HIST 100: Engineering The Past

Pictorial Essay

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Taylor Archuleta

Prof. Brooks

Hist 100

1 April 2016

Engineering Water Resources

There have been lots of different methods countries and cities have used to store and provide water for their citizens. Some countries have done a very good job about maximizing their resources. In the start of the early 1900’s we began building dams to store up water in rivers and control the amounts of water that is being distributed. Some major dams that many would know would be Hoover Dam. Many people disapproved of building damns for because of the ecosystem. It has allowed us to be able to store water and save it ever in case of a drought. This has proven to be effective especially in the water crisis they were experiencing in California and other states. The building have such damns required large amounts of workers, many of those that were behind the designing of the structures knew of what great importance it would provide for later generations.

The Hoover dam was a major engineering feat during it’s time and still is considered an astonishing build to this day. It stands at 726 feet tall and helps control the flow of the Colorado river. During the depression they began the building process of this monolithic project and it required thousands of workers, which many fled to the Black Canyon in search of work. It is told that a total of 21,000 men worked on the construction of the Hoover Dam, which is great number in human resources to have these men work daily to build this project. Caption 1 shows the size of the city built to house on the new works:

Caption 1: http://www.arizona-leisure.com/hoover-dam-men.html

This picture shows the number of houses and overview of how large this process truly was. The federal government used their land to help house their new human resources. In this picture it shows many of the houses, stores, and churches that was built for the public. This city is now known as Boulder City, Nevada.

Not only did it require lots of man power to build such a structure, but it also required a large amount of money which at the time our country was in an economic crisis also known as the “Great Depression”.

The damn was estimated to cost a total of about $49 million dollars. A lot of government money was put into this project that $49 million is estimated to be just about $750 million today. In Caption 2 it is a cartoon that describes the American Power:

Caption 2: http://www.economist.com/node/21533393

                                I found this photo very intriguing to me because it describes how our federal government was wanting to show the American people what we are capable as a country. The picture has Uncle Sam which represents the American Government standing on the dam flexing showing how strong we were. In the bottom left it shows an American Citizen looking upon Uncle Sam.

To me that photo speaks volume to what the Government was trying to accomplish during this time. There was lot of engineering and planning that went into this project. The dam was going to be able to control the distribution of the water in almost the entire southwest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Resources

http://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/faqs/damfaqs.html

http://www.arizona-leisure.com/hoover-dam-men.html

http://www.economist.com/node/21533393