Hoover Dam: heading home

As my vacation wraps up and I'm heading home, I stopped at Hoover Dam as I crossed the border back to Arizona. Hoover Dam was constructed between 1931-1936 during the Great Depression. Engineers decided to create a concrete arch-gravity dam. This type of dam is convex shaped and is thick at the bottom and thin at the top and the walls of the canyon share the force of the water. By 1939 the dam's power plant became the largest hydroelectric facility in the world. Unfortunately, prolonged drought has impacted the dam's ability to produce power although water is still released to create hydroelectric power. All total, water from Lake Meade supports 18 million people in Arizona, Nevada, and California. Over one million tourists visit the dam each year. It was too hot to leave the pups in the car and take a tour of the dam today, so that will have to go on my list of "things to do" in the future. However, I did hop out and walk along the top of the dam to get some quick pictures. The view down to the Colorado River was overwhelming and it was so amazing to think about the engineering involved to create such a huge structure. I know the Colorado River, Hoover Dam, and the water in Lake Meade are some of the reasons why I can live in the desert in Phoenix. Happy to be back in Arizona and heading home! 

View of the dam!

View of Lake Meade: notice the low water level ring

Heading home!