Hoover Dam - A National Historic Landmark

Pea soup. it’s what i remember most about the hoover dam from my visit. not *actual* pea soup, you understand, but the colour of the Colorado river behind the dam. apparently they’ve had a lot of algae this year, and with the algae living near the top of the water, and the intake towers emptying water from the bottom, it’s got a bit concentrated. concentrated to the point where the water is completely opaque, and very, very green.

anyway. the dam. it brought work to thousands during the depression, it prevents flooding on valuable agricultural land downstream, it supplies electricity to Arizona, California and nevada (someone has to power all those slot machines!), and it’s a damn (sorry) good stop for tourists.

approaching the dam from the east, there’s not much to see. just road and rocks, like almost everything else in arizona. then you hit the edge of the canyon, and begin to zigzag down to the level of the top of the dam, and you think… it doesn’t look *that* big. you see, the top is only 45 feet wide, and somehow the jam of cars and lorries crawling across it (up to 20,000 a day apparently) makes it look even smaller. (this traffic can also lead to large delays in summer, of up to an hour or more.) then you notice the drop on the far side, and although you can’t see it all, you do notice the size then. in fact, the dam is 726 feet high (about 60 storeys) - perhaps it’s just as well you don’t get the full effect straight away!

on the nevada side is the whole visitor centre and car park complex. the tourist experience starts here, and that means you have to pay. parking is $3, although you do get to park in the shade, in a multistorey car park built back into the canyon walls. it’s still not cool, but at least you don’t leave the car in the sun. don’t forget your hat, sunglasses, suncream, water bottle (it was 110 degrees fahrenheit when i went in late may) and camera. you can take a bag, but you will have it X-rayed (like at the airport) on entrance. Cameras are no problem, as long as they are for private use.

Entrance fees vary according to what you want to do (no, really). They range from $4 for exhibits only (a bit dull), to $25 for the full “Hard Hat Tour” - full details can easily be found on the website linked from this category. My friends and I went for the whole shebang - a Hard Hat Tour, to take us into the depths of the dam and get the works on, well, the works. These are timed tickets, however, so you may have some time to kill before your slot. Also, make sure your whole group orders their tickets together - you can pay separately, but order together to make sure you get on the same tour. Cheaper, shorter tours are available - these are non-timed, in much larger groups, and you don’t get a hard hat to keep!

Killing time is done by checking out the exhibitions. These comprise: an interesting 20(ish) minute film on the construction of the dam, some information boards on the same subject, and more information on where the water goes, who uses the most, and also recreation opportunities around Lake Mead (formed by the dam and stretching 110 miles upstream, it holds enough water to flood New York state to a depth of 1 foot). There’s a viewing platform, where you can be frazzled by the sun as it bounces off the concrete, and get a little dizzy looking down to the boiling turbulence of the exiting water. Overall, there’s nothing amazingly whizzy or interactive, and you may well get rather bored if you have a long wait for your tour. If you want a drink, snack, or souvenir, you’ll find them up by the car park, which means going out of the secure area, and queueing again for security and to show your tickets.

So, you’ve waited and waited… time for the tour. Everyone’s feeling a little silly in their regulation blue hard hat, but there are no exceptions! Also, you are recommended at several points not to wear open shoes, but I did the tour in sandals and found no difficulties. Apart from a few steps, there is nothing I saw that made me think about my footwear, although I would certainly not recommend heels! The steps and confined spaces also make the tour inaccessible to wheelchair users. The final safety point is that you’re given some gorgeous foam earplugs - ours were an attractive shade of green, and I’m sad to say I saved them and re-used them on the plane home (they worked very well actually!). You only need to wear them at one place on the tour, though.

The guides range from old guys who look like they helped build the thing through to young whippersnappers. Several of them are bilingual - our guide also spoke Spanish, according to his badge. The tour lasts about an hour, and involves a reasonable amount of walking, but not too much. You get to see the turbine halls, the turbines themselves (hence earplugs), some of the tunnels in the rock, and even walk down a ventilation shaft to look out of the face of the dam itself (pretty amazing). I found it fascinating - I was amazed by the sheer scale of everything, and tried (and failed) to remember all the information that was thrown at us, but it gave me a good feel for how the whole thing works.

The tour was accompanied by a running commentary full of facts and figures, trivia (like the dam’s appearance in films such as National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation), the odd bad joke or two, and even a couple of pop quizzes! Children under seven aren’t allowed on the tour, but the commentary is pitched at a level suitable for older children, so they shouldn’t get too bored. I’m not sure it’s “cool” enough for a lot of kids to enjoy, though.

The fact that NO-ONE is entombed in the concrete of the dam was heavily stressed to us, and having seen the information film, you understand - the maximum loads of concrete that the cranes could lift at that time were not enough to bury a man, being only 5″ deep when spread over the block being worked on. Would you lie there and wait for five more loads of concrete?! Ninety-six men did die, however (mostly from being hit by falling rock), and coincidentally, the last man to die was the son of the first.

The final lift journey is *very* squished as it uses an original tourist lift, whereas the trip down is in a newer, smoother-riding one. For this reason, as well as the journey through some relatively small tunnels and into the turbine room, I would not recommend the tour to anyone not fond of small spaces (or lifts!). Once at the top, you’re disgorged onto the pavement on top of the dam, and left to run the gauntlet of traffic to get back to the car park.

A quick word about the facilities. The toilets were clean, although not spotless, and there were plenty of water fountains around. The cafe was nothing to write home about, selling the usual food (burgers, hot dogs, nachos, fizzy drinks) at the usual tourist prices. The souvenir shop is fairly large, and seemed to have a good selection of the usual tack, from postcards to t-shirts, and any souvenir gimmick that they could write ” Hoover Dam tour“, “Nevada” or “Arizona” on. About average, I’d say.

And that about sums it up. The facts and figures sprinkled in this review are from the excellent website, which I thoroughly recommend looking at before you visit, if only for the information on prices etc. There’s nothing about pea soup though.