Dammit

Except first stop was Hoover Dam and Lake Mead.  And I'll warn you now, there are quite a lot of dam' pictures...

Dam': not a bad view from 27,000 feet up

Hoover Dam spans the Colorado River in Black Canyon between Arizon and Nevada, about thirty miles southeast of Las Vegas, NV.  It was originally known as Boulder Dam but was renamed in honour of Herbert Hoover, who as U.S. Secretary of Commerce and the 31st U.S. President proved instrumental in getting the dam built.  It was constructed between 1931 an 1936 by thousands of workers (of which 112 lost their lives) who lived in Boulder City, a town created to house them and the first purpose-built city in the U.S.

Memorial Bridge

At 726 feet high and 1,244 feet long, Hoover Dam was one of the largest man-made structures in the world at the time of its constructions.  It is also one of the world's largest producers of hydroelectric power, though this is only of secondary importance they say.  The Dam impounds Lake Mead which is also the largest reservoir in the United States by volume.

How Joey enjoyed his dam' Tour

Eight of the seventeen turbines

The concrete arch-gravity structure was intended to prevent flooding as well as provide much-needed irrigation and hydroelectric power to arid regions of states like California and Arizona.  Nearly a million people tour the dam each year, and the much needed Hoover Dam Bypass and Memorial Bridge opened in 2010.

The Lake hasn't been full since 1983.

It really was quite impressive, and interesting to boot.  It was also really interesting to see how low the water was, and to think about how much more water would be in there for the lake to require the spillways.  A cross-section of the dam is also really interesting to look at, but you'd have to go find that picture for yourself...

The Strip from US-93

Anyway, it was a dam' (geddit yet?) good start to the long weekend.