Latest / Ridiculous History / The Hoover Dam is Ridiculous, Part Two: The Audacity!

Transcript

The Hoover Dam is Ridiculous, Part Two: The Audacity! · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
0:27
Speaker 1: the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
0:30
Speaker 1: for tuning in. This is part two of the Hoover Damn.
0:35
Speaker 2: Damn, Damn, Damn. I wish I was your love? Remember
0:40
Speaker 2: that song Sophie? Was that Sophie B. Hawkins? Jam? I
0:44
Speaker 2: think it is? It is.
0:45
Speaker 3: She's in an episode of Community.
0:47
Speaker 4: Uh huh, she's just good, that's right.
0:50
Speaker 2: M h.
0:51
Speaker 3: It's the gas leak season though, so that's why none
0:53
Speaker 3: of us were remembering it fair enough.
0:55
Speaker 1: Speaking, remember it, I forgot the shout out. I'm the
0:58
Speaker 1: research associate for this and so, as always, send your
1:01
Speaker 1: complaints to our complaint department, Jonathan Strickland at iHeartRadio dot com.
1:07
Speaker 1: Let's do the damn thing, all right. The Great Depression
1:11
Speaker 1: is a thing. It does happen, it unfolds, and this
1:14
Speaker 1: is terrible for the United States. This is also terrible
1:18
Speaker 1: for the Western world in general, if we're being honest.
1:22
Speaker 1: But it is a silver lining for what we call
1:27
Speaker 1: the Hoover dam because hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
1:31
Speaker 1: people looking for work, the Great Age of the Hobo,
1:35
Speaker 1: they descend on the Las Vegas area because they hear
1:39
Speaker 1: the government is hiring and they're going to pay you
1:42
Speaker 1: an honest wage. Not enough to become a millionaire or
1:45
Speaker 1: a robber baron yourself, but enough to have a place
1:48
Speaker 1: to live and make sure you and your family don't starve.
1:52
Speaker 1: And of course a lot of them don't get hired.
1:54
Speaker 1: When these guys get hired, they are moved out, unmassed
1:58
Speaker 1: to a place called Boulder City, intentionally built community six
2:03
Speaker 1: miles from the work side of the dam, which we visited.
2:07
Speaker 2: And that's also definitely in Fallout New Vegas. Right, this
2:11
Speaker 2: is in Boulder City like a place where you hang out.
2:14
Speaker 2: I feel like it has to be, even if it
2:16
Speaker 2: wasn't real. That's such a Fallout thing. It's like Rivet
2:19
Speaker 2: City in Fallout four or no, sorry, Fallout three. And
2:23
Speaker 2: then in New Vegas, I swear there was like Boulder City.
2:25
Speaker 2: There's like there's a there's a sheriff kind of deal.
2:27
Speaker 2: I'm almost positive, but I could be mistaken. But that's
2:30
Speaker 2: another thing about that that film that we watched, you know,
2:34
Speaker 2: the before very Fallout vibes very like raw, raw America
2:40
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. But then also fall Out beautifully filters
2:44
Speaker 2: all of that kind of flag waving sentiment through this
2:47
Speaker 2: dystopian lens and just make ah, they're so good. I'm
2:51
Speaker 2: bummed that people say Starfield sucks, but I don't know.
2:55
Speaker 2: I think you like it, but I have I'm a
2:57
Speaker 2: little thrown because a couple of these reviewers that I
2:59
Speaker 2: really did are just really dumping.
3:02
Speaker 4: Dog it on it.
3:03
Speaker 1: It's a it's a matter of expectations and also, uh,
3:06
Speaker 1: to a point Max made in a previous episode, it
3:09
Speaker 1: is a bethesta game, which means, in my opinion, it
3:13
Speaker 1: is a crock pot game. You can eat it right
3:16
Speaker 1: when uh right, right when the schedule says it's ready,
3:20
Speaker 1: but it gets really good as time goes on. And
3:24
Speaker 1: that's you gotta like, Nol, I know you had a
3:26
Speaker 1: little bit of candidly put a little bit of fomo
3:29
Speaker 1: about not being on day.
3:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never not loved one.
3:33
Speaker 1: You're you're You're totally in the cappird seat on it
3:37
Speaker 1: because weight I would say, wait like a year and
3:41
Speaker 1: then a lot of the basic fixes will come out,
3:43
Speaker 1: which always happens with this.
3:44
Speaker 2: I'm just heard even the story set up is a
3:46
Speaker 2: little silly, like it's like like it's like you're a
3:49
Speaker 2: dirt farmer and then all of a sudden you get
3:51
Speaker 2: picked up by the spaceship and now all of a
3:53
Speaker 2: sudden you're an explorer or whatever.
3:55
Speaker 3: I mean. I'm just gonna say the worst part about it,
3:58
Speaker 3: and it's that, uh my Microsoft and needs get out
4:00
Speaker 3: of their own damn way and let it be on
4:02
Speaker 3: PS five. Question, it's not that's so that's so ridiculous
4:06
Speaker 3: because it was always said the entire these are long
4:09
Speaker 3: development cycles, that it's always going to be on PS five.
4:11
Speaker 3: Now you got me scare that Elder Scroll six is
4:13
Speaker 3: not going to be in there because I'm not going
4:15
Speaker 3: to get an Xbox.
4:16
Speaker 2: I was thinking about it, but then after hearing what
4:18
Speaker 2: I was hearing, I decided to pull back and just
4:20
Speaker 2: play more. No Man's Sky, which is also another game
4:23
Speaker 2: that is finally at like its peak, coming after being
4:27
Speaker 2: out there for several years without some of the things
4:29
Speaker 2: that were promised. But see, speaking of what was promised, now,
4:32
Speaker 2: we promised you an episode about the Hubert, so not
4:35
Speaker 2: a commentary on Bethesda. Right.
4:37
Speaker 1: So, Boulder City, if you want to go, we recommend
4:41
Speaker 1: visiting a restaurant called the Dillinger, which was definitely an
4:45
Speaker 1: aesthetic choice, good burgers, cool little antique store next door
4:51
Speaker 1: that it was awesome and had all kinds of crazy stuff.
4:53
Speaker 1: But it's the kind of place that if you look
4:54
Speaker 1: closely enough, you'll see some problematic little black face figurines
4:58
Speaker 1: and things like that. Like Nevada in California are very
5:03
Speaker 1: interesting places because you've got your liberal hubs and then
5:06
Speaker 1: you got your like, for lack of a better term,
5:09
Speaker 1: more like I guess, redneck y kind of rural communities,
5:13
Speaker 1: and there's all kinds of weird shit going on in
5:17
Speaker 1: those pockets.
5:18
Speaker 3: You know, if you guys don't mind if I jump,
5:20
Speaker 3: and I promise this is my last side. But when
5:21
Speaker 3: I was in Montana, you know, I was stopping to
5:25
Speaker 3: get gas. It's like you're driving through Montana. You get
5:27
Speaker 3: gas when gas is available. Right one to its placed
5:29
Speaker 3: in this town called Big Timber, no joke, Big Timber, Montana,
5:33
Speaker 3: and it was a gas station, Uh you know, a
5:38
Speaker 3: gift shop, a package store. The package store is mixed
5:42
Speaker 3: with gas stations and guns. Actually it was fifty percent
5:46
Speaker 3: guns and it's just like salt rifles sitting right everything.
5:48
Speaker 3: You guys, You guys know me. How I my relationship
5:51
Speaker 3: with guns. So I was very uncomfortable walking through that side,
5:54
Speaker 3: but thankfully I found out the restroom was in the
5:57
Speaker 3: gift shop park.
5:58
Speaker 2: Of course, exit through the gift shop exit. Evacuate your bounce.
6:04
Speaker 1: That we we've got to stay there too. On a
6:07
Speaker 1: side because just just to illustrate the way, uh, these
6:11
Speaker 1: cultural differences can hit and we're not judging here.
6:15
Speaker 2: Uh.
6:15
Speaker 1: I think it was surprising for those of us in Vegas.
6:19
Speaker 1: It was surprising for all of us. We went to
6:20
Speaker 1: this big festival and there were a lot of big
6:23
Speaker 1: names there TLC Sheryl Crow, et cetera, et cetera, and
6:28
Speaker 1: I think it was Ryan Seacrest the radio host, was
6:32
Speaker 1: one of the big MC's and he mentioned the Maderna vaccine,
6:38
Speaker 1: which was the manufacturer. Maderna is a partial sponsor that festival.
6:43
Speaker 1: And this crowd irupted in booze. They turned and we
6:48
Speaker 1: we definitely I think all had a wake up moment there.
6:52
Speaker 3: Oh one last side. Did you guys know Ryan Seacrest
6:54
Speaker 3: is the most famous alum of my high school?
6:56
Speaker 2: Wow?
6:57
Speaker 1: We did, yeah about that. He's probably bragging about you
7:01
Speaker 1: right now.
7:02
Speaker 3: His football jersey was up in the waylifting is that.
7:06
Speaker 2: When they like retire it because you're such a big deal. Well,
7:09
Speaker 2: he's a good looking man and I'm sure it was
7:10
Speaker 2: a fine football player and his ex talk, but what
7:14
Speaker 2: does he know about the Hoover Dam? Not as much
7:16
Speaker 2: as you. When we finally do this episode, it does
7:20
Speaker 2: appear that way. But much like a lot of like
7:23
Speaker 2: Los Alamos, you know, for example, sure they tested the
7:25
Speaker 2: atomic bomb. Some of these long term projects, they these
7:28
Speaker 2: cities like little you know, build these communities are built
7:31
Speaker 2: around it to house and feed the workers, and it
7:35
Speaker 2: does become almost like a barracks type situation. But Boulder
7:39
Speaker 2: City was very much that thing, you know, and all
7:43
Speaker 2: of these folks that were hired and took up residence
7:47
Speaker 2: in Boulder City set to work building this dam. After
7:51
Speaker 2: the government found this contractor for the what was described
7:55
Speaker 2: as a sixty story arch style dam. Yes, and the
7:59
Speaker 2: contract is a ordered in nineteen thirty one March of
8:02
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty one to six different companies. And then they
8:07
Speaker 2: actually have a believe a five million dollar performance bond,
8:12
Speaker 2: which is what like that's like when you say you're
8:14
Speaker 2: bonded for you know, doing home repairs or whatever. That's
8:18
Speaker 2: what this is. But this is a bit heavier burden
8:22
Speaker 2: to the point where that's why all of these firms
8:24
Speaker 2: had to kind of pool their resources in order to
8:27
Speaker 2: meet that benchmark for this project.
8:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, they had to. They had to put up
8:33
Speaker 1: the money to show that they were serious. Is really
8:35
Speaker 1: what this means, and that is a steep amount. You know,
8:38
Speaker 1: the first step of construction, after you get through all
8:42
Speaker 1: the wheeling and dealing and talk in Turkey, the first
8:46
Speaker 1: real step is blasting out those canyon walls. They have
8:49
Speaker 1: to make four diversion tunnels for the water. We've been
8:53
Speaker 1: describing dams as walls. I'm thinking now perhaps it's more
8:57
Speaker 1: accurate to describe a dam something that turns a river
9:01
Speaker 1: into a gated community. There are different redundancies you have
9:06
Speaker 1: to build in in case the water rises above the
9:09
Speaker 1: level of the dam, in case you need to bleed
9:12
Speaker 1: off the supply in different ways. So they have to
9:15
Speaker 1: build out these diversion tunnels. And the entire time they're
9:19
Speaker 1: building this thing, this enormous, audacious, ridiculous structure, they are
9:23
Speaker 1: facing very strict, very unsafe deadlines. We're talking stuff OSHA
9:36
Speaker 1: would not approve of today. One hundred and forty degree
9:39
Speaker 1: tunnels that's how hot they are, carbon monoxide poisoning, which
9:43
Speaker 1: definitely got covered up by the way. Eventually this all
9:46
Speaker 1: leads the employees to go on strike for more than
9:48
Speaker 1: a week in what was it, August nineteen thirty one.
9:52
Speaker 1: So it was so bad that these people who had
9:56
Speaker 1: traveled with no other hope of employment, even they were saying, Okay,
10:01
Speaker 1: we're not working until we know we're not going to die,
10:04
Speaker 1: or at least not.
10:04
Speaker 4: All of us.
10:05
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And like we said at the top of
10:08
Speaker 2: the show, in order to to do to mount an
10:12
Speaker 2: audacious project of this scale, you know, there's gonna be
10:16
Speaker 2: some literal human capital involved. And that was one of
10:19
Speaker 2: the questions that we asked our tour guide whose name
10:22
Speaker 2: you keep, you give him a great nickname, whover Matt.
10:26
Speaker 2: We asked, you know, roughly how many how many lives
10:29
Speaker 2: were lost in the execution of this project, And I
10:32
Speaker 2: think it was something like only a couple of hundred
10:36
Speaker 2: on paper, but like probably more like five or six hundred,
10:40
Speaker 2: because some of them were very suspiciously attributed to natural causes.
10:47
Speaker 2: But it may have been natural causes brought on by
10:50
Speaker 2: perhaps the inhalation of some of these this debris and
10:54
Speaker 2: you know, the gases and whatever. And I know we
10:57
Speaker 2: heard one story about someone who may have been like,
10:59
Speaker 2: you know, Edgar Allen Poe style in case alive, you know,
11:04
Speaker 2: in concrete.
11:05
Speaker 1: Well yeah, yeah, that's a good tease because we'll get
11:09
Speaker 1: to that cask of a Mantilado story. Yeah, but you're right.
11:14
Speaker 1: And also, you know, the government is being a bit
11:19
Speaker 1: cold here. They're saying, just as we said at the top,
11:22
Speaker 1: they're saying, well, you got to break a few eggs,
11:25
Speaker 1: and if those eggs are human lives, we better make
11:27
Speaker 1: sure this is a hell of an omelet. At the end,
11:29
Speaker 1: like in their rationale, they could say natural causes, because
11:33
Speaker 1: asphyxiation is the natural result of being exposed to too
11:37
Speaker 1: much carbon monoxide. Kind of evil stuff. And they so
11:43
Speaker 1: they complete two of the tunnels, and they use the
11:46
Speaker 1: rock that they have taken out of the canyon to
11:50
Speaker 1: form a temporary dam, like a placeholder dam, to rechannel
11:55
Speaker 1: the path of the river in November nineteen thirty two,
11:58
Speaker 1: and then they start clearing out the walls that are
12:01
Speaker 1: going to be the containers of the dam, like where
12:05
Speaker 1: the dam is anchored. So these guys are one hundred
12:10
Speaker 1: feet above the canyon floor just suspended for anybody with
12:13
Speaker 1: fear of heights cough cough, max picture that feel one
12:17
Speaker 1: hundred eight.
12:18
Speaker 2: Hundred, you said at you said, one hundred.
12:20
Speaker 4: Oh, let's keep it in eight even worse.
12:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it reminds me of those images
12:26
Speaker 2: of folks building the skyscrapers in New York, like eating
12:28
Speaker 2: their lunch pails, like sitting on these crazy beams. You know,
12:31
Speaker 2: I mean like these are jobs that require bravery, you know,
12:35
Speaker 2: absolute ability, you know, courage under fire, under under pressure,
12:39
Speaker 2: and also you know, that's the kind of stuff that
12:42
Speaker 2: can often be taken advantage of. And I believe there
12:45
Speaker 2: were a few strikes that took place, you know, when
12:48
Speaker 2: the when the powers that be that were in charge
12:50
Speaker 2: of this project weren't listening to the demands of workers
12:53
Speaker 2: and were forcing them into very very unsafe circumstances in
12:57
Speaker 2: order to get this thing done at budget or under
13:00
Speaker 2: budget and on time.
13:02
Speaker 3: I will say, the only thing crazier than those photos
13:05
Speaker 3: of people eating on those beams is the fact that
13:07
Speaker 3: there were allowed to bring lunch pails up there.
13:09
Speaker 4: Yes, if that thing falls from that high.
13:11
Speaker 2: These are heavy, like ten lunch pails.
13:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you guys, it's going to kill us one.
13:16
Speaker 1: You guys, you guys are catastrophizing. No, it did happen.
13:19
Speaker 1: You're right, You're absolutely right. Lunchbox deaths were a thing
13:23
Speaker 1: that might be an episode, that might be something we
13:25
Speaker 1: mentioned skyscraper construction in the past. So in addition to
13:30
Speaker 1: be one hundred day hundred feet above the canyon floor,
13:34
Speaker 1: these guys were carrying jackhammers that weighed forty four pounds.
13:39
Speaker 1: They were carrying metal poles to knock stuff loose, and
13:43
Speaker 1: there were a lot of falling workers who died. There
13:46
Speaker 1: was a lot of equipment that fell on people who
13:49
Speaker 1: later tally lunch pails potentially lunch pails, excuse me, and
13:54
Speaker 1: also a lot of rocks that fell and killed people.
13:57
Speaker 4: And meanwhile, as they.
13:59
Speaker 1: Built Coffer Dam and they're building up the actual facts dam,
14:03
Speaker 1: shout out to our power lare and vocal bomb. The
14:06
Speaker 1: riverbed is dried on one side and this allows them
14:10
Speaker 1: to start building the power plant and the four intake
14:13
Speaker 1: towers and the rest of the permanent dam. They mix
14:16
Speaker 1: cement on site. They hoisted across the canyon on these
14:21
Speaker 1: twenty ton cable ways, and they give I think when
14:27
Speaker 1: they're all rolling and they're firing on all pistons, so
14:30
Speaker 1: to speak. A fresh bucket of concrete reaches the crews
14:35
Speaker 1: every seventy eight seconds and they have to they have
14:41
Speaker 1: to fight the heat now because concrete is putting off
14:45
Speaker 1: heat as it cools, and it will take decades and
14:47
Speaker 1: decades for this concrete to completely cure.
14:49
Speaker 2: That part was super interesting to me in our Hoover
14:52
Speaker 2: Dam tour. What they had to do to exactly to
14:56
Speaker 2: mitigate like you know, the just raw heat of the sun,
15:00
Speaker 2: you know, beating down on this concrete as it dried,
15:03
Speaker 2: because it's putting out all this energy and they had
15:05
Speaker 2: to I think, yeah, like you said, like pump water
15:08
Speaker 2: through it.
15:08
Speaker 4: That was just specifically to keep it cool.
15:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that was that was a whole other Yeah,
15:13
Speaker 2: that was a whole other thing to solve a problem
15:15
Speaker 2: that had nothing to do with like you know, ultimately
15:17
Speaker 2: the endgame of the project.
15:19
Speaker 4: You know, luck, it's genius who came up with that,
15:22
Speaker 4: who figured that out?
15:23
Speaker 2: Like I mean, you know, I know that a lot
15:25
Speaker 2: of this stuff is just based on mathematics and and
15:27
Speaker 2: you know, calculations that have been around for a long time,
15:30
Speaker 2: and we know vast structures were you know, built much
15:35
Speaker 2: further back in history than this.
15:37
Speaker 4: But I still feel like this is very, very impressive.
15:41
Speaker 2: Again, not making excuses for how the human capital element
15:46
Speaker 2: in this, you know, panned out. Not great, but ultimately
15:50
Speaker 2: not awful considering what the project was, the scope of it,
15:56
Speaker 2: and you know, ultimately the fact that it has stood
15:59
Speaker 2: the test of time, you know, to this day.
16:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they were and also to the point about
16:04
Speaker 1: genius and invention, sure, yes, they were using established techniques
16:10
Speaker 1: from other projects, other engineering marvels. However, I would argue
16:14
Speaker 1: that the scale becomes a kind of genius all its own.
16:18
Speaker 1: That's that pipe system that we're talking about, fellow ridiculous historians.
16:23
Speaker 1: That's six hundred miles of pipe just to circulate water
16:27
Speaker 1: through the concrete blocks.
16:29
Speaker 2: And this is a temporary thing. And this isn't like
16:31
Speaker 2: even necessary once the thing has cured.
16:34
Speaker 4: Right, They built a circulatory system, is what they did
16:37
Speaker 4: for the day on.
16:38
Speaker 1: It's crazy. It becomes like a living thing. And yeah,
16:42
Speaker 1: and there's so there's an architect named Gordon Kaufman who
16:45
Speaker 1: has made a lot of the visual renderings. Of course,
16:49
Speaker 1: Gordon is not going to be laying concrete himself, but
16:53
Speaker 1: he says, yeah, let's emphasize how ridiculously big this thing is.
16:59
Speaker 1: So all his renderings kind of showcase the mass of
17:03
Speaker 1: the structure. And that's why you can see that whole
17:07
Speaker 1: curved face of the dam and there's not a decoration
17:11
Speaker 1: on it. It's just block after a cyclopean block of concrete.
17:16
Speaker 1: And the power plant has horizontal aluminum thins for windows,
17:22
Speaker 1: which is very you know, futuristic at the time, very
17:25
Speaker 1: space age, though they wouldn't have used the word. And
17:28
Speaker 1: there there is one thing we have to note. Then
17:30
Speaker 1: you'll see it anytime you take a tour.
17:32
Speaker 2: Uh.
17:32
Speaker 1: The interior has some esthetic touches that are meant to
17:36
Speaker 1: pay homage to Native American cultures. I say homage, is
17:41
Speaker 1: that like oh.
17:43
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, I would home.
17:45
Speaker 4: No one would ever say anything other than homage.
17:47
Speaker 2: In my opinion, I've never heard anybody if someone said homage,
17:50
Speaker 2: I would I would look at them Sideways'd be like
17:52
Speaker 2: saying vague instead of exactly, or like a salve instead
17:58
Speaker 2: of salv Oh. Yeah, I think I think I can
18:01
Speaker 2: go either way too. But I have been been mocked
18:03
Speaker 2: for saying south. But I believe again Hoover Matt when
18:08
Speaker 2: he was giving us a tour of the power plant.
18:10
Speaker 2: There were two specifically mentioned, a Native American kind of
18:14
Speaker 2: like tile pieces on the floor that that were, you know,
18:18
Speaker 2: very much a nod to to the you know, the
18:20
Speaker 2: indigenous people of this part of the country, and also
18:23
Speaker 2: I believe we're kind of a nod to the grandiosity of.
18:27
Speaker 4: The project as well.
18:28
Speaker 2: I can't quite remember what was depicted, but there were
18:31
Speaker 2: two big mosaic floor tile pieces right around those.
18:36
Speaker 4: They're not reactors, those turbines.
18:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, power.
18:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're absolutely right, And there's a little bit of
18:43
Speaker 1: a I mean not a little bit. I think there's
18:45
Speaker 1: quite a bit of irony or paradox to those homages
18:50
Speaker 1: because the you know, these designs are put in place
18:55
Speaker 1: almost like lip service, while at the same time the
18:58
Speaker 1: federal government is taking traditional sources of water from indigenous communities.
19:05
Speaker 1: It's like, I don't know, it's sticky, it's a sticky wicket.
19:10
Speaker 1: But yeah, to your point, Noel, they were adaptations of
19:16
Speaker 1: pima ocamma and members patterns, motifs from pottery baskets and
19:21
Speaker 1: sand paintings from people traditionally living in the Colorado Watershed
19:28
Speaker 1: and Now what we see is the formation of another lake.
19:32
Speaker 1: It is like the younger, less evil brother of the
19:38
Speaker 1: Salt and Sea, Lake Mead. Lake Mead is starting to form.
19:44
Speaker 1: And by the time and the vital block of concrete
19:48
Speaker 1: is laid in nineteen thirty five. Now the dam is
19:52
Speaker 1: seven hundred and twenty six feet above the canyon. September thirtieth,
19:57
Speaker 1: twenty thousand people get together. There's another guy who's president.
20:01
Speaker 1: His name Franklin Roosevelt. They're commemorating the completion of the dam.
20:06
Speaker 1: We're talking five million barrels of cement, forty five million
20:10
Speaker 1: pounds of steel, rebar reinforcement steel. Excuse me. And at
20:14
Speaker 1: this point this thing has six point six million tons
20:19
Speaker 1: of concrete. It is the tallest dam in the world.
20:22
Speaker 1: If you took yeah, if you took the same amount
20:24
Speaker 1: of concrete, you could pave a road from San Francisco
20:27
Speaker 1: all the way to the Big app.
20:35
Speaker 2: It's incredible. And I guess, I mean, you know, just
20:37
Speaker 2: this is the the reveal of it. Driving up, not
20:41
Speaker 2: to mention, once you get up on that observation deck.
20:44
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like the world's largest, most insane skateboard.
20:48
Speaker 2: You know, you know, but just like the arch of
20:52
Speaker 2: it all, and just like the way it's drilled into
20:55
Speaker 2: the rocks, the surrounding rocks. It almost it's it's like,
20:58
Speaker 2: I think, what I really like about David lynch movies,
21:01
Speaker 2: you know, where it's this pairing of sort of the
21:03
Speaker 2: natural world with this industrial stuff. And I think Lynch
21:07
Speaker 2: isn't always even doing that as like a negative commentary
21:10
Speaker 2: on industrialization. I think he genuinely finds that hybrid kind
21:15
Speaker 2: of form to be beautiful. And I think it can be,
21:18
Speaker 2: you know, not only because of what it represents in
21:21
Speaker 2: terms of, like, you know, the ability to harness this
21:23
Speaker 2: stuff and the whole very grand notion of playing god,
21:27
Speaker 2: but it looks cool and it does have these brutalists
21:31
Speaker 2: kind of touches, you know, with the curves of it
21:34
Speaker 2: all and the way it was designed. Yeah, it's crazy.
21:37
Speaker 2: The Hoover Dam will leave you wordless when you see
21:42
Speaker 2: it for the first time.
21:43
Speaker 4: I think that's fair to say.
21:44
Speaker 1: Even just that massive love crafty andesque bridge spanning the
21:50
Speaker 1: canyon directly after the damn, even that just boggles the
21:55
Speaker 1: mind and leaves us in articulate. Right now, the Hoover
22:00
Speaker 1: Dam saved the Southwest The Hoover Dam is the reason
22:05
Speaker 1: cities like La Las Vegas and Phoenix are as big
22:08
Speaker 1: as they are. It irrigates two million acres. Those turbines
22:12
Speaker 1: you mentioned, no, there's seventeen of them. They generate just
22:16
Speaker 1: those seventeen enough electricity to power one point three million
22:21
Speaker 1: individual homes. It is one of America's seven modern civil
22:26
Speaker 1: engineering wonders. As of nineteen ninety four, seven million people
22:31
Speaker 1: visit it annually. Lake Mead is the world's largest wait
22:34
Speaker 1: for it, reservoir, and ten million people visit there just
22:38
Speaker 1: to hang out every year.
22:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's say, you know, water sports and really right, right, family,
22:43
Speaker 2: as the video shows you, it sure does. Yeah that
22:46
Speaker 2: was part of the pitch too, right, like really the
22:48
Speaker 2: whole like, yeah, it's all this stuff living and harmony,
22:51
Speaker 2: you know, with nature. I think it's super cool. I
22:55
Speaker 2: think my first awareness of the Hoover Dam outside of
22:58
Speaker 2: like maybe a very early civics class, like an elementary school,
23:01
Speaker 2: was in the movie Beavis and butt Head Do America,
23:04
Speaker 2: where they go and visit the Hoover Dam. And of
23:07
Speaker 2: course I think Beavis goes, is it a goddamn right,
23:13
Speaker 2: you know? And I couldn't not think about that, But
23:16
Speaker 2: it makes sense that they featured it because if you're
23:18
Speaker 2: in that part of the world, Vegas, Los Angeles, this
23:21
Speaker 2: is part of kind of southern California and that you know,
23:24
Speaker 2: that stretch, it's a big deal. It's a big deal.
23:29
Speaker 2: This thing exists and allows all of these other things
23:32
Speaker 2: to exist. And it's all because someone kind of did
23:37
Speaker 2: the low tech version of this, screwed the pooch, and
23:40
Speaker 2: then we've had to figure out how to do it
23:42
Speaker 2: right and make it last long term. And yes, labor
23:46
Speaker 2: laws were a real issue back in these days, and
23:50
Speaker 2: it was certainly was capitalizing on people's desperation, you know
23:54
Speaker 2: who needed work. But then it did lead to I
23:57
Speaker 2: think what you could argue were some more equitable situations
24:01
Speaker 2: under you know, the New Deal type programs, which also
24:07
Speaker 2: created like our highway systems and you know a lot
24:09
Speaker 2: of the things that we still you know, depend on
24:12
Speaker 2: and rely upon today. And they created a lot of jobs. Yeah,
24:16
Speaker 2: and some people today would call socialist, which I think
24:20
Speaker 2: is hilarious and absurd.
24:21
Speaker 1: Well, it did save the country, regardless of people's flavor
24:25
Speaker 1: of ideology. That fact is inescapable without the New Deal,
24:29
Speaker 1: without those huge public works the United States would not exist.
24:35
Speaker 1: And you know, some people don't like that, but some
24:38
Speaker 1: people might not like gravity. It does not make gravity untrue.
24:42
Speaker 1: We know we've been going long. Thanks for the smirk there, Max.
24:46
Speaker 2: We know we've been going long.
24:48
Speaker 1: This may or may not end up being a two
24:50
Speaker 1: parter once we get to the edit. There is one tangent.
24:53
Speaker 1: We wanted to end on the myths about the Hoover Dam,
24:58
Speaker 1: which Noli so beautifully set up earlier in our exploration.
25:03
Speaker 1: All right, Yes, just like Lake Linear here in the
25:06
Speaker 1: Atlanta metro area, there was a town on the site
25:10
Speaker 1: of what is now Lake Mead, The city of Saint Thomas,
25:13
Speaker 1: Nevada was Nevada was flooded when Lake Mead was filled
25:19
Speaker 1: and because of severe drought. You can see the ruins
25:22
Speaker 1: of the town again. It was a Mormon or LDS
25:25
Speaker 1: settlement on the Arrowhead Trail between Salt Lake City and
25:28
Speaker 1: la The residents were forced out by the government during
25:32
Speaker 1: an imminent domain pool in nineteen thirty five. But the
25:36
Speaker 1: big question you're probably wondering, the big myth that we're
25:38
Speaker 1: gonna bust with the help from our pals, superhero Hoover.
25:41
Speaker 1: Matt the historian Hoover. Hoover, Matt's fine. All sorts of people,
25:48
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, have claimed Hoover Dam is secretly a graveyard.
25:52
Speaker 1: The idea is that construction was so phrenetic and hurried
25:55
Speaker 1: the safety concerns were thrown out the window. That part
25:58
Speaker 1: is true, but they'll say that people fell from the heights,
26:01
Speaker 1: they got crushed beneath concrete or rocks, and they got ignored.
26:05
Speaker 1: Authorities gave their family flimsy cover stories about workplace accidents,
26:09
Speaker 1: and they said the river took the bodies. So we,
26:13
Speaker 1: like you said, we quartered this incredibly knowledgeable, incredibly nice
26:18
Speaker 1: tour guide that we're calling Hoover Matt. We asked them
26:21
Speaker 1: all about this. Matt, if you're listening, thank you, because
26:24
Speaker 1: we know that the four of us basically gathered in
26:27
Speaker 1: a semi circle around you and sort it kind of
26:30
Speaker 1: tricked you into doing an unrecorded podcast with us.
26:35
Speaker 4: What did Matt tell us about the Hoover Dam.
26:38
Speaker 2: Well, I believe I alluded to it earlier, and I
26:40
Speaker 2: hope I didn't spoil it too much, but there, you know,
26:42
Speaker 2: the whole disparity about the reports of deaths and what
26:47
Speaker 2: they were attributed to. I think that's something that we
26:50
Speaker 2: could go into a little deeper here that you know,
26:53
Speaker 2: I believe you know, what was it, something like one
26:56
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty two hundred. You know, it seems like
26:58
Speaker 2: really really great people were killed, you know, in reported
27:01
Speaker 2: work site accidents out Again, I'm not again not trying
27:06
Speaker 2: to every life is important, but that's pretty damn good God.
27:12
Speaker 2: But off the record, I guess or other deaths that
27:16
Speaker 2: were attributed to things like natural causes, perhaps you know,
27:20
Speaker 2: heart attacks, whatever, those things could very well have been
27:23
Speaker 2: brought on by some of these less than optimal working conditions.
27:31
Speaker 2: And then I believe you asked directly if there was
27:34
Speaker 2: any if any like urban myths or urban legends kind
27:38
Speaker 2: of and he mentioned this kind of cask of a
27:40
Speaker 2: Mantiado story that we mentioned alluded to earlier. You want
27:43
Speaker 2: to give us a little bit more of the skinny
27:45
Speaker 2: on that one.
27:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there it turns out that, yes, there are
27:51
Speaker 1: inevitable fatalities during the construction. Those are almost certainly chalked
27:56
Speaker 1: up to this, chalked up to the speed of the build.
27:59
Speaker 1: But the as far as we can tell, we're pretty
28:02
Speaker 1: much retrieved in every case, and experts can point to
28:07
Speaker 1: most real causes of death. The biggest sticky one is
28:11
Speaker 1: again carbon monoxide poisoning, which the government covered up. However,
28:16
Speaker 1: the legend about Hoover Dam is a mass grave, has
28:19
Speaker 1: an origin point. And here's how Hoover Matt puts it.
28:22
Speaker 1: He says, all right, look, these workers were in dirty, slippery,
28:26
Speaker 1: dangerous conditions, often at the mercy of the weather, and
28:29
Speaker 1: sometimes they would take off their boots during certain activities,
28:33
Speaker 1: air their feed out. Maybe just try to knock some
28:36
Speaker 1: of the debris off those construction boots. One day, the
28:40
Speaker 1: story goes and there's a photograph to prove this. Apparently
28:43
Speaker 1: a worker's boots dropped from a platform from a great height,
28:47
Speaker 1: just like that EMO song to land upside down in
28:51
Speaker 1: newly laid concrete. So if you just look at it,
28:54
Speaker 1: it looks like a dude was buried face down in
28:58
Speaker 1: the concrete. The workers at the time knew no one
29:00
Speaker 1: was dead. They thought it was a cool joke, and
29:03
Speaker 1: so they left it there a little bit longer. It's
29:06
Speaker 1: like cool for morale. But over time this joke without
29:10
Speaker 1: a context, became treated as fact. And that's why you
29:13
Speaker 1: hear people say Hoover Dam is like this mass grave,
29:17
Speaker 1: a ghoulish testament to the necessity of workers' rights.
29:20
Speaker 4: That is not true.
29:22
Speaker 1: However, there is a mass grave right next to Hoover Dam,
29:27
Speaker 1: that one we talked about and Hoover Matt confirmed it. Right, Noel,
29:31
Speaker 1: you know I'm thinking about I.
29:32
Speaker 2: Don't think so. No Lake Mead rights that that it's
29:37
Speaker 2: it's more of a that is sketchier than the damn itself,
29:40
Speaker 2: like in terms of bodies. Yeah, that's sorry where the
29:43
Speaker 2: bodies are buried.
29:44
Speaker 4: That's right.
29:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're and you pointed out, I think in an
29:48
Speaker 1: off air conversation a while back, you were like, it's
29:51
Speaker 1: you told me.
29:52
Speaker 4: I think it was doing.
29:53
Speaker 1: When I was still doing car stuff, we did something
29:56
Speaker 1: on Lake Mead or underwater burials, and I think it
30:00
Speaker 1: as you who said, oh, yeah, totally the mob. The
30:03
Speaker 1: mob is killing people and putting them in Lake Mead.
30:05
Speaker 1: It turns out you you were very correct on that
30:08
Speaker 1: one hundred percent.
30:09
Speaker 2: Yeah. And also, you know, if we've seen the movie Casino,
30:11
Speaker 2: you know they describe the desert surrounding Las Vegas as
30:15
Speaker 2: being full of holes.
30:16
Speaker 4: So yeah, that's another part of it.
30:19
Speaker 2: But yeah, man, this is I don't know who knew
30:21
Speaker 2: that this would be as interesting a topic as I mean,
30:24
Speaker 2: maybe I hope, I hope. I'm not speaking for our
30:27
Speaker 2: listeners and saying that I hope you found it interesting,
30:29
Speaker 2: but I know the three of us did, and it was,
30:31
Speaker 2: you know, an excellent thing to visit and also really
30:34
Speaker 2: really pretty pretty epic to talk about.
30:38
Speaker 1: And Max, you've got to go with us next time,
30:41
Speaker 1: you know, it is a great ambition of ours to
30:45
Speaker 1: have the three of us get back on the road.
30:48
Speaker 1: So who knows, folks, maybe maybe in twenty twenty four
30:52
Speaker 1: we will be seeing you in person. Hope springs like
30:57
Speaker 1: the Colorado River eternal. So thank you, as always for
31:02
Speaker 1: tuning in. Big big thanks to our super producer, mister
31:05
Speaker 1: Max big Sky Williams. Big big thanks of course to
31:09
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, ak the Quist, who else who else?
31:13
Speaker 2: Who will oh geez, Alex Williams who composed our theme,
31:17
Speaker 2: Christoph Frasciotis and Eves Chef Coats here in spirit. Yeah,
31:22
Speaker 2: all the hits I think I think they've had about
31:24
Speaker 2: covers us Edgar Jay, Edgar Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, Edgar Allan Poe,
31:30
Speaker 2: Woodrow Wilson kissed our collective grits. Yeah, yeah, EAP. That's
31:36
Speaker 2: how we're for Edgar Allan Poe FDR shout out follow
31:40
Speaker 2: the House of Usher, by the way, I know we're
31:41
Speaker 2: past spooky season, but I.
31:43
Speaker 4: Just enjoyed the hell out of that.
31:44
Speaker 2: I think it's the best thing that Mike flan again
31:47
Speaker 2: has done, and it's a really cool reimagining of a
31:50
Speaker 2: lot of that Poe lore. And highly recommend it if
31:52
Speaker 2: anyone is looking for a little bit of a spook fest.
31:55
Speaker 2: You know I always have your back on that.
31:57
Speaker 1: No, I believe it is always Halloween in America and
32:02
Speaker 1: in our hearts.
32:03
Speaker 4: We'll see you next time, folks.
32:11
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
32:15
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.