The Construction of Hoover Dam

The main premise of this compend is that the construction of the decametre up was more a product of its time than merely a public works stomach.

The make clean decameter was not create without a great deal of literary argument between those in favor of and those opposed to its construction. The dam was built between 1931 and 1936,and, as Stevens points out it was more than a dam or a public works project; it was a symbol of American civilization and of the achievements it was capable as oft as the pyramids symbolized the same for Egyptian civilizations: "Construction of Hoover dam?the great pyramid of the American West, fount for a twentieth-century oasis civilization--?the first and most important link in a chain of dams, canals, and aqueducts built to harness the Colorado River, it was the supreme engine room feet of its day, a soul-stirring architectural and industrial achievement, the ultimate manner of machine-age America's ingenuity and technological prowess" (Stevens vii).

One must immortalise this was in an era when few were worried about the environmental consequences of much(prenominal) projects. A more primary consideration was ontogeny the ability to control nature in order to proceed development of the often hostile-to-humans American West. Officials in Arizona, developers in Los Angeles, and the US government were more interested in creating an enormous credit of electrical power and preventing the annual flooding of the Colorado. The US g

How, I wondered, could this massive concrete barrier, its working parts functioning with the smooth precision of a fine crafted machine, make up been built in so rugged an unapproachable a place? What manner of men had possessed the shamelessness to undertake such a daunting construction project in the depths of the Great Depression? How had thousands of laborers who came to this lonely canyon coped with the alarming heat, the unforgiving rock, the dangers they faced at every turn? What had it been deal to work and live in this inhospitable landscape during the thirty-something?

In conclusion, one can readily see that Hoover Dam was as a good deal a manifestation of the wit and mythology of its era as it was a man-made construct.

The dam was genuinely a pivotal turning point in the change magnitude exploitation and development of the American West. Its construction had as much to do with American superiority as it did with technological superiority. For instance, kind of than admit white workers were not up to the task and that long numbers of blacks were able, the government built Boulder City in order to improve the physical and condition and moral of the disappointed workers. Further, the dam was also a manifestation of the fear on behalf of public legislators that private interests might take control of such a project if the government did not. Eventually, the workers themselves became a symbol of American prowess and technological superiority. The dam and its workers were even used by investors as a public relations ploy to curl up tourists to the area. As one tourist wrote: "Men are carpenturing, digging, chopping, sliding, swingy on ropes, shouting and signalling everywhere. Out of their swarming comes a light, steady roar, have muffled by the vastness of the setting, but punctuated from flash to moment by its own inner emphasis?brake, squeallings, cable-creakings, horn-honkings, whistles, hammer-poundings; the cluckings, purrings, grindings, snufflings of machinery me
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