Leg 5 - Boulder City

Hoover Dam is big - really really big. Rising 700 feet above the canyon floor and 600 feet thick at the base, the dam is a marvel of engineering.

After a 700 foot elevator ride to the bottom, our tour took us inside the Nevada Generator room.

The dam features these unusualy leaning towers. These high-voltage towers keep the powerlines away from the canyon rock faces which are hign in iron content. If the wires got too close, there would be an exciting electric arc display.

There is enough cement in the dam to create a 2 lane highway from San Francisco to New York City. Also the cement is a much higher quality and does not contain curing accelerants or decomposing compounds. The aggregate (embedded rocks that make concrete stronger) are the size of your fist.

There are two banks of generators. The Arizona side (top) has 2 smaller generators, one of which feeds the 'non-existant' Area-51 demands for power.

If we did it again...

We would stay at the historic Boulder Dam Hotel.