Download or read book Hoover Dam written by Joseph E. Stevens and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 1931, in a rugged desert canyon on the Arizona-Nevada border, an army of workmen began one of the most difficult and daring building projects ever undertaken—the construction of Hoover Dam. Through the worst years of the Great Depression as many as five thousand laborers toiled twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to erect the huge structure that would harness the Colorado River and transform the American West. Construction of the giant dam was a triumph of human ingenuity, yet the full story of this monumental endeavor has never been told. Now, in an engrossing, fast-paced narrative, Joseph E. Stevens recounts the gripping saga of Hoover Dam. Drawing on a wealth of material, including manuscript collections, government documents, contemporary newspaper and magazine accounts, and personal interviews and correspondence with men and women who were involved with the construction, he brings the Hoover Dam adventure to life. Described here in dramatic detail are the deadly hazards the work crews faced as they hacked and blasted the dam’s foundation out of solid rock; the bitter political battles and violent labor unrest that threatened to shut the job down; the deprivation and grinding hardship endured by the workers’ families; the dam builders’ gambling, drinking, and whoring sprees in nearby Las Vegas; and the stirring triumphs and searing moments of terror as the massive concrete wedge rose inexorably from the canyon floor. Here, too, is an unforgettable cast of characters: Henry Kaiser, Warren Bechtel, and Harry Morrison, the ambitious, headstrong construction executives who gambled fortune and fame on the Hoover Dam contract; Frank Crowe, the brilliant, obsessed field engineer who relentlessly drove the work force to finish the dam two and a half years ahead of schedule; Sims Ely, the irascible, teetotaling eccentric who ruled Boulder City, the straightlaced company town created for the dam workers by the federal government; and many more men and women whose courage and sacrifice, greed and frailty, made the dam’s construction a great human, as well as technological, adventure. Hoover Dam is a compelling, irresistible account of an extraordinary American epic.

Download or read book Hearings written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs and published by . This book was released on 1948 with total page 1654 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Boulder Dam written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Rules and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Colorado River Water Rights written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. Subcommittee on Irrigation and Reclamation and published by . This book was released on 1948 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considers (80) S.J. Res. 145.

Download or read book Colorado River Water Rights written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs and published by . This book was released on 1948 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Hearings written by United States. Congress Senate and published by . This book was released on 1947 with total page 2716 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Research Laboratory in North Dakota Lignite consuming Region written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs and published by . This book was released on 1948 with total page 1198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Protection and Development of Lower Colorado River Basin written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 1192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book How Local Politics Shape Federal Policy written by Sarah S. Elkind and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on five Los Angeles environmental policy debates between 1920 and 1950, Sarah Elkind investigates how practices in American municipal government gave business groups political legitimacy at the local level as well as unanticipated influence over federal politics. Los Angeles's struggles with oil drilling, air pollution, flooding, and water and power supplies expose the clout business has had over government. Revealing the huge disparities between big business groups and individual community members in power, influence, and the ability to participate in policy debates, Elkind shows that business groups secured their political power by providing Los Angeles authorities with much-needed services, including studying emerging problems and framing public debates. As a result, government officials came to view business interests as the public interest. When federal agencies looked to local powerbrokers for project ideas and political support, local business interests influenced federal policy, too. Los Angeles, with its many environmental problems and its dependence upon the federal government, provides a distillation of national urban trends, Elkind argues, and is thus an ideal jumping-off point for understanding environmental politics and the power of business in the middle of the twentieth century.

Download or read book Heavy Ground written by Norris Hundley and published by University of Nevada Press. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Minutes before midnight on March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam collapsed, sending more than twelve billion gallons of water surging through Southern California’s Santa Clara Valley, killing some four hundred people and causing the greatest civil engineering disaster in twentieth-century American history. In this carefully researched work, Norris Hundley jr. and Donald C. Jackson provide a riveting narrative exploring the history of the ill-fated dam and the person directly responsible for its flawed design—William Mulholland, a self-taught engineer of the Los Angeles municipal water system. Employing copious illustrations and intensive research, Heavy Ground traces the interwoven roles of politics and engineering in explaining how the St. Francis Dam came to be built and the reasons for its collapse. Hundley and Jackson also detail the terror and heartbreak brought by the flood, legal claims against the City of Los Angeles, efforts to restore the Santa Clara Valley, political factors influencing investigations of the failure, and the effect of the disaster on congressional approval of the future Hoover Dam. Underlying it all is a consideration of how the dam—and the disaster—were inextricably intertwined with the life and career of William Mulholland. Ultimately, this thoughtful and nuanced account of the dam’s failure reveals how individual and bureaucratic conceit fed Los Angeles’s desire to control vital water supplies in the booming metropolis of Southern California.

Download or read book Senatorial Campaign Expenditures October 18 22 25 27 1926 pp 1917 2342 written by United States. Congress. Senate. Special Committee Investigating Expenditures in Senatorial Primary and General Elections and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 1030 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Hearings written by United States. Congress. Senate. Special Committee Investigating Expenditures in Senatorial Primary and General Elections and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 1584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Central Arizona Project and Colorado River Water Rights written by United States. Congress. Senate. Interior and Insular Affairs and published by . This book was released on 1949 with total page 992 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Utility Corporations written by United States. Federal Trade Commission and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 1302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Norton Trilogy written by Jack L. August and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-20 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Dividing Western Waters comes a book on the development of the arid West--in particular the development of Arizona--as seen through the experiences of three generations of John Ruddle Nortons of Arizona. From the administration of Teddy Roosevelt and the earliest reclamation acts to the monumental case between California and Arizona that would determine how the life-giving waters of the Colorado River would be divided, the Nortons were at the center of Arizona's development into a vital population and agricultural center. Pioneers like the Nortons shaped the very landscape of the western United States--a region that would help to supply the United States with cotton, vegetables, and livestock throughout World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. The Norton Trilogy follows the lives of John R. Norton (1854-1923) and the beginnings of Arizona farming; John R. Norton, Jr. (1901-1987) and his expansions into diverse crops; and John R. Norton III (1929-present) and the shaping of modern agribusiness as it responded to new water irrigation policies. As the author points out, "Several themes run through The Norton Trilogy: the most important is the interplay between human values and the waterscape. Technology, of course, played a monumental role in this drama, for dynamite, bulldozers, and reinforced concrete impacted the region's water and shaped the agricultural economy more than any Indian's digging stick. Another theme is the central role played by government--local, state, regional, and national--in shaping water policies. The biographical profiles of each John Norton addressed in this work reveal much about the history of Arizona and the central role that the quest for water has played in the growth and development of the region." Although the book focuses largely on the state of Arizona, and specifically on one Arizonan family, the story is a template of the hardworking American ideal. Senator John Kyl, a colleague of John Norton III, writes in the foreword, “The Nortons, who never suffered from lack of a work ethic, have made Arizona and the nation a better place. This book is as much an American story as it is an Arizona one.” Readers everywhere will be captivated by the generation-to-generation struggles of a family business and how these failures and successes are affected by interstate politics and public policy.

Download or read book Central Arizona Project and Colorado River Water Rights written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs and published by . This book was released on 1949 with total page 994 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considers legislation to authorize construction and maintenance of a dam at Bridge Canyon on the Colorado River in Arizona and to grant Congressional consent to the joinder of the U.S. as a party in suits for adjudication of claims to waters of the Colorado River system.\

Download or read book Senatorial Campaign Expenditures written by United States. Congress. Senate. Special Committee Investigating Expenditures in Senatorial Primary and General Elections and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 1140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: