Context defines us.

I oughta to be studying for my checkride, so I'm watching old Reclamation Era film clips - just watched one about the Hoover Dam. The narrator's so amazed at their achievement and so proud. It's such a Big Deal - of an unprecedented and nearly unimaginable scale - kinda like the destruction of New Orleans last fall, but the exact opposite. Check this out...

"Every section of the country was called upon to contribute to the staggering quantity and wide diversity of materials required."

(great vocabulary too)

"Every state of the union contributed its quota of laborers and artisans. It was not long before roads and rail lines had penetrated into the lowest reaches of the canyon. To provide these arteries of transportation, thousands of tons of virgin rock were blasted from the age-old walls of the gorge. Thus the first thunders of man’s determination to conquer the Colorado River reverberated between the sheer cliffs of the canyon which heretofore had known only the hot silence of the desert and the roar of the river’s angry floods.”

“As the work of placing [concrete] progressed, the crews became expert in the handling of equipment and record-breaking daily pours were made only to be surpassed by later achievements on this same structure.”

(and incredible new technology)
“From the switchyard (where the most highly specialized and modern developments in the power transmission field are to be found) the lines travel out across the desert bringing light to the homes and cities and power to the factories of the great southwest."



There’s another quick little film about a North Platte river - how it contains a 2-year water supply and is used for “irrigation; by which a high degree of control is maintained over the application of the water to the land, coupled with mild western climates serve to make fruits...”

“The settlers' tents give way in a few years to fine well-kept rural homes – a far cry from the sagebrush...”

They did a lot of work on our core infrastructure making the west and southwest habitable for everyone who lives there now. Now we sit in our homes, tapping away on our computers and take their work for granted.

It's interesting to compare the Hoover Dam with the Three Rivers dam currently under construction in China. There's been a lot of outcry over that project. People displaced, species uprooted or exterminated, environmental havoc, etc. but I have to wonder whether China will see just as many core hibituation impovements as we saw in the American West as a result of our dams.

Worth noting that the Hoover Dam took 4 years in development, and two years of sitework (diverting the river) before they could start on construction. Constructing the dam took two years (funny, the first house I built took two years and it didn't have nearly as much concrete - even though it was a concrete house.) They installed and started up generators over the next four years as the reservoir filled (that took six years). A total of 8 years work after 4 years planning. That's a pretty aggressive schedule.