the always hot southwestern summers, the flow of the Colorado River slowed to a trickle. For millions of years this was the natural cycle of the river.

In the nineteenth century, when the area along the lower Colorado began to be settled, the inconsistent nature of the river made it an unreliable source for irrigation. The wanton destruction caused when the river flooded in the spring had a deep impact on the farm lands near its banks.

In fact, the damage caused so much attention that by the 1920's, it had become necessary and politically expedient to try to control the damage caused by flooding along the path of the lower Colorado.

Trying to control the Colorado was not a new idea. Earlier attempts ended in disaster. The most famous disaster had almost completely and forever changed the geography and history of the entire lower Colorado region. To read more about this amazing incident CLICK HERE.

The role played by Herbert Hoover

Because of his long involvement in the project, from his days as Secretary of Commerce to his tenure as 31st president, no other politician is more responsible for the successful completion of Hoover Dam than Herbert Hoover.

Politically, there were an incredible number of obstacles for Hoover to overcome. Before work on the dam could start, he had to help settle a 25 year water allocation controversy between the representatives of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. On November 24, 1922, these states signed the Colorado River Compact, settling this old conflict. The Boulder Canyon Project Act, which authorized the construction of Hoover Dam, was enacted on December 21, 1928.

As President, Hoover continued his involvement settling engineering problems, water and power allocation rights and even securing the revenue contracts required by congress. Victimized by the harsh circumstances of his times, no critic can ever deny that Herbert Hoovers' greatest achievement was the engineering, organizational and political skills which he showed, to bring about the construction of Hoover Dam.

The role played by the Bureau of Reclamation

It was the policy of the Bureau of Reclamation to insure that every available drop of water from the various streams and rivers in the dry southwest United States was made available for either municipal, agricultural or industrial use. To this end, Hoover Dam and the dams which followed it, are very successful. Currently the lower Colorado river provides water to irrigate over 1,000,000 acres in the United States and 500, 000 acres in Mexico. Hoover Dam is the center piece to a water conservation and delivery system which provides water to over 22,000,000 people in Arizona, California and Nevada.