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How the Hoover Dam Works, Part I · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
0:03
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:13
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, Who's Charles Chuck Bryant, And there's Jerry
0:17
Speaker 1: Roland over there. And if you put all three of
0:20
Speaker 1: us together you get a little something called Stuff you
0:23
Speaker 1: Should Know. Oh, Man, Damn, Hoover Damn edition. Have you
0:33
Speaker 1: ever been to Hoover Damn? I have been there twice show.
0:38
Speaker 1: Yeah I went. Um, I went in Oh the great
0:44
Speaker 1: Hoover Damn Tour of it was either or Man, it
0:48
Speaker 1: may have been nine. Almost cussed right then? Yeah, I
0:53
Speaker 1: heard that. I almost did that the other day to
0:57
Speaker 1: getting to a movie crushy. Um. It may have been
1:01
Speaker 1: eighty nine or ninety. It was when I went out
1:03
Speaker 1: to visit my brother when he lived in l A.
1:05
Speaker 1: And we met in Las Vegas, drove down to the
1:08
Speaker 1: Hoover dam and then back to l A. The first
1:11
Speaker 1: time you guys met, Yeah, it was great. Uh. And
1:15
Speaker 1: then I went again in ninety six for sure, ninety
1:18
Speaker 1: six and okay, I think both times I took the tour. Uh.
1:24
Speaker 1: And it's have you ever been? It's really something else. Yeah,
1:27
Speaker 1: for the first time you me and I went about
1:30
Speaker 1: a year ago. Um, we drove from uh Scottsdale to
1:36
Speaker 1: Vegas and stopped in Hoover Dam on the way and
1:38
Speaker 1: it was great, as you do, it was very very cool. Well,
1:41
Speaker 1: there's nothing, nothing, nothing nothing. Hoover Damn, Vegas is kind
1:45
Speaker 1: of how it goes. Yeah, and you know, we'll get
1:48
Speaker 1: to the water levels. But it's uh, it's startling from
1:51
Speaker 1: when I was there what it looks like now. Yeah,
1:54
Speaker 1: I can imagine like if you had gone any time
1:57
Speaker 1: before about two thousand. From what I understand, it's like
2:00
Speaker 1: a different, different place. But the damn still there and
2:05
Speaker 1: it's still intact and doing really well. You got that
2:08
Speaker 1: at least, right, it's just the ecological catastrophe that's kind
2:11
Speaker 1: of looming that kind of is a downer. That's right.
2:14
Speaker 1: And we should give a big shout out to Julia Layton,
2:18
Speaker 1: who used to be one of the great great writers
2:21
Speaker 1: for how Stuff Works dot com back when we were
2:24
Speaker 1: uh still associated with that website. I think she might
2:29
Speaker 1: still write for him occasionally. Really well, she's great and
2:33
Speaker 1: now we are commissioning some articles from her, and boy,
2:39
Speaker 1: she's good, Yes she is. So what's her nickname? Chuck
2:42
Speaker 1: the lates Julia Layton. Late's no, because that sounds like
2:46
Speaker 1: she's not tardy. Oh yeah, that's right. Um, let's just
2:50
Speaker 1: call her Dr Layton. Okay, there you go. Although I
2:53
Speaker 1: don't think she's a doctor, but she does have her
2:55
Speaker 1: masters in writing, that's right, So way better than me.
2:58
Speaker 1: She cranks out some good stuff, that's right. So thanks, Julia,
3:02
Speaker 1: I'm glad you called that out, Chuck. Well done. So
3:06
Speaker 1: let's go back, shall we to a time in the
3:10
Speaker 1: the little the little area of the southwestern United States
3:14
Speaker 1: where Arizona reaches out to hug Nevada, Nevada. Which way
3:20
Speaker 1: are we supposed to say it? Well, we're supposed to
3:22
Speaker 1: say Nevada, but we're not from there, so we'll say Nevada,
3:26
Speaker 1: right like everybody else, right, Um. And where they almost meet,
3:31
Speaker 1: there's a little gorge. There's a canyon. Well there's a
3:35
Speaker 1: lot of canyons, but there's one in particular, and it's
3:37
Speaker 1: called Boulder Canyon. And if you went to Boulder Canyon
3:41
Speaker 1: today to find the Hoover Dam, you would be s
3:43
Speaker 1: o l because while they're originally going to build the
3:46
Speaker 1: Hoover Dam at Boulder Canyon, so much so that the
3:50
Speaker 1: name of the project for the first decade or so
3:52
Speaker 1: it was called the Boulder Boulder Dam just Bold Boulder once,
3:56
Speaker 1: not two Boulders, the Boulder Dam project. Um, they actually
4:01
Speaker 1: moved it a little further upstream to a much more
4:04
Speaker 1: suitable site called Black Canyon. And if you go visit
4:07
Speaker 1: the Hoover Dam today, that's where you're actually going. It's
4:10
Speaker 1: Black Canyon where Nevada and Arizona almost meat, that's right.
4:16
Speaker 1: And um, this idea was conceived, this concrete gravity arch
4:22
Speaker 1: hydro electric dam, hydro electric almost almost high dough electric.
4:29
Speaker 1: Excuse me. Uh, this was all conceived because well, for
4:35
Speaker 1: three reasons plus a cherry on top. One is that
4:39
Speaker 1: the Colorado River had a had a bad habit of
4:44
Speaker 1: flooding and causing lots of devastation. Just a nasty boy,
4:47
Speaker 1: so too to lasso that that beast. Uh. Number Two,
4:52
Speaker 1: to create water in times of drought, as you know,
4:56
Speaker 1: creating a big reservoir that would be like mead uh,
4:59
Speaker 1: to create energy. I love things that kill all these birds,
5:03
Speaker 1: you know, so many dead birds. Uh. And then finally
5:08
Speaker 1: the little cherry on top. Those were the three big
5:10
Speaker 1: reasons they did it. But the cherry on top. It
5:12
Speaker 1: turns out has been like me tourism is huge. Yeah,
5:16
Speaker 1: I think like Mead was the first nationally designated recreation area. Yeah.
5:23
Speaker 1: It sounds almost Soviet, doesn't it. Like the government's like
5:25
Speaker 1: this is where you recreate on this particular designated lake.
5:30
Speaker 1: Travel to the fund zone. So um yeah, the first one.
5:35
Speaker 1: I think there's like this. This is the nineteen twenties,
5:39
Speaker 1: I think when the project is really starting to gain
5:42
Speaker 1: steam and the guy who was this Secretary of Commerce
5:46
Speaker 1: at the time, who Herbert Hoover, who would very soon
5:49
Speaker 1: be the President of the United States, who would very
5:51
Speaker 1: shortly after that be like the most hated man in America.
5:55
Speaker 1: Hoover was like, this is a great idea. There's like
5:57
Speaker 1: this whole spot of land down in the Lower United States,
6:02
Speaker 1: and it just wants to be so much more than
6:05
Speaker 1: it than it is. It wants to be cropland, it
6:08
Speaker 1: wants to be cattle pasture. It wants to be a
6:10
Speaker 1: big old city like l A or Vegas. They're just
6:13
Speaker 1: waiting to pop, but they really are having trouble with
6:17
Speaker 1: water and with flooding. Like it's it's weird. It's like
6:20
Speaker 1: the Colorado River would be like not enough, sorry, and
6:23
Speaker 1: then up too much, way more than you ever wanted.
6:26
Speaker 1: And because of this kind of mercurial nature of it,
6:29
Speaker 1: there was just not a lot that could be done
6:31
Speaker 1: with the Southwest unless you figured out a way to
6:34
Speaker 1: tame that that river. And you know, like you were saying,
6:38
Speaker 1: that's what the Hoover dam was originally intended to do,
6:41
Speaker 1: and that's definitely what it did. I mean, just to
6:44
Speaker 1: kind of let the cat out of the bag early. Um,
6:47
Speaker 1: it was successful as far as damn projects go. Yeah,
6:50
Speaker 1: And just to clear something up when you just said
6:53
Speaker 1: Herbert Hoover said big cities like l A and Vegas,
6:57
Speaker 1: he had a crystal ball on Vegas because Vegas was
7:02
Speaker 1: cowtown back then. Yeah, population five thousand at around ninety. Yeah,
7:07
Speaker 1: Vegas didn't people didn't want to go there until gambling
7:10
Speaker 1: started happening. They did have gambling. They had gambling, they
7:14
Speaker 1: had prostitution, they had yes, they had drinking. I guess
7:18
Speaker 1: casinos thanks to h what's his name, Buggsy. Yeah, Bugsy
7:23
Speaker 1: was one of the first, wouldn't he. I think so
7:26
Speaker 1: he wasn't the first, was he? I mean I saw
7:29
Speaker 1: that movie and if I remember correctly, Warren Beatty built
7:33
Speaker 1: that Flamingo casino and hotel, and that was kind of
7:36
Speaker 1: the first major casino. If I'm not mistaken, that sounds
7:40
Speaker 1: like a guy who deserves his own episode of stuff.
7:43
Speaker 1: You should know who Bugsy or or Warren Beatty. But
7:47
Speaker 1: Bugsy okay, Warren Beatty maybe gets the short stuff. So,
7:51
Speaker 1: uh the cup man, what a cut burn. It's better
7:56
Speaker 1: than just ignoring his existence and something's uh. So the
8:00
Speaker 1: Colorado River, like we said, um, it's the seventh longest
8:04
Speaker 1: in the US, about close to fift miles of total flow,
8:09
Speaker 1: and I believe that it distributes water that the river
8:14
Speaker 1: itself and then its tributaries to about million people. Of
8:20
Speaker 1: the crops in the US and of the livestock drink
8:24
Speaker 1: its water in the United States. It does now. So
8:29
Speaker 1: before this, before the Hoover Dam project, when the Colorado
8:32
Speaker 1: just did whatever the Colorado wanted to do. It's not
8:35
Speaker 1: like the people of the Southwest had had not tried
8:39
Speaker 1: to tame it before. They had extensive irrigation canals and
8:44
Speaker 1: ditches and dikes and earthworks and everything they could think
8:48
Speaker 1: of to keep the river going this way or that
8:50
Speaker 1: way and to keep it from flooding, and none of
8:53
Speaker 1: it worked. I mean it would work some like yes,
8:55
Speaker 1: an irrigation canal would work and you could here get
8:58
Speaker 1: your crops. But eventually the river was gonna flood and
9:01
Speaker 1: because you had diverted the river towards your crop land,
9:04
Speaker 1: when it flooded, it flooded that irrigation ditch, and it
9:07
Speaker 1: flooded your crop land to which was a real problem
9:10
Speaker 1: for you because it would when eventually it would recede um,
9:14
Speaker 1: you might have a lot more dirt than you're used to,
9:16
Speaker 1: probably pretty fertile dirt, but your crops would be gone.
9:20
Speaker 1: Maybe some of your cows got carried away, you might
9:22
Speaker 1: have lost your ten gallon hat. It's not a good
9:25
Speaker 1: deal when your crop land gets flooded. And so this
9:27
Speaker 1: was kind of what was going on when they were
9:29
Speaker 1: trying to tame the Colorado. It was just way too
9:32
Speaker 1: big of a project for you know, a handful of
9:36
Speaker 1: even large scale farmers to take on, which was one
9:40
Speaker 1: reason why the federal government stepped in because at the
9:43
Speaker 1: time there was really no entity that could take on
9:46
Speaker 1: a project like this, And even then there were a
9:48
Speaker 1: lot of questions like I'm not even sure the U. S.
9:51
Speaker 1: Government can handle this kind of thing. And the government said, oh, well, watch,
9:55
Speaker 1: watch and learn suckers. Yeah. So it's when uh US
10:01
Speaker 1: Bureau of Reclamation said, all right, I think we can
10:04
Speaker 1: build a dam of all dams. Um, we're gonna make
10:08
Speaker 1: it a gravity arch design. I think that can handle
10:11
Speaker 1: the Colorado River. And we're gonna have tunnels and turbines
10:15
Speaker 1: and towers, and we're gonna prevent flooding, and we're gonna
10:19
Speaker 1: deliver water to people. And the best news is we're
10:22
Speaker 1: going to create well, all that's great news, but more
10:26
Speaker 1: great news is we're going to create energy for a
10:28
Speaker 1: ton of people, such that this thing will even pay
10:31
Speaker 1: for itself in fifty years time. And like you said,
10:35
Speaker 1: a lot of people, I mean, this was and a
10:38
Speaker 1: lot of people are like, I don't Even engineers were saying,
10:41
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is possible, right, And so
10:45
Speaker 1: not only were people incredulous that it was even possible,
10:49
Speaker 1: there's some seven states that draw water from the Colorado River,
10:53
Speaker 1: which is a pretty long river. It goes it starts
10:56
Speaker 1: in the Rocky Mountains, that's where it's fed by snow
10:59
Speaker 1: melt up there, and then it goes all the way
11:01
Speaker 1: down to Mexico and so seven states lay claim on water.
11:05
Speaker 1: They need water from the Colorado River to live, to
11:08
Speaker 1: irriget their crops, to feed their livestock. It's the kind
11:12
Speaker 1: of like the main artery for life in in the Southwest,
11:15
Speaker 1: or one of them. And when they found out that
11:18
Speaker 1: people in the seven States found out the US government
11:21
Speaker 1: was was wanting to damn and control the river, they
11:24
Speaker 1: got really worried that really this was just a project
11:27
Speaker 1: to divert all that beautiful water over to California. Because
11:31
Speaker 1: California had it going on by the late twenties, you know,
11:34
Speaker 1: the early mid twenties already thanks to Los Angeles, thanks
11:38
Speaker 1: to well, thanks to Los Angeles, UM. But it had
11:41
Speaker 1: a lot of potential, and it was growing San Francisco
11:43
Speaker 1: to it was it. It was growing in between those two,
11:47
Speaker 1: those two cities. And so the people in like New
11:50
Speaker 1: Mexico and Colorado and Arizona and Nevada were really worried
11:54
Speaker 1: that this was really just the federal government stepping in
11:56
Speaker 1: and saying, thanks a lot, we're gonna take this water
11:59
Speaker 1: and send it off to California, and um. Herbert Hoover
12:02
Speaker 1: actually intervened and said no, no no, no, how about this.
12:05
Speaker 1: Before we even get this project underway, we will broker
12:08
Speaker 1: a deal for how the water from the Colorado River
12:12
Speaker 1: gets distributed. And I'm Herbert Hoover. I'm going to be
12:15
Speaker 1: the most hated man in the world. So I'm going
12:17
Speaker 1: to actually purposely inflate the the capacity that this reservoir
12:22
Speaker 1: will hold so that no one feels like they're they're
12:25
Speaker 1: going to get left out. And everybody ended up signing on.
12:28
Speaker 1: So that was technically step negative one or maybe step
12:32
Speaker 1: zero before the plan was even fully adopted by the government. Yeah,
12:38
Speaker 1: and it was called the Colorado River Compact. And again
12:42
Speaker 1: it was just to make I think the only ones
12:44
Speaker 1: you left out were Utah and Wyoming and then the
12:46
Speaker 1: other five. Um. And they said, all right, the way
12:52
Speaker 1: you a portion, it looks good to us. California is like,
12:55
Speaker 1: we all know that we're really going to get the
12:57
Speaker 1: most water, right, and it was like, totally don't worry about.
13:00
Speaker 1: Everyone's gonna hate me soon and many people will hate
13:02
Speaker 1: California one day too. Um. And so Congress said, this
13:07
Speaker 1: looks great, let's push forward. Uh, despite the fact, I
13:10
Speaker 1: don't think we mentioned yet that the private sector. Of course,
13:13
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think the private sector and the
13:15
Speaker 1: government have been it's like a newish thing that they're
13:18
Speaker 1: arguing over stuff like this. Think again, because since the
13:22
Speaker 1: dawn of time in the United States, the government and
13:25
Speaker 1: the private sector have squabbled, and so obviously private power
13:30
Speaker 1: companies and and water companies and just everybody was like, geez,
13:34
Speaker 1: I don't like the sounds of this, like the government's
13:36
Speaker 1: gonna start getting into the electricity business. Um. But regardless,
13:41
Speaker 1: they had no choice. Congress approved the Boulder Dam project,
13:46
Speaker 1: like you said, that later moved to Black Canyon, and
13:49
Speaker 1: for many, many years it was kind of bounced back
13:52
Speaker 1: and forth between Boulder Dam and then Hoover Dam. Uh.
13:57
Speaker 1: They officially called it Hoover Dam in nineteen thirty one,
14:00
Speaker 1: but like you said, four times, Hoover people didn't like
14:05
Speaker 1: him when he left office, so they went, let's call
14:07
Speaker 1: it the Boulder Dam again. And then it took a
14:10
Speaker 1: congressional resolution in nineteen seven to finally bring it back
14:15
Speaker 1: and give Hoover his due right. The reason why people
14:18
Speaker 1: hated Hoover, especially right after he left office, like he
14:22
Speaker 1: was a super conservative president. He believed that the federal
14:25
Speaker 1: government should intervene in business and in personal affairs as
14:29
Speaker 1: little as possible. So in the grips the worst parts
14:33
Speaker 1: of the Great Depression, the greatest economic recession that's ever
14:36
Speaker 1: hit the world, he was literally vetoing bills that would
14:41
Speaker 1: give federal assistance to Americans. So he was very much
14:46
Speaker 1: hated and reviled by the average person and just about
14:48
Speaker 1: everybody when he when he was soundly defeated by FDR,
14:53
Speaker 1: I think in nineteen thirty two. That sounded so uneasy
15:00
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty ish to election. So obviously, if you're
15:08
Speaker 1: gonna undertake a project in award contracts to two companies
15:11
Speaker 1: to build this thing, there's probably not one company that
15:14
Speaker 1: can tackle something like this that has all the different
15:17
Speaker 1: UH skills necessary to build something like the Hoover Dam.
15:21
Speaker 1: So UH six actually companies, six big big construction firms
15:26
Speaker 1: got together and UH formed what was called, wait for it,
15:31
Speaker 1: the six Companies right in nineteen thirty one, and they
15:35
Speaker 1: served as the kind of UH mega construction firm that
15:40
Speaker 1: undertook this huge, huge project. Yeah, they bid the project
15:45
Speaker 1: out at like forty eight point eight million dollars um,
15:49
Speaker 1: which is so funny to think about now, Like it's
15:52
Speaker 1: a little money for something like this. Yeah, even when
15:54
Speaker 1: you adjust for inflation, it's still a surprisingly low amount.
15:57
Speaker 1: It comes out to about eight hundred million dollars. And
16:00
Speaker 1: it's like the federal government today spends billion dollars like
16:03
Speaker 1: it's nothing. This is like a huge deal that the
16:06
Speaker 1: federal government government was spending the equivalent of today's eight
16:09
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars. But one reason why they went with
16:12
Speaker 1: the six companies consortium is because the Bureau of Reclamation
16:16
Speaker 1: this is the department that oversaw the project. Um, they
16:20
Speaker 1: had calculated the costs themselves, and the six companies bid
16:25
Speaker 1: was only about twenty four thousand dollars more than the
16:29
Speaker 1: six company or than the Bureau of Reclamation had estimated
16:32
Speaker 1: the project would cost about twenty four grand over right,
16:38
Speaker 1: So they were like, all right, if you want to
16:40
Speaker 1: build this whole project for dollars have added UM. And
16:44
Speaker 1: I mean obviously they were six legitimate major construction companies
16:48
Speaker 1: and then all of them combined together form one super
16:51
Speaker 1: construction company. UM. So they seem to be pretty comfortable
16:54
Speaker 1: with this consortium. And from everything I can tell, unless
16:58
Speaker 1: you're a workers rights kind of person, um, this this company.
17:02
Speaker 1: Their faith in this consortium was well placed because they
17:05
Speaker 1: did a pretty good job, saving maybe one major mistake, um,
17:11
Speaker 1: which we'll get too later. It was it's a pretty
17:14
Speaker 1: good government construction project if you ask me, public private,
17:18
Speaker 1: all right, UM, I feel like we should take a
17:21
Speaker 1: break now and come back and talk about, uh, infrastructure
17:26
Speaker 1: right for this. All right, So we're back and uh
17:42
Speaker 1: it will take a couple of years. Obviously, you're not
17:43
Speaker 1: going to dive into a project like this right away
17:46
Speaker 1: because you can't back then because of where it was located.
17:50
Speaker 1: And if you think about it, um, like part of
17:55
Speaker 1: the problem with this project from the beginning was its
17:58
Speaker 1: location and how isolated the Southwest was from other like
18:02
Speaker 1: major parts of the U S at the time. And
18:05
Speaker 1: so they were like, wait a minute, we're not close
18:07
Speaker 1: to anything Like Vegas only is the closest place and
18:10
Speaker 1: it has five thousand people. That doesn't really help us much.
18:13
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, miles away. So here's what we're
18:17
Speaker 1: gonna have to do. Um, we're gonna have to build
18:19
Speaker 1: a town that's really close by for all of our
18:24
Speaker 1: employees and our workers to live. And so they did
18:27
Speaker 1: just that. I think this was about six miles away.
18:32
Speaker 1: They literally constructed a city called Boulder, city, UM west
18:37
Speaker 1: of the damn site. It had seven fifty eight cottages
18:41
Speaker 1: if you were married and worked or had a family
18:44
Speaker 1: or whatever. It had nine dormitories for single men. I
18:48
Speaker 1: imagine that was a wild scene. Uh. They had a hospital,
18:52
Speaker 1: they had a department store, they had laundry, they had
18:55
Speaker 1: a school, they had a post office, they had uh
18:58
Speaker 1: liquor stills and and that's real illegal by the way.
19:01
Speaker 1: Sure of course this depression or prohibition, UM, but they
19:06
Speaker 1: needed their booze, like, let's be honest. Uh. And this
19:10
Speaker 1: this city actually remained under government control until nineteen fifty nine,
19:15
Speaker 1: when uh it got its own incorporation, which is kind
19:18
Speaker 1: of crazy. Yeah, the the the Hoover Damn was dedicated,
19:22
Speaker 1: like the project was done basically UM by nineteen thirty eight, Um,
19:28
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine. I think they're still working on outbuildings
19:31
Speaker 1: and stuff for a little while. But for twenty years
19:33
Speaker 1: after a lot of the people who had UM built
19:37
Speaker 1: the damn were like, I really like this Bowlder City town.
19:40
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stay here. And one of the reasons why
19:42
Speaker 1: you would stay there is because like the government ran
19:45
Speaker 1: the town. There were no elected officials. There was an
19:48
Speaker 1: appointed Bureau of Reclamation, um department, uh like administrator that
19:55
Speaker 1: was like the de facto mayor of the town. And
19:57
Speaker 1: like if there was something wrong with your house, You're
19:59
Speaker 1: of Reclamation workers would come fix it, like your sink
20:04
Speaker 1: or paint your house or whatever. You didn't have to
20:07
Speaker 1: do anything because the government this is like federal land.
20:10
Speaker 1: And finally in nineteen what'd you say, the government was like,
20:14
Speaker 1: all right, freeloaders, you can paint your own houses from
20:17
Speaker 1: now on. This is your place. And they incorporated it
20:20
Speaker 1: into a city in nineteen sixty, I guess, yeah, And
20:23
Speaker 1: it's uh still one of two cities in Nevada that
20:26
Speaker 1: say no gambling here, which is pretty unique. You know.
20:29
Speaker 1: At the at the height of this project to Chuck
20:31
Speaker 1: Bowlder City, which hadn't existed just a couple of years before.
20:34
Speaker 1: Like it wasn't like they took over an existing city
20:36
Speaker 1: and built it up. There was nothing there before and
20:39
Speaker 1: they built a city from scratch. Um it was. It
20:42
Speaker 1: had the biggest population in Nevada at the time. Yeah,
20:45
Speaker 1: more than Vegas. Yeah, by by a few hundred people,
20:48
Speaker 1: I believe. All right, so they built I mean this
20:52
Speaker 1: is keep in mind again, this before they can even
20:54
Speaker 1: get started on this dam. They say, we gotta build
20:56
Speaker 1: a city. We gotta build um seven miles of highway,
21:01
Speaker 1: we gotta build twenty three miles of railway, we got
21:04
Speaker 1: to build um bring in like two miles of power lines,
21:08
Speaker 1: and we have to bring in cableways spanning this canyon.
21:13
Speaker 1: And it's just all this massive amounts of infrastructure to
21:17
Speaker 1: tackle this project where they were gonna be paying dudes
21:21
Speaker 1: fifty cents to a dollar an hour, which is between
21:25
Speaker 1: eight bucks and twenty bucks an hour in today dollars. Right,
21:29
Speaker 1: what's ironic is the harder and the more dangerous your
21:34
Speaker 1: job typically the less you were paid, kind of like
21:38
Speaker 1: today kind of. Yeah, there was there is a group
21:42
Speaker 1: called the muckers, and they were the ones who had
21:45
Speaker 1: to like get the stone in the sludge and all
21:48
Speaker 1: that stuff out of the canyon bottom. And um, they
21:51
Speaker 1: got paid the least even though they were the most
21:54
Speaker 1: um exposed to like falling rocks and falling items, and
21:58
Speaker 1: apparently like falling stuff was a real danger on this project. Yeah,
22:03
Speaker 1: well we'll get to that later, but a lot of
22:05
Speaker 1: noggins suffered. Um, So then the other thing that they
22:10
Speaker 1: had to do, they're like all right, we got the
22:12
Speaker 1: city built, we got all these highways, We've got all
22:14
Speaker 1: this stuff, We've got all these people. We got a
22:16
Speaker 1: good plan. They're like, we need to do something with
22:19
Speaker 1: this river because you can't. You can't just start stacking
22:22
Speaker 1: rocks and divert the Colorado River. So they literally had
22:27
Speaker 1: to come up with a plan to reroute the Colorado
22:31
Speaker 1: River while they built this thing. I hadn't thought about that.
22:34
Speaker 1: I'm sure you knew about it two times over from
22:37
Speaker 1: your double visits and the tour. Now, did you just
22:41
Speaker 1: drive across it? No, we walked around. We didn't take
22:44
Speaker 1: one of these sexual like tours, tours like it was
22:47
Speaker 1: seventeen bucks, right, Like, I'm sure I know as much
22:51
Speaker 1: as this guy. Um, but no, No, I mean like
22:54
Speaker 1: we took out the whole thing and we were there
22:56
Speaker 1: for a couple of hours or anything. But it was
22:57
Speaker 1: self guided to her, How about that got you? No,
22:59
Speaker 1: that's great, but it had never occurred to me. And
23:01
Speaker 1: I didn't learn on this self guided tour that we
23:03
Speaker 1: just made up ourselves. Um, that that that you would
23:06
Speaker 1: have to divert the river, that the river was still
23:08
Speaker 1: going through um Black Canyon at the time. Um, and
23:14
Speaker 1: you just couldn't build a damn there while the river
23:16
Speaker 1: was trying to get through there. There's a lot of
23:19
Speaker 1: stuff you could do so to to divert the river. Um,
23:23
Speaker 1: they did some really ingenious stuff. And if you step
23:25
Speaker 1: back and look at it from like the eyes of
23:28
Speaker 1: a like like a child, it's really just too three
23:32
Speaker 1: four steps and building this damn if you really look
23:36
Speaker 1: at a super high level or super I guess childlike again,
23:39
Speaker 1: um in all of them make total sense. But just
23:43
Speaker 1: the audacity of saying, yeah, we can do that, Yeah,
23:46
Speaker 1: add that extra step on before we get started. It's
23:49
Speaker 1: it really kind of goes to the heart of like,
23:52
Speaker 1: just what an amazing civil engineering project this was. So
23:56
Speaker 1: like with any damn, if you want to divert that water,
23:58
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to go up straight a certain amount,
24:01
Speaker 1: and they have very smart engineers that figure out exactly
24:04
Speaker 1: where to do this. And in this case they built
24:07
Speaker 1: uh Coffer dams, which is a very common thing to
24:10
Speaker 1: do when you want to build a damn downstream. It's
24:12
Speaker 1: basically sort of like a big hole in the river
24:15
Speaker 1: that uh the water would just flow into these. So
24:20
Speaker 1: the water instead of going downstream, dumps into these Coffer Dams,
24:25
Speaker 1: and then it funnels that water into these four tunnels,
24:29
Speaker 1: two on each side of the canyon under the canyon,
24:32
Speaker 1: instead of between them, diverting everything around to then rejoin
24:37
Speaker 1: uh the other you know, those those tunnels rejoin each
24:40
Speaker 1: other as the Colorado River once again downstream, right. And
24:44
Speaker 1: I think the Coffer Dam is actually kind of like
24:46
Speaker 1: a like an earthworks, like a wall inside the water.
24:50
Speaker 1: Yeah you will, you pump the water out, you kind
24:54
Speaker 1: of make it a hole. But yeah, so so this
24:57
Speaker 1: these tunnels that they diverted this too, Chuck, where it
25:00
Speaker 1: combined four miles four miles of tunnel, so each each
25:05
Speaker 1: tunnel was about a mile because there are four of
25:07
Speaker 1: them through the canyon rock which was granite. And they
25:12
Speaker 1: dug out these tunnels as and built the Coffer Dam
25:17
Speaker 1: just to start the whole thing, not as part of
25:19
Speaker 1: the larger project, but this is like to to just
25:22
Speaker 1: to get started. That was the first thing they had
25:24
Speaker 1: to do. Yeah, there were fifty ft in diameter, like
25:26
Speaker 1: these were not small tunnels. They had to be lined
25:29
Speaker 1: with three feet of concrete to hold up. And I
25:33
Speaker 1: think the water was was racing through those at a
25:36
Speaker 1: rate of two hundred thousand cubic feet per second. So
25:41
Speaker 1: it's amazing. That's a hundred and thirty six um Olympic
25:46
Speaker 1: sized pools per minute passing through there. Yeah, I mean
25:49
Speaker 1: this would be remarkable today, dude. Yeah, you know for sure.
25:53
Speaker 1: And as we'll see those those things are still in operation,
25:56
Speaker 1: although they use them differently now. Um, but yeah, that
25:59
Speaker 1: that's that's just a ton of water. And and they said, yep, success,
26:03
Speaker 1: it worked. We diverted um this water down further downstream
26:07
Speaker 1: because you know, the tunnels ended below the damn project
26:10
Speaker 1: site and then all of a sudden, the Colorado River
26:14
Speaker 1: had been diverted around the dam and now they could
26:16
Speaker 1: get started, right, And so they're like, all right, we
26:20
Speaker 1: feel like we could just quit now because what we
26:23
Speaker 1: did was pretty awesome. But we don't have a damn yet.
26:26
Speaker 1: So in this huge canyon, we need, uh, if we're
26:29
Speaker 1: gonna build a dam, we need to make these walls
26:31
Speaker 1: smooth because they were you know, it was a canyon.
26:34
Speaker 1: It was just jagged rock and you can't just fill
26:38
Speaker 1: in a bunch of concrete against this jagged rock. They
26:41
Speaker 1: have these abutments that are gonna secure this huge concrete
26:44
Speaker 1: slab to the canyon walls. So they had to smooth
26:47
Speaker 1: these things out, and that was done by I mean,
26:51
Speaker 1: I want to say the most dangerous job, but it's
26:53
Speaker 1: kind of hard to pick. But the high scale ers
26:57
Speaker 1: are definitely up there as far as danger goes. If
27:01
Speaker 1: you go to the Hoover Dam site today, there's a
27:03
Speaker 1: statue of a high scaler. It's a guy like on
27:06
Speaker 1: a rope with like a toolbag hanging from me. He's
27:08
Speaker 1: like scaling down the side of the uh, the canyon wall.
27:12
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what they did. Because if you're trying
27:15
Speaker 1: to clear the canyon walls and you're talking, you know,
27:18
Speaker 1: your seven hundred feet up between the bottom of the
27:21
Speaker 1: canyon and the canyon rim, You've got a lot of
27:24
Speaker 1: rock that you're trying to get out of there. Um,
27:26
Speaker 1: it's not easy. You can't just you know, hit it
27:29
Speaker 1: with a pole and priyate loose. You get to blast
27:32
Speaker 1: it loose, actually sure, but to no avail. They spent
27:38
Speaker 1: a good year and a half trying that and nothing happened. Um,
27:41
Speaker 1: but the uh I'm totally joking about that, by the way, Um, Okay,
27:46
Speaker 1: to to blast it the chuck, you have to drill
27:48
Speaker 1: a hole and then put the dynamite in and then
27:51
Speaker 1: blast it. But if you're trying to drill a wholesomewhere,
27:54
Speaker 1: you know, halfway between the canyon ridge and the canyon bottom,
27:58
Speaker 1: you have to have a guy on a rope who
28:00
Speaker 1: is willing to swing down there, have a jackhammer four
28:05
Speaker 1: pound jackhammer lowered to him, and then it drill a
28:08
Speaker 1: hole with a jackhammer suspended from the edge of the
28:12
Speaker 1: canyon um into the into the mid air um and
28:15
Speaker 1: then pack it full of dynamite. Light it, get out
28:18
Speaker 1: of the way, let the blast happen, and then come
28:22
Speaker 1: back and then use a pole to private rocks loose.
28:25
Speaker 1: That's what these guys had to do. And if you
28:26
Speaker 1: want to know how Jackhammers work, everybody, let me tell you.
28:30
Speaker 1: We have maybe our best episode ever in eleven years.
28:34
Speaker 1: Jack It was the worst one we've ever done. Like
28:37
Speaker 1: there's no question, Like the sun ha ha, you know
28:40
Speaker 1: it was terrible. Jackhammers was actually bad. At least the
28:44
Speaker 1: son's an interesting thing, right A right, good point. Um,
28:49
Speaker 1: All right, so they're they're blasting these things out. These dudes, uh,
28:52
Speaker 1: believe it or not, did not even have hard hats
28:55
Speaker 1: at the time. They were not supplied with hard hats. No.
28:59
Speaker 1: That's one big criticis some of the six six Companies
29:01
Speaker 1: consortium that they did not care about workers, right. So
29:05
Speaker 1: there was a strike that happened in and the guy
29:08
Speaker 1: running the show for the six companies name was Frank Crow.
29:11
Speaker 1: They called him hurry up Crow. Um, he fired everybody.
29:15
Speaker 1: He just fired everybody and brought in new workers. They
29:18
Speaker 1: didn't get hard hats until they basically said, we're not
29:20
Speaker 1: gonna work anymore unless you give us hard hats. They
29:22
Speaker 1: had to make their own hard hats by taking soft hats,
29:26
Speaker 1: which I guess it's just a hat, and then putting
29:29
Speaker 1: it in like coal tar and letting it like molten
29:32
Speaker 1: coal tar, and then letting it cool, and all of
29:34
Speaker 1: a sudden you had like a homemade hard hat. And
29:37
Speaker 1: then finally the company is just like, all right, you're
29:39
Speaker 1: making us look bad. We'll we'll get some actual ones.
29:41
Speaker 1: But it took like a little while before they had
29:43
Speaker 1: any any actual hard hats on site. Yeah, those homemade
29:47
Speaker 1: ones are called hard boiled hats, and they really actually
29:50
Speaker 1: worked that. Um. I know that thing you sent said
29:52
Speaker 1: that some of the rocks falling on these hard boiled hats.
29:56
Speaker 1: Their their head would be fine, but it would be
29:58
Speaker 1: such force that would actually break their jaw. So these
30:03
Speaker 1: they worked, these hard bowl hats actually worked, um, but
30:06
Speaker 1: I imagine they wanted the real thing. You'd be like
30:10
Speaker 1: if I don't think though, And they would do tricks
30:14
Speaker 1: and stuff like in their downtime they would you know,
30:17
Speaker 1: a lot of these people were I mean not a lot,
30:19
Speaker 1: but some of them were like circus workers, right, and
30:21
Speaker 1: people like former military that could do this kind of thing.
30:24
Speaker 1: And apparently between working they would fly around and do little,
30:30
Speaker 1: uh high wire tricks and stuff basically, and Native Americans too,
30:34
Speaker 1: And you always hear about when the skyscrapers were built,
30:37
Speaker 1: they'd be like, yeah, we just hired a bunch of
30:38
Speaker 1: Native Americans and they'll run all over steel beams as
30:42
Speaker 1: much as you please without any fear. And I've always
30:44
Speaker 1: wondered why that's the case, and is it is it?
30:47
Speaker 1: It's got to just be some sweeping generalization that Native
30:50
Speaker 1: Americans aren't afraid of heights, obviously, but like, are there
30:54
Speaker 1: specific tribes that were exposed to things like cliff walls
30:57
Speaker 1: for generations and generations and that they became used to
31:01
Speaker 1: these dizzy heights so that it wasn't a big deal.
31:03
Speaker 1: And those are the same tribes that you know made
31:06
Speaker 1: their way out to New York to build the skyscrapers too.
31:09
Speaker 1: We gotta get to the bottom of that one. Or
31:11
Speaker 1: maybe they were just tough and not scared of anything.
31:14
Speaker 1: They just didn't let on. But there we have to.
31:19
Speaker 1: We have to tell this once, the story of Burrel
31:21
Speaker 1: Our Rutledge, though, man like like, I almost faint just
31:24
Speaker 1: just reading about it. I'm sure because you don't love heights. No,
31:28
Speaker 1: I don't love heights. So let's just go over this
31:30
Speaker 1: one more time. If you were in the canyon rim
31:32
Speaker 1: of the the Boulder Damn Hoover Dam project at the time,
31:37
Speaker 1: you were more than seven feet above the bottom of
31:41
Speaker 1: the canyon, which for all intents and purposes, is straight down.
31:44
Speaker 1: That's like a sixty story building. Basically, it's a really
31:48
Speaker 1: really big height and you can sense it, man, when
31:51
Speaker 1: you're there, and Hoover Dam, if you haven't been, go
31:54
Speaker 1: it's totally worth the trip for sure, um, especially if
31:57
Speaker 1: you're in Las Vegas. Um. But there was a guy
32:02
Speaker 1: named Burl Rutledge who was one of the engineers for
32:04
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Reclamation, and I guess he lost his
32:07
Speaker 1: footing or something and he fell off off the canyon
32:12
Speaker 1: rim on his way down to the canyon bottom a
32:15
Speaker 1: sixty story building below him, that's right. And then thankfully,
32:20
Speaker 1: um he either had a a former circus worker or
32:24
Speaker 1: somebody who was just very brave named Oliver Cowen about
32:29
Speaker 1: below apparently heard this, I guess it calls a bit
32:32
Speaker 1: of a commotion and swung himself out. He's hanging in
32:35
Speaker 1: a it's called abortion seat that's like sort of like
32:38
Speaker 1: a little sling seat. He rushes over as fast as
32:42
Speaker 1: he can go, swinging out and grabs this guy's leg
32:45
Speaker 1: as he's sliding down the canyon wall. And then another
32:48
Speaker 1: high scaler named Arnold Parks then swings over, you know,
32:53
Speaker 1: helps him pin his body to the wall, and they
32:55
Speaker 1: held him there until they could drop a line and
32:57
Speaker 1: pull him up. If I were Rutledge, I would have
33:02
Speaker 1: been like, like, just let me go, let me go.
33:04
Speaker 1: I can't stand this. I'm so scared. They're like, Josh,
33:08
Speaker 1: we've really got you. You know. You're like it's all over.
33:12
Speaker 1: I'm never going to be the same again. Well, that's
33:15
Speaker 1: probably true. You would just moved to the to the
33:17
Speaker 1: lowest place in the continuous contiguous United States. I can't
33:21
Speaker 1: imagine what the rest of Burl Rutledge's day was after that,
33:25
Speaker 1: but it was good. I bet he drank a lot.
33:28
Speaker 1: I hope it was a good day. But yeah, So
33:31
Speaker 1: that happened like that, like the thing that everyone's imagination
33:34
Speaker 1: thinks of when you think of a bunch of people
33:36
Speaker 1: doing construction work on a canyon. Ledge, that happened, and
33:40
Speaker 1: it actually panned out pretty well for Burl Rutledge at least.
33:43
Speaker 1: All right, man, I think it's time for a message break, agreed,
33:58
Speaker 1: all right? So do are dying? Though? Um? I saw
34:02
Speaker 1: anywhere between like ninety three to ninety six to a
34:05
Speaker 1: hundred people died total in the whole project, which, all
34:10
Speaker 1: things being equal, for what they were doing, isn't that
34:12
Speaker 1: high of a number. Um A hundred lives is a
34:15
Speaker 1: lot though to be lost on a specific engineering project. Yeah,
34:18
Speaker 1: I saw as high as a hundred and twelve. And
34:21
Speaker 1: the six companies, again, they weren't exactly known for having
34:25
Speaker 1: like the loosest pockets. If you file the some sort
34:28
Speaker 1: of health claim against them for you know, an injury
34:31
Speaker 1: or an illness sustained working on the job, there was Um.
34:35
Speaker 1: I think like thirty six forty two people associated with
34:39
Speaker 1: the project died of pneumonia. But I think the Las
34:43
Speaker 1: Vegas Star did an investigation either years later at the
34:47
Speaker 1: time and said there were basically no deaths back at
34:50
Speaker 1: Boulder City of pneumonia. If there was pneumonia, it would
34:52
Speaker 1: have been going around Boulder City. And we think that
34:56
Speaker 1: really pneumonia is just a code word from the six
34:59
Speaker 1: companies or carbon monoxide poison because the six companies wanted
35:04
Speaker 1: to cover it up so they didn't didn't have to
35:05
Speaker 1: pay out any you know, money to the family because
35:09
Speaker 1: they accidentally killed the dad with carbon monoxide poisoning because
35:13
Speaker 1: he was working all day alongside like a diesel engine
35:16
Speaker 1: in one of these you know, mile long tunnels. Yeah,
35:20
Speaker 1: so that was the kind of stuff that they endured. Um.
35:23
Speaker 1: Heat stroke killed a lot of people too. Oh yeah,
35:26
Speaker 1: in the summer of nine three alone, apparently about three
35:29
Speaker 1: people per week. We're dying a pete stroke because dude
35:33
Speaker 1: in in the sun in these tunnels in particular, apparently
35:37
Speaker 1: would get up to a hundred and forty degrees fahrenheit,
35:40
Speaker 1: which is some ungodly amount and celsius too, and then
35:44
Speaker 1: in the shade. On the worst days, it would get
35:47
Speaker 1: to like a hundred and twenty degrees in the shade.
35:50
Speaker 1: It's a dry heat though. Sure it's not the heat,
35:52
Speaker 1: it's the humidity unless it's a hundred and twenty and
35:55
Speaker 1: then it doesn't matter. Yeah, And one of the common
35:58
Speaker 1: um urban legends is that there are dead bodies um
36:02
Speaker 1: in the concrete of Hoover Damn. That is not true,
36:06
Speaker 1: and I love how Julia put it. Common decency aside.
36:10
Speaker 1: She says it would have compromised the structural integrity. So
36:13
Speaker 1: they they had to fish these bodies out, because if
36:17
Speaker 1: you were a body in concrete, you're gonna decompose eventually,
36:20
Speaker 1: and that's gonna leave bubbles and introduce gas into the concrete,
36:23
Speaker 1: and that's going to weaken the structure. So they had
36:25
Speaker 1: to fish all these bodies out and even still well
36:28
Speaker 1: we'll talk about the concrete next, but just just to
36:31
Speaker 1: kind of lay the foundation for this point, feel forgive
36:33
Speaker 1: the punt you when they when they poured a bucket's
36:38
Speaker 1: worth of concrete to build the damn face there the
36:41
Speaker 1: damn itself, I guess um the dam was so enormous
36:46
Speaker 1: that the whole bucket only raised the level of concrete
36:49
Speaker 1: by like two to six inches, depending on the block
36:52
Speaker 1: they were pouring. So if you fell into the concrete,
36:55
Speaker 1: you were you fell into two inches of concrete basically,
36:58
Speaker 1: So you were you were you were going to get
37:00
Speaker 1: lost in the concrete or anything like that. And then
37:03
Speaker 1: on top of that, yet they even if they did
37:06
Speaker 1: not care about whether you spent eternity entombed, they would
37:09
Speaker 1: be like, well, you're not gonna You're not gonna screw
37:12
Speaker 1: with the integrity of our damn So, yes, there's no
37:15
Speaker 1: dead bodies in there, no dead bodies. So so let's
37:18
Speaker 1: talk about the concrete, shall we, real quick? Yeah? Um,
37:21
Speaker 1: So at this point, the walls are clean and smooth.
37:25
Speaker 1: They've got these abutments in place, which, by the way,
37:28
Speaker 1: if I may, okay, So I looked all over for
37:33
Speaker 1: the abutments, and all I ever saw was it's the
37:35
Speaker 1: it's the walls of the canyon, the rock walls of
37:37
Speaker 1: the canyon, or the abutments from what I can gather. Um,
37:41
Speaker 1: you know how when you when you grab somebody nicely
37:45
Speaker 1: and in jokingly by the shoulders right and are holding
37:50
Speaker 1: them securely like this, right, so you've got your thumbs
37:53
Speaker 1: on the front of their arms, and you've got their
37:55
Speaker 1: fingers on the back of their arms like that, right,
37:58
Speaker 1: your fingers and thumbs are acting as abutments. And so
38:01
Speaker 1: the abutments that are holding rather than this poor sap
38:05
Speaker 1: who again you're just joking around with um, rather than
38:09
Speaker 1: than that person, these abutments are the canyon walls holding
38:13
Speaker 1: the damn itself in places. Okay, I mean I had,
38:19
Speaker 1: but like I couldn't tell if they were like parts
38:24
Speaker 1: of that stuck out of the damn or parts that
38:28
Speaker 1: stuck out of the canyon walls. And I don't know.
38:31
Speaker 1: Maybe it was one of those things where everybody else
38:33
Speaker 1: knows what abutments is, and that's why no one went
38:35
Speaker 1: to the trouble of explaining it. But I couldn't find
38:38
Speaker 1: it like spelled out or a good picture saying here's
38:40
Speaker 1: the abutments. So I just assumed that no one else
38:43
Speaker 1: knew and I was the only one digging into it.
38:45
Speaker 1: But now I feel like my eyes have been open. Well,
38:48
Speaker 1: I have the three fake teeth and implants, so I
38:51
Speaker 1: know what abutments are. They go, that was it's different
38:55
Speaker 1: in your teeth but not really the same word, same function, right,
39:00
Speaker 1: So these abutments are in place, and they were like,
39:02
Speaker 1: all right, we gotta start pouring some concrete. The design itself, Um,
39:07
Speaker 1: a lot of damns use this design. It's called a
39:09
Speaker 1: gravity arch, and it's basically just using the natural pressure
39:14
Speaker 1: of of the land to uh kind of force everything
39:19
Speaker 1: tight into that uh tightened down that concrete between those
39:23
Speaker 1: two canyons. Yeah, it's really ingenious, dude. It's it's just
39:27
Speaker 1: like an arched bridge where gravity presses down on the arch,
39:31
Speaker 1: which makes the arch press in to say, like the
39:34
Speaker 1: walls of the canyon that the bridge is crossing, and
39:37
Speaker 1: the bridge the walls of the canyon pushed back, which
39:40
Speaker 1: only strengthens the bridge. Same exact thing. It's like if
39:43
Speaker 1: you took a bridge at arch bridge and put it
39:46
Speaker 1: on its side. That's what the Hoover dam is. So
39:49
Speaker 1: when the water presses into that curve of the arch,
39:53
Speaker 1: it tries to straighten the dam, which presses the damn
39:56
Speaker 1: into the sides of the canyon walls, which press back
40:00
Speaker 1: strengthens the damn. It's ingenious, ingenious, I tell you, yeah,
40:05
Speaker 1: And so uh they didn't even need that. That's kind
40:08
Speaker 1: of the funny part about all of this there's so
40:11
Speaker 1: much concrete that it could have been a flat slab,
40:14
Speaker 1: which a lot of damns are, but um, apparently engineers
40:18
Speaker 1: thought that would freak people out to have a flat
40:21
Speaker 1: slab damn that big, and so they said, let's just
40:24
Speaker 1: curve it anyway, because everyone understands basic physics, right, all right,
40:29
Speaker 1: and it looks cool and it does look very cool. Um, alright,
40:33
Speaker 1: so we're we're actually finally to the concrete. Um. There
40:36
Speaker 1: are three point two five million cubic yards of concrete
40:43
Speaker 1: that make up the Hoover dam, uh and then another
40:46
Speaker 1: one point one one million cubic yards and um, it's
40:50
Speaker 1: not just the damn face. There's a lot of you know,
40:52
Speaker 1: the houses, a power plant and all these outlying structures,
40:56
Speaker 1: and five million barrels of cement. Five million barrels went
41:01
Speaker 1: into mixing all this concrete, which they mixed on site, uh,
41:06
Speaker 1: sen in rail cars hoisted down on these cableways that
41:10
Speaker 1: they had built. And every seventy eight seconds, these workers
41:14
Speaker 1: would get a new bucket of concrete to poor right
41:17
Speaker 1: right for um until about five ft of the dam
41:21
Speaker 1: had been poured, and then after that they had to
41:23
Speaker 1: stop for seventy two hours to let it cure, because
41:27
Speaker 1: curing is a huge part when you're working with concrete.
41:30
Speaker 1: If it doesn't cure right, then the stuff inside is
41:33
Speaker 1: going to take longer to cure than the stuff outside.
41:36
Speaker 1: Um which isn't that big of a deal if you're
41:38
Speaker 1: pouring like you know, a driveway in a house or
41:41
Speaker 1: something like that. But when you're pouring a dam that
41:43
Speaker 1: has to have like really exact dimensions, you have to
41:46
Speaker 1: keep the outside and the inside curing at about the
41:49
Speaker 1: same rate. So they came up with this really ingenious
41:52
Speaker 1: um way to cure this concrete really fast. And they
41:57
Speaker 1: ran pipes, steel pipes all through all the concrete that
42:01
Speaker 1: they poured, So there's steel pipes running all over the
42:03
Speaker 1: Hoover dam inside of it, and they cooled water on
42:07
Speaker 1: site to like like just above freezing, and they pumped
42:10
Speaker 1: it through these pipes so that when they were pouring concrete,
42:14
Speaker 1: the concrete was being cooled internally and they were spraying
42:17
Speaker 1: it with water on the outside too, So it was
42:20
Speaker 1: curing at about the same rate inside as it was outside,
42:23
Speaker 1: and it was curing fast in about seventy two hours,
42:26
Speaker 1: where if they had poured a slab that if they
42:29
Speaker 1: poured the Hoover Dam in one big slab had just
42:31
Speaker 1: left it, first of all, it would have been all
42:33
Speaker 1: messed up all kinds of ways. But it also would
42:36
Speaker 1: have taken about a hundred and twenty five years to
42:39
Speaker 1: cure fully on its own. It'd still be curing now.
42:43
Speaker 1: But they get they managed to get these you know,
42:45
Speaker 1: five foot increments to cure in about seventy two hours.
42:49
Speaker 1: So again, I mean another just the idea that they like,
42:53
Speaker 1: nobody had really tried something like this on the scale.
42:55
Speaker 1: So these people were kind of making it up and
42:57
Speaker 1: going and doing the math as as they went a
43:00
Speaker 1: long and they were right like time after time. That's
43:02
Speaker 1: the most astounding part to me. Yeah, I mean that
43:05
Speaker 1: the heat is a big problem for concrete because it's
43:07
Speaker 1: going to expand in that heat, and then you know,
43:10
Speaker 1: in the desert it can cool down quite a bit.
43:13
Speaker 1: You know, the temperature variation between the heat of day
43:16
Speaker 1: and at night can be really drastic, and so it's
43:19
Speaker 1: really tough to control all that and they managed to
43:21
Speaker 1: do it, which is remarkable. Um, they divide this whole
43:25
Speaker 1: thing up into blocks, and there are two hundred blocks
43:28
Speaker 1: total making up the Hoover Dam. Um. Depending they're they're
43:32
Speaker 1: smaller at the downstream face and they are upstream, but
43:36
Speaker 1: they range from about square feet to sixty square feet. Uh.
43:40
Speaker 1: And all of those blocks together, all two hundred of them,
43:44
Speaker 1: make up the Hoover Dam. Finally, on they poured that
43:50
Speaker 1: last bucket of concrete, which I imagine was a pretty
43:54
Speaker 1: darn good day. I'll bet it was too. And then
43:56
Speaker 1: after that, after that last block of concrete cured, they
44:00
Speaker 1: squeeze grout, which is um cement and water, like a
44:03
Speaker 1: really kind of slushy mixture, into every crack and crevice
44:07
Speaker 1: there was in between those blocks to form a solid sheet.
44:11
Speaker 1: And then just for good measure, they pumped grout into
44:14
Speaker 1: those cooling pipes. So and then they cap that off.
44:18
Speaker 1: So inside the Hoover Dam there's enough concrete to make
44:25
Speaker 1: a sixteen ft wide, eight inch deep road all the
44:30
Speaker 1: way from San Francisco to New York. It is amazing. So, dude,
44:35
Speaker 1: I think we should do this into two parts. If
44:38
Speaker 1: Evil Kinevel got a two parter, I think the Hoover
44:41
Speaker 1: Dam deserves a two parter. Two. We've been at it
44:43
Speaker 1: for forty five minutes, so there's still a long long
44:45
Speaker 1: way to go. So should we do that? Yes, let's
44:48
Speaker 1: so since we're doing a two parter. Uh, well, I
44:51
Speaker 1: guess that brings up listener mail, right, Chuck, I think
44:54
Speaker 1: let's skip listener mail. Okay, Damn doesn't get too listener mails. Okay, fine,
45:00
Speaker 1: was just it was getting a little ambitious. Well, in
45:02
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you want to drop us a line,
45:04
Speaker 1: you can go to stuff you Should Know dot com
45:06
Speaker 1: and check out our social links. You can check me
45:08
Speaker 1: out on the Josh Clark Way dot com and you
45:10
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45:13
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45:16
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45:21
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45:24
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45:26
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