Download or read book Hoover Dam written by Joseph E. Stevens and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-09-12 with total page 338 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 The Hoover Dam Documents written by United States Department of the Interior and published by . This book was released on 1948 with total page 694 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Damming Grand Canyon written by Diane E Boyer and published by . This book was released on 2007-05-07 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1923, America paid close attention, via special radio broadcasts, newspaper headlines, and cover stories in popular magazines, as a government party descended the Colorado to survey Grand Canyon. Fifty years after John Wesley Powell's journey, the canyon still had an aura of mystery and extreme danger. At one point, the party was thought lost in a flood. Something important besides adventure was going on. Led by Claude Birdseye and including colorful characters such as early river-runner Emery Kolb, popular writer Lewis Freeman, and hydraulic engineer Eugene La Rue, the expedition not only made the first accurate survey of the river gorge but sought to decide the canyon's fate. The primary goal was to determine the best places to dam the Grand. With Boulder Dam not yet built, the USGS, especially La Rue, contested with the Bureau of Reclamation over how best to develop the Colorado River. The survey party played a major role in what was known and thought about Grand Canyon. The authors weave a narrative from the party's firsthand accounts and frame it with a thorough history of water politics and development and the Colorado River. The recommended dams were not built, but the survey both provided base data that stood the test of time and helped define Grand Canyon in the popular imagination. Also by Robert Webb: Lee's Ferry
Download or read book The History of Large Federal Dams written by David P. Billington and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2005-10 with total page 630 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the story of Federal contributions to dam planning, design, and construction.
Download or read book The Boulder Canyon Project written by William Joe Simonds and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Technical investigations Bull 1 Trial load method of analyzing arch dams Bull 2 Slab analogy experiments Bull 3 Model tests of Boulder Dam Bull 4 Stress studies for Boulder Dam Bull 5 Penstock analysis and stiffener design Bull 6 Model tests of arch and cantilever elements written by United States. Bureau of Reclamation and published by . This book was released on 1938 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Colorado River Basin Water Management written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2007-06-30 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent studies of past climate and streamflow conditions have broadened understanding of long-term water availability in the Colorado River, revealing many periods when streamflow was lower than at any time in the past 100 years of recorded flows. That information, along with two important trends-a rapid increase in urban populations in the West and significant climate warming in the region-will require that water managers prepare for possible reductions in water supplies that cannot be fully averted through traditional means. Colorado River Basin Water Management assesses existing scientific information, including temperature and streamflow records, tree-ring based reconstructions, and climate model projections, and how it relates to Colorado River water supplies and demands, water management, and drought preparedness. The book concludes that successful adjustments to new conditions will entail strong and sustained cooperation among the seven Colorado River basin states and recommends conducting a comprehensive basinwide study of urban water practices that can be used to help improve planning for future droughts and water shortages.
Download or read book The Emerald Mile written by Kevin Fedarko and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-07 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The epic story of the fastest boat ride in history, on a hand-built dory named the "Emerald Mile," through the heart of the Grand Canyon on the Colorado river.
Download or read book Wet Desert written by Gary Hansen and published by WetDesert. This book was released on 2007-05 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grant Stevens, a mid-level manager for the Bureau of Reclamation, only wanted to build dams. He never imagined he would be swept into a desperate race against an environmental terrorist bent on restoring the Colorado River by blowing up the dams. Left temporarily in charge of the Bureau, Grant must react when the first dam is attacked. He faces the unthinkable task of mitigating the massive flood roaring down the Colorado. The flood will eventually threaten the mighty Hoover Dam, and if Hoover fails, the other dams downstream will fall like dominos. Working with the FBI, Grant uses his engineering skills, river knowledge, and plenty of gut instinct in an attempt to outmaneuver the terrorist. The chase will lead all the way downstream to the Gulf of California in a cat and mouse game where the stakes are high and the potential for destruction is enormous.
Download or read book Boulder Canyon Project written by and published by . This book was released on 1950 with total page 1346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Where the Water Goes written by David Owen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Wonderfully written…Mr. Owen writes about water, but in these polarized times the lessons he shares spill into other arenas. The world of water rights and wrongs along the Colorado River offers hope for other problems.” —Wall Street Journal An eye-opening account of where our water comes from and where it all goes. The Colorado River is an essential resource for a surprisingly large part of the United States, and every gallon that flows down it is owned or claimed by someone. David Owen traces all that water from the Colorado’s headwaters to its parched terminus, once a verdant wetland but now a million-acre desert. He takes readers on an adventure downriver, along a labyrinth of waterways, reservoirs, power plants, farms, fracking sites, ghost towns, and RV parks, to the spot near the U.S.–Mexico border where the river runs dry. Water problems in the western United States can seem tantalizingly easy to solve: just turn off the fountains at the Bellagio, stop selling hay to China, ban golf, cut down the almond trees, and kill all the lawyers. But a closer look reveals a vast man-made ecosystem that is far more complex and more interesting than the headlines let on. The story Owen tells in Where the Water Goes is crucial to our future: how a patchwork of engineering marvels, byzantine legal agreements, aging infrastructure, and neighborly cooperation enables life to flourish in the desert—and the disastrous consequences we face when any part of this tenuous system fails.
Download or read book Water and the West written by Norris Hundley (Jr.) and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Back in print for the first time in over ten years, this classic account of the numerous struggles--national, state, and local--that have occurred over western American water rights since the late 1800s is thoroughly expanded and updated to trace the continuing battles raging over the West's most valuable, and contentious, resource.
Download or read book Water is for Fighting Over written by John Fleck and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2016-09 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Illuminating." --New York Times WIRED's Required Science Reading 2016 When we think of water in the West, we think of conflict and crisis. Yet despite decades of headlines warning of mega-droughts, the death of agriculture, and the collapse of cities, the Colorado River basin has thrived in the face of water scarcity. John Fleck shows how western communities, whether farmers and city-dwellers or U.S. environmentalists and Mexican water managers, actually have a promising record of conservation and cooperation. Rather than perpetuate the myth "Whiskey's for drinkin', water's for fightin' over," Fleck urges readers to embrace a new, more optimistic narrative--a future where the Colorado continues to flow.
Download or read book Water and Los Angeles written by William Deverell and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Los Angeles rose to significance in the first half of the twentieth century by way of its complex relationship to three rivers: the Los Angeles, the Owens, and the Colorado. The remarkable urban and suburban trajectory of southern California since then cannot be fully understood without reference to the ways in which each of these three river systems came to be connected to the future of the metropolitan region. This history of growth must be understood in full consideration of all three rivers and the challenges and opportunities they presented to those who would come to make Los Angeles a global power. Full of primary sources and original documents, Water and Los Angeles will be of interest to both students of Los Angeles and general readers interested in the origins of the city.
Download or read book Boulder Canyon Project written by United States. Bureau of Reclamation and published by . This book was released on 1938 with total page 176 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 1928 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Building Hoover Dam written by Andrew J. Dunar and published by University of Nevada Press. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andrew J. Dunar and Dennis McBride skillfully interweave eyewitness accounts of the building of Hoover Dam. These stories create the richest existing portrait of the building of Hoover Dam and its tremendous effect on the lives of those involved in its creation: the gritty, sometimes grisly realities of living in cardboard boxes and tents during several of the hottest Southern Nevada summers on record; the fearsome carbon monoxide deaths of tunnel builders who, it was claimed, had died of "pneumonia"; the uproarious life of nearby Las Vegas versus the tightly controlled existence of the workers in the built-overnight confines of Boulder City; and of course the astounding accomplishment of building the Dam itself and completing the task not only early but under budget!
